Making a 22 cal pistol round. lightest bullets available?

[squirrel_slayer]

I've always wanted to try the 22lr to bullet swaging.

Just ran across this


Talked to the guy who makes the swaging dies. he stated the picture shown was completely full of lead and weighs 40gr but you could put less core in it and reduce the weight. he also stated if you wanted to trim jackets (this is made from a 22 short case) you could shortened the bullet till it had very little bearing surface and a bullet of about 20gr could easily be made.

May try my hand at making my own dies lol

[Oso Polaris]

Today, I saw a short YouTube video from ShotShow 2020 reviewing new ELR 22 long rifle ammo that is being designed. The bullets are being made by one of the specialty makers who also plans to offer loaded rimfire ammo. They are finalizing the exact bullet weight. At the moment they were playing with a polymer tipped bullet and a solid copper core bullet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApP1e_EVbFY

[squirrel_slayer]

Originally Posted by Oso Polaris

Today, I saw a short YouTube video from ShotShow 2020 reviewing new ELR 22 long rifle ammo that is being designed. The bullets are being made by one of the specialty makers who also plans to offer loaded rimfire ammo. They are finalizing the exact bullet weight. At the moment they were playing with a polymer tipped bullet and a solid copper core bullet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApP1e_EVbFY

Yeah seen that the week of and immediately contacted them and asked if they knew what weights the bullets would be, if they were going to be heeled .221 bullets and if they would be offered as a component.

Answer no plans to be sold as a component and their still finalizing design/weights but their will be 6 in all from what I gathered. A fmj and tipped and weights that will work in 1:16, 1:9 and 1:6 barrels.

[22_boomer]

I'm late into this thread but ran into the same problem years ago with my own special cartridges. If you are looking for short commercial bullets Barnes makes a 30gr varmint Grenade flat base that's 0.555" long and Speer makes a 30gr TNT Green bullet with small hollow point that's 0.438" long and a few others up to 40gr that are in the 0.495" range. At one time Midway sold the .224" diameter 30gr bullets used in the hornady 22 rimfire magnum with the red ballistic tip as blems and they where short but the Hornady 35gr V-max bullet is similar and can still be found and is 0.517" long. The ballistic tip on the V-max really helps with feeding and I believe they are flat base bullets.

I had made an AR-15 carbine chambered in the 22 Reed Express with Ron Reed's help and I wanted a light .224 diameter bullet and the ones listed above worked great. By the way, AR's do not like bullets that are blunt or have large hollow points and the bullets I listed worked great.

Edit to add: this is the 35gr Hornady V-max I used at times. Straight sides allows more bullet to fit in neck.

[squirrel_slayer]

Originally Posted by 22_boomer

I'm late into this thread but ran into the same problem years ago with my own special cartridges. If you are looking for short commercial bullets Barnes makes a 30gr varmint Grenade flat base that's 0.555" long and Speer makes a 30gr TNT Green bullet with small hollow point that's 0.438" long and a few others up to 40gr that are in the 0.495" range. At one time Midway sold the .224" diameter 30gr bullets used in the hornady 22 rimfire magnum with the red ballistic tip as blems and they where short but the Hornady 35gr V-max bullet is similar and can still be found and is 0.517" long. The ballistic tip on the V-max really helps with feeding and I believe they are flat base bullets.

I had made an AR-15 carbine chambered in the 22 Reed Express with Ron Reed's help and I wanted a light .224 diameter bullet and the ones listed above worked great. By the way, AR's do not like bullets that are blunt or have large hollow points and the bullets I listed worked great.

Edit to add: this is the 35gr Hornady V-max I used at times. Straight sides allows more bullet to fit in neck.

Yes you are late to the party Not sure if i'll run this on in the AR as i'm still ironing out things with my other wildcat.

However a PPSH 43 mag'd MP7 esq build would be fun! but I would wear out my welcome at my buddies place trying to bring that to fruition.

I do have some of those listed but I think the speer is 33gr or is there another?

My currently lineup to test 33gr speer jhp, 34gr nosler fbhp, 40gr armscor jhp, 45gr "H" xtp/bee bullet.

Dungheap has also sent me some 30gr moly coated bullets I plan to try as soon as they show up.

[squirrel_slayer]

Guess I forgot to post this yesterday.

ok i'm so upset with myself!!!! just powered up the chrono and went to log my data and I pressed the wrong button and deleted everything. :faint:

I do remember some of the velocities. 5.2gr were in the mid 2000's, 5.4gr was upper 2200's with one that read 2400 on the nose then things nose bombed.

Here's a quick case measurement rundown. Fresh resized brass measures .373", 4.5gr measured .3745, 5gr measured .3745-.375, 5.2gr .3755, 5.4gr .3755 now all of these plunk in and out of the barrel without issue.

Now is where things changed 5.6gr had erratic velocities from 1700-2100 cases took effort to remove from the chamber and will not drop back into the barrel. case expansion was .377" and weirdly 2/3's of the body of the case has this measurement but the web is still .3755". I shot 1 5.8gr which was 2108 ft/sec and it got stuck in the barrel. I didn't want to damage the extractor so I waited till I got home and used a vice grip to get it out. body diameter was .3775" and web .376" now an intersting thing about this case is if it had a deeper firing pin indent and it looked as it walked to the edge of the primer as if it maybe was trying to tilt the barrel down during the hit?

The primers on all but the 1 mentioned looked the same and they have less primer flow than factory 9mm ammo, likely due to the rifle primer thickness?

All of the loads were starting to cycle the slide with the factory spring.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Looks like I need to go a touch slower on the powder or concentrate on the 5.2-5.4gr load.



After plotting Quickloads prediction against my velocities I seen an interesting correlation. My velocities were posting rougly .4-.6gr faster velocities (ie. the 4.5gr load tracks with the 4.9gr estimation, the 5gr with 5.4gr and it ramps up from there) I'm wondering if the small rifle primer was boosting pressures by ~5k psi compared to QL's prediction.

It makes almost perfect sense when plotted. Here's what 5.4gr +.6gr looks like in QL 6.04gr 2259 ft/sec 385ft/lbs 52337 ft/sec which is right in line with what speeds I was seeing. and the loads after that were likely getting toasty and why things went erratic!

[squirrel_slayer]

Loaded up some of the 34's at 5.3gr to re-test and get a solid velocity # and try and do some accuracy testing. Also loaded up a few 33 jhp's to work those up. they actually look pretty tough! Being that it's a shorter bullet it should run ~50 ft/sec faster than the 34's.

[22_boomer]

squirrel_slayer,
I don't know if this would help at all but the factory 22 TCM brass is a bit thinner in the case sides and might allow a bit more volume and require less reaming when you form it to your case size. I did an AR back when the cartridge first came out and hated that little fire plug bullet so I got the cases and hand loaded with better bullets. I made the mistake of buying off brand TCM cases (because they were cheap) that were made from .223 brass and found the necks where way too thick when loaded so had to neck turn them. I decided to go with the real 22 TCM brass with the 22 TCM head stamp and it worked great. I guess the cases where made specifically for the 22 TCM so the case wall thickness is less. You are using what seems like safe loads so I don't think you need the strength built into .223 brass plus having to ream the neck on each case is a pain. This is the place I got the brass from and it's Armscor 22 TCM brass https://www.ammosupplywarehouse.com/...ducts_id=20077

EDIT to add: I didn't realize the plain brass only came primed.

[ray h]

Last fall when I talked to Armscor, they are only doing nickle cases now.

[squirrel_slayer]

I want to say people on here have reported the brass doesn't hold up to well at rifle pressures. which i'm pretty close to (45-52K)