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Thread: 22 Magnum Center Fire feasibility?

  1. #21
    Boolit Grand Master

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    Magnum Mike runs the website Specialty Pistols has a 22 CCM and has fired 22 Magnum in it. Some accuracy was lost but he stated it would be good for about 50 yards to hunt with. I suppose it would vary with the gun and the chamber as to how it shot.

  2. #22
    Boolit Master

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    Ok I found some 5.7x28 brass locally and it should be here tomorrow if I can just find the time now to make the dies, if we can just deal with all that excess brass around the web area I think this just might work.


    The Hornet too may be an even better option so I won't discount that one yet, apparently the Hornet will work for the CCM since there is CCM brass derived from IT available so I would think the 22 Mag would be just easy.
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  3. #23
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    You are going to be disappointed when the 5.7 primer pockets start expanding as they do in the current factory loadings and even worse when reloaded. I lose more cases to the pocket failure than to any other cause. I dont load hot either. The metal just isnt there and if you plan to turn the cases, it will get really thin. the thickness at the pocket wall at the extractor cut is only .040 to start with, and the Hornet would be about the same with the rim turned off.

  4. #24
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by SOFMatchstaff View Post
    You are going to be disappointed when the 5.7 primer pockets start expanding as they do in the current factory loadings and even worse when reloaded. I lose more cases to the pocket failure than to any other cause. I dont load hot either. The metal just isnt there and if you plan to turn the cases, it will get really thin. the thickness at the pocket wall at the extractor cut is only .040 to start with, and the Hornet would be about the same with the rim turned off.

    That's interesting and I see what you mean, that's a problem I hadn't even considered. I don't know if that has been a problem with the CCM which is only very slightly larger, if the CCM doesn't suffer from that problem then likely the 22 Mag "shouldn't"(?) either but still I see the concern there!
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  5. #25
    Boolit Master Cap'n Morgan's Avatar
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    The 5.7x28 is a 50.000 PSI cartridge. The 22WMR is 24.000 PSI Max cartridge. If pressures are held at 22WMR levels (as they should, unless we're talking Contender or similar guns) the primer pockets should be fine.
    Cap'n Morgan

  6. #26
    Boolit Grand Master leftiye's Avatar
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    Take a 22 CCM case and turn it down about .005" and it will go in a .22 mag chamber. Might have to reduce the rim thickness too.
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  7. #27
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cap'n Morgan View Post
    The 5.7x28 is a 50.000 PSI cartridge. The 22WMR is 24.000 PSI Max cartridge. If pressures are held at 22WMR levels (as they should, unless we're talking Contender or similar guns) the primer pockets should be fine.
    Yes, exactly. A CCM or similar round could be loaded to give more performance than the Magnum, if good cases were available, at far less pressure than the 5.7x28R.

  8. #28
    Boolit Master

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    I think I would use good old 12L14 steel .

    Brass cartridge cases are work hardened in the head area in the corming process, then selectively annealed several times during the process so that their yield strength in the head area is higher than the maximum pressure of the cartridge.

    There have been instances of cases getting stuck in an annealing station meant to anneal the necks only, and the whole case was annealed...these are incredibly dangerous, at 50,000-60,000 psi the case heads will flow and rupture. There will be an uncontrolled release of high pressure gas. Not sure on the yield strength of the brass bar stock. Yes as I suspected Speedy Metals lists the Yield strength of 260 brass as 10,900psi.

    The Yield strength of 12L14 is 60,200 PSI. It should be plenty strong enough...and they call it "screw machine stock" because it machines so nicely. You can often buy "bar ends" on Ebay pretty cheap....they are the left over portion of a 12' bar.

    There is a machine called a "swiss turn" that would do a very nice job machining cases. If they were fit to the chamber for a known bullet dia (leave say .002 clearance over loaded round) they might never need sizing.

    This concept would be easiest tried in a TC contender 22 magnum barrel.

    Bill
    Last edited by Willbird; 12-30-2015 at 04:47 PM.
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  9. #29
    Boolit Master
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    You are right about the unsuitability of certain brass alloys, although work hardening is important. I would feel all right about using any brass for a shotgun case, but not a rifle of any great power for its size. It can be hard for the amateur to tell them apart, and optimism isn't invariably a virtue - in an eBay seller, say. There are some who buy up lots of surplus material and describe it by the light of nature. I would only buy bargain bar ends from a genuine business user of the stuff.

