.221 Askins

[deltaenterprizes]

I am working on something similar to the.221 Askins, a reloadable 22LR.
Askins had a similar idea and used 5.56 Velo Dog brass, which is almost impossible to find now a days.
I am using .25ACP brass sized to a straight walled case with a rim that will hold a 22 cal bullet.
I am using 22 cal pellets with a primer to replicate 22 Colibri Ammo to start, then I will use a small amount of powder to get 22 short and maybe long rifle velocities.
The primer pocket and bullet occupy case capacity that the 22LR does not.
An adapter was made from a piece of 22LR barrel the dimensions of a.410 shell to fit a .410 bolt action I have.
Initial tests have been positive so the next step is to rebarrel a bolt action 22 and convert the bolt to center fire.

[Landy]

Can you form them in one pass thru a FL die or does forming take special dies and steps?

[deltaenterprizes]

I made the OD .250", so it would be easy to just drill and ream a hole, but an intermediate size is needed.
The .250 die has a sharp corner and shaves a small ring of brass from the solid part of the head of the case.
the primer pocket and flash hole shrink and need to opened up with a drill and primer pocket uniformer.
I used a small 1/2 ton arbor press and made the dies from grade 5 bolts, a 1 ton would better, I needed a cheater bar with the 1/2 ton press.
I plan to make the rims the same size as a 22LR to match the bolt face so I may have to make an extractor groove, the smaller rim will help feeding in a multi shot firearm.

[Landy]

Still, many other wildcats and, especially, some obsolete rounds are worse forming challenges; and they, often being redundant, serve little clear purpose.

The last seven years, though, have shown us that a good centerfire .22 substitute would serve a clear purpose. The little rimfire is just a tough act to follow, but your round has real potential.

That chamber adapter was a clever way to do a quick and easy first test.

I'll certainly look forward to reading about your and your cartridge's progress.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I've got several pounds weight of WW Super-X rimfire cases, which were never loaded, bought on the internet for making .22CF jackets. They are something of a mystery, for they are an inch in length and yet are definitely .22LR diameter, not Magnum. I think they may have been intended for .22LR shotshells.

A Large Rifle primer slides easily about two-thirds of the way down the inside, and looks like it would go down to the head and lodge tightly against the head. I would use pistol primers, of course. You would need a fairly powerful firing-pin strike, to work through a extra layer of brass, and a metal collar, superglued in place or crimped like the old inside primed rounds, to stop the anvil being driven out of the primer. But it should work at pressure which would split the rim when used as a rimfire.

I make the internal diameter at the mouth .211in., which would probably be workable with the .216in. heel of the CBE mould for the .297/.230.

Some kind of die with a tubular plunger and eye protection would be needed, in case of igniting a primer while pressing it in. But I don't believe that would happen. I wouldn't remove unfired centrefire primers with the sizing die and decapping pin, as some do, but they see to get away with it. Perfection, possibly, would be to neck it slightly for .204 bullets, or swage them up to around .212in. for a barrel of that groove diameter.

I don't see why this couldn't be done with fired .22LR cases, although these are shorter. If I were doing this I would make a die, or adapt the primer seating die, to squash the hollow out of the rimfire rim. That would eliminate any variation in headspacing produced by the rimfire firing-pin indentation or swelling into its hole or the ejector slot.

Remember, if anybody makes this work, you heard it here first.

[Char-Gar]

My memory tells me the 22 Hornet was developed by using 22 Velo Dog cases. So it should not be a great task to recreate Askin's round. Which by the way ended his career in competition shooting as the officials thought he was trying to get around the rules and Askins took umbrage at their ruling.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It could be that the Velo Dog case had a role in bullet development, but it was introduced by Galand in Paris in 1894. The Hornet uses (probably in strengthened form) the case of the .22 WCF, which was on the market before that date, and I think from the introduction of the Winchester Single Shot in 1885.

[Bent Ramrod]

The first .22 Hornet softpoint bullets were Velo-Dog bullets, turned upside down and reswaged so the exposed lead at the base became the soft point.

I believe Fiocchi still makes 5.5 mm Velo-Dog ammunition. I got a couple boxes from J&G in Prescott, AZ eons ago. I think the shell is the basis for the Cooper Centerfire Magnum rounds, and is practically the equivalent of the .22 Maynard Extra Long.

There was a guy on the old Shooter's site who had developed something he called the .22 Epperson Cricket. (It sticks in my mind that his name was Epperson.) Anyway, the thing that was interesting was that he was able to make the forming and loading dies, and cut the rifle chamber, with a couple of standard chucking reamers. The result was a .25 Auto shell bottlenecked to .22. This, to my mind, would be a much less strenuous rework of the .25 Auto for pretty much the same effect: a "reloadable" .22 Long Rifle equivalent. Can't remember the size of the reamers.

[bearcove]

Why not a 22 Hornet or K-Hornet. You can load it as slow as you want?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The first .22 Hornet softpoint bullets were Velo-Dog bullets, turned upside down and reswaged so the exposed lead at the base became the soft point.

I believe Fiocchi still makes 5.5 mm Velo-Dog ammunition. I got a couple boxes from J&G in Prescott, AZ eons ago. I think the shell is the basis for the Cooper Centerfire Magnum rounds, and is practically the equivalent of the .22 Maynard Extra Long.

