20 cal from 22lr brass

[R.Ph. 380]

Holy Smokes Batman............................................ .........

[BT Sniper]

Yep, that's the way I felt! A bit shocked, amazed and gratified all at the same time! First load and second OAL right out of the gate shoots 1/4 MOA at 200 yrds from scrap bullets made from 22lr brass in my own dies! This after spending three days and a couple hundred rounds with commercial bullets trying to get groups twice that size!

Just trying to upload some pics now........ I'll have more data and info soon.

BT

[BT Sniper]

It is amazing what simply a small change in a loaded round can make on target. With my 140 grain 6.5mm bullets it was the primer, with my 130 grain 6mm bullets it was both the primer and OAL and now with my 41 grain 20 cals it seems the OAL is the biggest culprit and possibly the powder too, for achieving success on paper.

Every year now for the last 4 years I have been loading up more and more 20 Practical (20-223) rounds for my dad an I to use in the ground squirrel fields each spring. The first year I loaded up about 3,000 rounds, last year it was closer to 10,000 rounds. My research showed Viht N-133 to be a great powder for this round pushing 32 grain pills upward of 4200fps. So for the last four years this is the only powder I bothered to use, it provided excellent accuracy, clean burning and great FPS. I loaded the rounds to within about a half grain of max for our riffles and have shot several thousand rounds now down the barrel at speeds of 4000+FPS. Barrels still look good and still easily shoot under half inch at 100, we load them single shot so the barrels don't get to hot or abused BUT....... loading this close to the edge of max PSI for our riffles I didn't want to trust a powder thrower to dispense powder directly into case, I needed to be more accurate, beside the N-133 is a rather long stick powder so an accurate throw is not as simple as it is with say a ball powder. So I have been using the RCBS charge master to ensure accurate powder weight for each and every case. It sure takes a long time to load nearly 10,000 rounds and it got to the point I needed to research to see if there was a ball powder alternative that I could trust in the powder thrower. A bit of research and I came up with a few good reviews of the RamShot line of powders. All of them are spherical (ball basically) and throw very accurate charges. If I could find a load it would make my reloading life much easier and faster. For light weight 32 grain bullets in the 20 Practical cartridge Ramshot X-Terminator is recommended and for heavier loads in both the 20 practical as well as the 223 RamShot TAC has a few good reviews.

So I picked up a couple jugs of each and away I went. I wanted to try the Nosler 32 grain Varmageddon against our tried and true Horandy Z-max. I also picked up some Nosler 2nds with their 40 grain BT bullets. I did have success in years past with the Sierra 39 grain Blitz king bullets, the 39 grain SBK bullets took no effort at all to find a good load in a 12 twist Shilen barreled Savage but these Nosler 40s have been a bit more temperamental, then again I was using N-133 for the SBK back then.

Anyway.... I found the 32 grain Nosler to shoot very well, maybe a little better then the Hornady, with a load of 26.5 grains of X-terminator powder at 4050 fps and the 40 grain Nosler shoot well with 27 grains of TAC at 3700 FPS. Of course there was plenty of load development and OAL testing but....... what floored me today was my 41.5 grain 20 cal bullets made from 22lr jackets.

I made these bullets earlier this year. It was some of my first bullets made with a very small .045 ejection pin and resulting meplat. The 22lr jacket was not trimmed or shortened. The barring surface measures .2038 and the flat base pressure ring comes in at .2045 in diameter. The long jacket could have made a heavier bullet but I had some lead cores already swaged to give a weight of 41.5 so I went with it and I didn't really want it any heavier then it needed to be so 41.5 grains it was. I did not make any attempt to sort the brass jackets used in today's testing nor did I sort the LC brass. Only thing I did do was cull out any bullets with a folded tip or any other blemish.

What was different from past experiments and something I am trying a bit more of lately is that I made no attempt to polish, shine, or clean the bullet after it had been point formed. There was still a very faint film of lube on the bullet. Simply took these bullets from the die to the box and then 10 months later loaded them up.

Specs......

Savage short action receiver with PTG bolt head
Choate stock with some extra lead in the stock for weight (certainly not needed with the 20 practical but what the heck)
CBI Criterion 26" Stainless Steel 11 twist barrel
Sightron SIII 8-32x56 LRMOA2 scope
LC brass
CCI 450 primer
RamShot TAC powder at 24.0 grains
BTSniper 41.5 grain bullet made from 22lr brass at 3300FPS
200 yrds, calm wind, 40 degrees, 2500 elv.


First five rounds with my bullets at an OAL of 2.175" Nothing spectacular but not too bad....





THEN!!!! the next five rounds with my bullets at an OAL of 2.200





and the last five rounds at an OAL of 2.225




What a difference a simple .025 change in OAL will make! In this case the difference in accuracy was substantial! That is a five shot .550" group at 200 yrds or 1/4 MOA vs. groups of 2" or more!







Here is a couple pics of the best groups from the Nosler bullets, again still at 200 yrds!







and just to show that not all groups at 200 are this pretty check out what happens in my gun when I tried the 40 grain Nosler BT with H-335 powder! Three different groups there with three different powder loads. I figured with the groups I got using TAC there was no since going any further with the H-335 powder with this bullet.





