Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A re-loadable .22 to replace the .22RF?

That Seafire fellow has been posting data on stuff like that for years now... going on 10...

but folks always thought he was a little nuts... down loading 223s to 22 Hornet or even 22 Mag or 22 LR velocities... and wondering what ever would someone need an application like that for....

granted the bullets, decent bullets aren't cheap.. but it can make components go a long way.. biggest cost is the bullet and the primer...and ya need a bolt action or single shot rifle.. no semi autos...

but trying times motivate innovative solutions... its the American way...

and for those crying about not being able to find 223 brass, that Seafire Fellow would also like to pass on that some of this cheap Russian 223 ammo is actually reloadable...Tula for example, and there are others...

a universal decapping die, and a little easy patience at the load bench, can tell you that real quick.. just don't push real hard when depriming...if it is reloadable, it will deprime fairly easily...

Thanks, I may have to try that.

Sea fire,
I immediately thought of your blue dot loads when I read this thread.

If I happen to get that desperate, I have a 222 that will get some new loads developed.

Until then, I am waiting for the 22LR scalpers to get bit by an oversupply.

load the hornet down to 1000 fps, and you have a gun capable of killing any small game without blowing things up.

I've wondered if a light enough load would work in a semi auto (i.e., is there a load slow enough not to drive the bolt back?). What happens with the low velocity loads in a semi auto? Do you get jams, or does the semi auto become essentially a straight pull bolt action?

Depends on how light the load is.

The 5.5mm Velo-Dog cartridge qualifies as a 22 that's reloadable and equivalent to a 22LR RF. Cartridges of the World #10 says that the original cartidges used an odd-sized primer. I think that some US manufacturers also made these, and likely used small pistol primers. Some campfire members have reported using the cartridge. Finding brass will likely be a problem these days.

A well-known story is that Askins Jr. found a few hundred of these cases, cut the length down, reloaded them and used them in a 22LR pistol converted to center fire. He used the setup in winning a national pistol championship in the 1930s (at Camp Perry?).

When Wotkyns, Whelen, & Co were developing the Hornet, they used bullets pulled from factory Velo-Dog cartridges. Jacketed 22 bullets were pretty rare about 1930.

--Bob

I have run 12 grains of Blue dot under 35 grain VMaxs through a Mini 14 and an AR. With both, they were just on the edge of being able to cycle them. A 40 grain bullet may well cycle it some of the time or just another grain of powder. I suspect that such a small bump up would still leave it not cycling ALL of the time, just most of the time.

At 12 grains of BD under a 35 gran VMax the bolt comes pretty much all the way back but the empty does not eject. If I used one of them all the time, I think I'd dial it back just a hair so that it didn't jam.

The Velo Dog and 22 CCM are what I would like to see available, they certainly make more sense than a all the existing rim fires except the 22 itself.