My 22 wide flat nose tool

[375RUGER]

How to make a 22 boolit like this.


Any aluminum or steel plate/block can be used up to about 3/4" thick. This in the photos is 1/2" (minimum recommended)anodized aluminum that I happen to have a lot of. 2 drills will be needed, a #2 and #25. The #25 can be changed if a different size meplat is desired.
First step is to drill through the base metal with the #25 drill. Ignore the large hole on the right side of the plate.


Next step requires a bit of care. The #25 hole is the pilot hole, drill into but not through with the #2 drill. Before the #2 reaches all the way through you will want to start checking with a 22 cartridge how much deeper you need the hole. Take it a little at a time till the nose of the boolit is just proud through the other side. The #2 side is where you will insert the cartridge, the nose will protrude out the otherside. The #2 drill will be ~.010-.020" shy of breaking all the way through.

I use a gasket scraper to shear off the tip of the boolit, couple taps with hammer. I've had this one for years, I believe I got it at Autozone. It comes with 3 nice heavy duty razors which are easy to resharpen if needed. This WFN tool takes off exactly 1g.

[Andrew Mason]

very interesting

do you only do this with ammo you are going to hunt with? or all of your ammo?

im sure it dosent take a long time to get some done, but I definatly wouldn't want to do a 525 round box.

[375RUGER]

Right now the ammo that I'm hunting with. You can do a box of 50 in just a few minutes.
I have a large rabbit and antelope squirrel infestation at my place. It's hard to get a garden in with these devils. They completely destroyed an entire crop of melons, tomatoes, and okra. I'm on my third planting of okra. I'm using poison, traps, repellent, and 22s. The 22s have the most confirmed kills.
I've been using the CCI Quiet ammo for my night hunts, it is deadly and will not penetrate through a cottontail, but it shoots right through a jack. I haven't shot a jack in about a week but I'm hopeing these will stop better.
I know about the fragmenting Quiet ammo, but I've got a brick of the regular.

[Andrew Mason]

so, even on game that small you are getting a measureable performance difference between flat and round nose bullets.

I will have to make one of these plates.

[375RUGER]

I'm actually getting different results between a small rabbit and a large rabbit. I have checked all the cottontails I shot and didn't find one exit wound with the CCI Quiet. I thought I was missing shots on the jacks because I could here the ricochet, but then on examination of the body I realized I was making all hits just shooting through. I shot one cottontail with the WFN day before yesterday but he managed to crawl under the shed and die so I couldn't retrieve the slug to see how well it did.
Those jacks are kind of thin bodied in the ribcage area and I think the pass through shots might just be ricocheting off of a rib.
So I decided to modify the tips. Main thing I'm after is to reduce the pass throughs on the jacks.
Since I can't be awake all the time I'm also spraying the garden with egg, vinegar, hot sauce mix. It kind of keeps them away. I've still got at least one jack to shoot but we can't seem to cross paths, he's wise to me and really light shy.

[uscra112]

Shearing the bullet tip off with a sideways force like that can't do the straightness of the cartridge any good. Have you done any accuracy comparison vs. un-modified cartridges? I've been swaging a flat point on .22s for a year or so now, and not only does it improve "terminal effects", it also improves the accuracy of some makes quite dramatically. Haven't done it to the Quiet, since where I live there no need for stealth when dealing with garden raiders.

[somedude101]

how do you swage .22, it seems to me that the rimfire primer would go off or be ruined before any real swaging force could be applied.

[quack1]

Shearing the bullet tip off with a sideways force like that can't do the straightness of the cartridge any good. Have you done any accuracy comparison vs. un-modified cartridges? I've been swaging a flat point on .22s for a year or so now, and not only does it improve "terminal effects", it also improves the accuracy of some makes quite dramatically. Haven't done it to the Quiet, since where I live there no need for stealth when dealing with garden raiders.

I do pretty much what the OP does, except I use a coarse file and a hardened die to hold the round. I have found no difference in accuracy or point of impact out to 50 yards between flat pointed and unmodified cartridges. No jackrabbits in PA, but the flat ones sure do thump squirrels better than the factory round nose and with less destruction of the eaten' meat than hollowpoints.

[uscra112]

Nope, it takes very little force, so there's no risk of firing the primers. Here's the tool I made for myself. The die is a cavity that's reamed to .2250" diameter. When the cartridge is pressed in, it comes up against the top punch, which forms the flat, (or a hollow-point if you wish) and simultaneously expands the boolit against the ID of of the die, giving it a very uniform diameter that's big enough to fill the throat of the typical semi-auto chamber, which you can't say for a lot of bulk ammo. Paco Kelly had (has?) a tool that is just a block with the hole, and you use a punch and a mallet. Not as well controlled as the press die method, IMHO.

[somedude101]

That is a pretty cool die set up, do you have any problems with the boolit setting back when you use that?