I read that the RamShot TAC powder contains a copper fouling reducing agent in it, probably similar to the 223CFE powder... but I got to wonder between this copper fouling reducing agent, my bullets made from brass jackets and the light layer of left over lube if it didn't all come together for a 1/4 MOA group or if I was just lucky that the second load tested out of three produced such amazing groups? I suppose if it was the powder, brass and lube then the other two groups should have also shot well but in this case maybe the OAL had ....... "everything?" to do with accuracy with these bullets in this barrel etc.........

Needless to say I was very pleased and will be making a lot more of these bullets to shoot this spring in the squirrel fields!

Good shooting and swage on!

Brian

p.s. I would be happy with groups like this at 100 yrds! But again I was blown away with these results at 200!

[mckenziedrums]

I think I figured out the trick to getting tiny groups with swaged bullets.... Let Brian shoot your rifle. Fine shooting as always! I'm a big fan of Xterminator powder, never could figure out why it wasn't more popular.

[Bills Shed]

Nicely done Brian,
I have been tinkering with my swaged 17 gn, .172" projectiles made from 22lr cases. I was told that they would not shoot and were only good for plinking. You have shown that you can push them very fast and I have found the same.
I am only shooting the 17 hornet from a stock standard CZ527 but I stumbled onto a cracker of a load and like you it was the COL that made the difference. It was a five shot group and I had a flier that I called (made the group .684") but the other four went into .188" Range was only 100m. It is more than I could have hoped for. Made these at .526" long running at 3650 F/S
Attachment 181360
Please note that the length in the pic should read .526"
Keep posting your results on the 20cal, it inspired me to make the .172" projectiles.
Bill

[Three44s]

Good grief, I keep reading these kind of postings over here in the swage section and my wallet is going to take a big dive!

Great work there Brian!

I know the .204 calibers are pretty capable in the accuracy/speed department. A friend of mine has been using a .204 Ruger in a CZ for years now and chiding me to jump on the band wagon ....... and I finally did with a build in a Savage bolt gun and I even tried to buy a barrel chambered in Practical over on the Savage shooters forum but the seller disappeared ....... weird .........

Anyway, we have been getting good service out of the 32 gr. bullets and not so much in the 40 grainers.

But your work really blows me away ...... using .22 lr casings for jackets and getting a group like you did!

Very nice ..... very nice indeed!

Three 44s

[reed1911]

The problem with using the .22LR brass with .17's and .14's is that with the pinch point left over from where the rim was, it will break up at that spot when pushed to high RPM. I've made bullets just fine from them in both calibers for shooting under 4000RPS (240,000 RPM) pushed much faster than that and they start to either break-up or drift. Using .22LR jackets takes a lot more scrutiny since you are not necessarily working with the same precision compared to commercial jackets, but if you take your time to sort them and be very picky; your extra work will show in the groups. Keep in mind too, that when you draw them down to the smaller calibers every little defect becomes more and more significant. roughly 60% of them drawn to .14 cal are tossed or relegated to plinking either from wall thickness or breaks along the primer strike. It is not worth it in my opinion, but, like the rest of us I had to try; because "why the heck not?".

[BT Sniper]

Updated the pics to make this thread current again.

Photobucket SUCKS!

Brian

[Bills Shed]

New thread or old thread...those are still pretty little groups

Bill

[Bills Shed]

The problem with using the .22LR brass with .17's and .14's is that with the pinch point left over from where the rim was, it will break up at that spot when pushed to high RPM. I've made bullets just fine from them in both calibers for shooting under 4000RPS (240,000 RPM) pushed much faster than that and they start to either break-up or drift. Using .22LR jackets takes a lot more scrutiny since you are not necessarily working with the same precision compared to commercial jackets, but if you take your time to sort them and be very picky; your extra work will show in the groups. Keep in mind too, that when you draw them down to the smaller calibers every little defect becomes more and more significant. roughly 60% of them drawn to .14 cal are tossed or relegated to plinking either from wall thickness or breaks along the primer strike. It is not worth it in my opinion, but, like the rest of us I had to try; because "why the heck not?".

I have not made any 14'cal but have shot thousands of my 17 cal projectiles and I can only go by what I see and I am pretty convinced that RPM is only one factor in projectiles coming apart. I believe barrel condition ( roughness) and surface velocity are just as big a consideration. Brian has shot his projectiles out of 22/250 at high velocity and I have tested my 17 cal projectiles out of a 17/222 at 4300+ and all made it to the target.
A 224 projectile and a 17 cal projectile both shot out of a 1:9 barrel at 3600f/s will be doing 288000R/M
The Surface velocity of the 224 is approx 16890 SF/Min..(surface feet per minute)
The surface velocity of the 172 is approx 12970 SF/Min. Basically the surface of the jacket is spinning 25% slower than the 224 to achieve the same RPM. The 17 cal would need to be punched at over 4680 f/s to get the same surface speed and presumably the same forces on the jacket.
The 14 would have to go even faster.
If I am not comparing apples with apples or am barking up the wrong tree please let me know. I am happy to learn and be corrected. Brian has shown that speed and rim fire jackets can go together very well and I tend to agree with him.

Love those 20 cal projectiles

Bills Shed