There was a guy on the old Shooter's site who had developed something he called the .22 Epperson Cricket. (It sticks in my mind that his name was Epperson.) Anyway, the thing that was interesting was that he was able to make the forming and loading dies, and cut the rifle chamber, with a couple of standard chucking reamers. The result was a .25 Auto shell bottlenecked to .22. This, to my mind, would be a much less strenuous rework of the .25 Auto for pretty much the same effect: a "reloadable" .22 Long Rifle equivalent. Can't remember the size of the reamers.

Epperson had the reamers ground, and I think they would be 7mm. for the case body, possibly with separate neck reamers of 6.5mm. for the case and ¼in. for the sizing die, which he made from a ⅞ UNF bolt. Others have made similar cartridges, mostly to put more performance in tiny pocket pistols, which are seldom reliable with the .22 rimfires.

I think the Cooper round would have been identical to the .22 WRM if it hadn't needed more thickness of brass in the neck for case life. As it is, it is close enough to work through most .2WRM magazines, but it is intermediate in diameters between the WRM and the Velo Dog.

Early in their history there were centrefire versions of the .22 Long and Long Rifle, but neither caught on, no doubt from cost, at a time when there weren't the smokeless powders to give superior performance anyway. The same might have applied to the Maynard Extra Long, That was just a lengthened version of the ordinary rimfires, with the heel bullet. The larger-diameter, inside lubricated round which was latter lengthened to give the .22WRM was the Winchester Rimfire.

I always think it is a great pity that the WRF didn't become the standard .22 rimfire round. It could surely have been developed to give superior accuracy to any heel bulleted round, although it never was.

[jmorris]

If a thread ever needed photos, it's this one.

[deltaenterprizes]

I have read about and I have seen pictures of the Epperson Cricket. I want a straight walled case for ease of reloading, bottle neck cartridges, especially one that small would be a real pain!

[pacomdiver]

I was tinkering with a cutdown 5.7 case a couple months ago to use up some of the 40g lead 223s my dad cast back in the 60's that are still in my bullet cabinet.

I also was tinkering with a 5.7 parent case and ended up with basically a baby 300 blackout. im making a chamber insert for my handirifle to test it out and will fireform the brass to the insert

it uses common 5.7 brass and a common bullet size that's was always on the shelves during the buying panic of 2012, so id call that a win-win, maybe try some cast in it too

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I have read about and I have seen pictures of the Epperson Cricket. I want a straight walled case for ease of reloading, bottle neck cartridges, especially one that small would be a real pain!

It would be rather low pressure bottle-necked case, and neck sizing would surely be all you would need for several firings.

If you want to rechamber an existing .22, it has to be a .22. But there are one or two appealing options if you are planning a rifle from scratch, which would be a lot easier to use with cast bullets. One is simply a rifle load of the .32ACP, for which cases will probably be available and cheap as long as any cases are. Another is a full-length or shortened version of the .270 REN, which is what you get by fireforming the .22 Hornet to a straight case.

[bcp]

IIRC, a couple of Hornet wildcats made to use in rechambered 22 rimfire revolvers were the 224 Harvey K-Chuck and the 22 Long Snapper.

There was also a very small rimless cartridge called the 22 JGR.

22JGR article here, P. 27.

www.gunsmagazine.com/1960issues/G0160.pdf

Bruce

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Not to mention the factory .22 Jet. But the Jet produced problems with cylinder lockup and gas-cutting of the topstrap, and didn't last long. (It remains, at least in Improved form, an excellent cartridge for the small Martini rifle.) I don't know how small the Long Snapper was, but anything comparable in performance to the Jet would surely give the same problems in a revolver.

General Hatcher, in his "Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers", reports good performance in the Luger with the 9mm. or 7.65mm. case necked down to .22. Of course that dodges the cylinder gap problem.

Jmorris asked for pictures. Here is what I think is about as good as a cast-bullet rifle substitute for the rimfire as any, the .255 Jeffery, which I made with shortened .25-20 dies for my Army and Navy rook rifle. That is an unaltered .25-20 case on the left.

.

[deltaenterprizes]

I have converted a bolt from what looks like a Glenfield action to center fire and fitted a junk Ruger 10/22 barrel to the receiver.
Next part is making the chamber and head spaceing and doing some test firing!

[Willbird]

My memory tells me the 22 Hornet was developed by using 22 Velo Dog cases. So it should not be a great task to recreate Askin's round. Which by the way ended his career in competition shooting as the officials thought he was trying to get around the rules and Askins took umbrage at their ruling.

The 22 Hornet is an evolution of the 22 WCF....the 22 WCF used black powder and a .228 bullet.

[deltaenterprizes]

I have had a set back. I converted a Marlin bolt to center fire and chambered and mounted a junk Ruger 22 barrel to the action. The problem is that a part is missing from the trigger mechanism which I believe is the sear and there is no marking on the receiver to identify the make and model.
It is similar to a Marlin model 25 but the parts will not interchange.
The bore is good on the model 25 and uses the same magazine as the other action, the bolt is similar but will not fit because the cocking lug is wider.
I have a couple of junk falling block actions one that I think is a 32 rimfire with a bad bore that should readily accept a 22 liner and be easy to convert to center fire.
The cold weather has made my projects come to a halt for a little while.

[deltaenterprizes]

The action I am working on now is a Hopkins & Allen in 32 rimfire, it is an octagon barrel and the bore is like a sewer pipe. The barrel is held on by a sling swivel on the bottom of the receiver. I am waiting on a 10/22 barrel from a member here that I can turn down to fit and then make the falling block into center fire, it came from the factory drilled for both. If my efforts are productive I will order a 22 liner and make the original barrel into 22 cal to shoot the 22Askins, if not it may turn into a 22LR or a 32 S&W long.