[calaloo]

375RUGER

I feel your pain. Nothing is as discouraging as having critters eat your garden after all the hard work. I don't know if this will work for your critters but I guarantee it works for deer. Anyway it's cheap and easy and you probably already have the stuff. Ain't poison either. Put 4 or 5 eggs in a blender with some water. Really grind them up good. Put the slurry in your pump up sprayer and add enough water to make a gallon. Spray your plants. This will last about two or three weeks unless it rains. In reality though, after I see signs the deer are enjoying my garden I'll spray once and never have another problem until next spring. Let me know how this works for you. Oh, don't let this secret get out, the company's that sell critter repellant wont like it.

[375RUGER]

Shearing the bullet tip off with a sideways force like that can't do the straightness of the cartridge any good. Have you done any accuracy comparison vs. un-modified cartridges? I've been swaging a flat point on .22s for a year or so now, and not only does it improve "terminal effects", it also improves the accuracy of some makes quite dramatically. Haven't done it to the Quiet, since where I live there no need for stealth when dealing with garden raiders.

That's why I chose the #2 drill, it holds the shell fairly snug. I use a real sharp razor and a 2 sharp taps with 4oz brass hammer. I was doing 1 blow from one side and then one from the other to finish the shear but I couldn't see where it made any difference in performance. I haven't done any real side by side on paper comparison yet, but just sighting in a scope it shoots just fine and seems to help the American Eagle ammo shoot a lot better.

375RUGER

I feel your pain. Nothing is as discouraging as having critters eat your garden after all the hard work. I don't know if this will work for your critters but I guarantee it works for deer. Anyway it's cheap and easy and you probably already have the stuff. Ain't poison either. Put 4 or 5 eggs in a blender with some water. Really grind them up good. Put the slurry in your pump up sprayer and add enough water to make a gallon. Spray your plants. This will last about two or three weeks unless it rains. In reality though, after I see signs the deer are enjoying my garden I'll spray once and never have another problem until next spring. Let me know how this works for you. Oh, don't let this secret get out, the company's that sell critter repellant wont like it.

I have been doing this with the addition of some hot sauce, little vinegar and squirt of dawn. It seems to help some with the rabbits but doesn't seem to deter the ground squirrels, little chipmunk size varmints. I've replanted okra 3X, and so far with this mix they are not bothering the third planting. I'll have to reapply today, we finally got some rain last night.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

If you get or make one of these noise reducing tools, be sure to check for accuracy improvement or degradation, in each firearm they will be used in. In my experience, some weapons like it , some are neutral, and some degrade with respect to accuracy. I found in one rifle that HP subsonics flatted did shoot more accurately and also worked better on squirrels.

My tool is a piece of aluminum round stock with a 1/2 of a 22 rim recess, and a height allowing a razor blade scraper to trim off about 1/16" on a 38 grain HP subsonic inserted in the slightly snug center chamber. The rim protruding allows a lightly snug fit at the case base when the rim is moderately held on a pine block. More is trimmed on the 40 grainers, solid or HP of course.

BvT

[uscra112]

That is a pretty cool die set up, do you have any problems with the boolit setting back when you use that?

I'm sure it does a little. It improves "bulk" ammo, and it improved CCI Minimags in my 10/22, but if I treat good ammo, (say, Wolf Match), it just makes it worse, and I would not be surprised to find that it's messing with the seating and/or the crimp.

[longbow]

Dale53 sent me some articles by Ed Harris several years ago and one was on a tool to modify .22's to flat point by filing in a die to make and SGB bullet. I made one and tested performance in a Bullet Test Tube. The flat pointed bullets gave much better terminal performance than standard round nose bullets. I have not shot any critters with them yet though.

Also, Paco Kelly makes a tool to produce a variety of point modifications to .22's:

http://gunblast.com/Paco2.htm
http://www.leverguns.com/store/acurizer.htm

Never tried one but I have read good reports on them so I made a simple one and it works pretty well. It really doesn't take much force to reshape the nose though I have to admit that hammering on the nose of a loaded rimfire round made me a bit nervous. Filing the nose works and certainly doesn't give that perception that it might shoot a nose punch at a guy! I am sure Paco's tools are safe though and I did not experience any mishaps with my copy.

Just some more options.

Longbow

[**oneshot**]

I use a DRock tool to modify 22's. It works great and in most cases really improved accuracy and really improved expansion on small game. It's made to be used in an arbor press and is really uniform due to it's design.

[Wayne Smith]

I use Paco's tools but use them in my arbor press. No impacts and it's easy to keep the effort the same.

[Herb in Pa]

Waltz die for 22, adjustable for bullet diameter and can create hollow points, flat points and hollow flat points, it's made to screw into a regular press.

[375RUGER]

The waltz is a neat tool. Here's how to get it in case anyone is interested.
Email: WALTZ@SSSNET.COM
Contact: NEAL B WALTZ
4105 HYATT N.W. MASSILLON, OH 44646 USA

About $135 shipped, it screws into a reloading press and has a shellholder for the case.

[Changeling]

Has it ever struck anyone why Winchester/ Reminging/ etc, hasen't come out with a "Flat Point" .22 ?

CCI started it then dropped the ball, I contacted them several times complaining and recommending they bring back the .22 SGB. They did, however the price went through the roof, I received zip!