    But there is no direct link between the pressure and tensile or yield strength figures, just because both are expressed in pounds per square inch. Tensile strength is the force which must be applied to break, by a straight pull, a bar of one square inch in section. Yield strength is the force, less in the sort of materials we are dealing with, at which the elasticity of the metal is exceeded, and it doesn't go completely back to its original size once the force is released.

    There is no one square inch section in a firearm case, and virtually all firearms apply to a much smaller section, enough force to exceed the yield strength. If they didn't we would never have to resize them, and we would be in real trouble with paper or plastic cases for shotguns or the somewhat higher pressure "bore" rifles which were once used in Africa. The reason that the tensile strength isn't exceeded too, is that a properly designed chamber and breech stop the yielding before that happens.

    12L14 is a fairly mild carbon steel, and probably lacks the ductility required for a cartridge case. Where steel cases have been used, notably by the Russians but sometimes by the US in wartime, it has been drawn and work-hardened very much like brass, rather than turned. I have found a steel .45ACP case which had suffered a head separation on a range. Brass does exist up to about the same tensile strength as 12L14 when work-hardened, but at the risk of excessive repetition, that would depend on just the right cycle of annealing and work-hardening. Simply turned steel or the more easily worked brasses would depend crucially on close fit to your individual chamber, and perhaps to thicker walls close to the head than in commercial cases.

  10. #30
    Boolit Master

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    The work hardening issue is the main reason for the hybrid process I mentioned earlier, while it's not practical to fully form a brass case from a slug in a home shop this method would require only the finial forming step. This should harden the head/web area sufficiently to create a safe cartridge and one that should maintain the primer pocket dimensions. The fella I have been discussing this with has a full understanding of the process and is just a phone call away, proper annealing temperatures and even the amount of pressure required have been determined already. I probably would not attempt this on a modern high pressure round but a small diameter low pressure case such as this "should" be safe enough, for sure if I manage to make a few usable cases these will be tested to pressures far above anything that they would be normally loaded to.

    Before we get to that I need to actually make a few of these things, it may be a week or more before I can even start since I first need to finish an old farm tractor project I have been working on but that is nearly done.
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  11. #31
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ballistics in Scotland View Post
    You are right about the unsuitability of certain brass alloys, although work hardening is important. I would feel all right about using any brass for a shotgun case, but not a rifle of any great power for its size. It can be hard for the amateur to tell them apart, and optimism isn't invariably a virtue - in an eBay seller, say. There are some who buy up lots of surplus material and describe it by the light of nature. I would only buy bargain bar ends from a genuine business user of the stuff.

    But there is no direct link between the pressure and tensile or yield strength figures, just because both are expressed in pounds per square inch. Tensile strength is the force which must be applied to break, by a straight pull, a bar of one square inch in section. Yield strength is the force, less in the sort of materials we are dealing with, at which the elasticity of the metal is exceeded, and it doesn't go completely back to its original size once the force is released.

    There is no one square inch section in a firearm case, and virtually all firearms apply to a much smaller section, enough force to exceed the yield strength. If they didn't we would never have to resize them, and we would be in real trouble with paper or plastic cases for shotguns or the somewhat higher pressure "bore" rifles which were once used in Africa. The reason that the tensile strength isn't exceeded too, is that a properly designed chamber and breech stop the yielding before that happens.

    12L14 is a fairly mild carbon steel, and probably lacks the ductility required for a cartridge case. Where steel cases have been used, notably by the Russians but sometimes by the US in wartime, it has been drawn and work-hardened very much like brass, rather than turned. I have found a steel .45ACP case which had suffered a head separation on a range. Brass does exist up to about the same tensile strength as 12L14 when work-hardened, but at the risk of excessive repetition, that would depend on just the right cycle of annealing and work-hardening. Simply turned steel or the more easily worked brasses would depend crucially on close fit to your individual chamber, and perhaps to thicker walls close to the head than in commercial cases.
    I disagree about yield and tensile strength...IMHO they apply here just like they do anywhere else...it is OK that we do not agree . I will FULLY admit I may be demonstrating IGNORANCE here, and education may cure that .

    When I was a kid my dad was a part time Gunsmith, did repairs for a local shop, had FFL, tinkered with his own stuff. He made a center fire breech block for a Martini action a friend of his had. We are using the memory of a 8-10 year old me here but it was similar in size to the 310 martini...and similar to one I have in 380 Rook. The rifle in question was a 25 rimfire. Ammo was mostly unobtanium at that time (probably 1972 maybe ?). The thought was similar, with a center fire breech block the rifle could be used again. So dad made up the breechblock and lathe turned one cartridge case. The breechblock BTW was a work of art, but anyway. Not sure the load he decided on...but he loaded it up and we headed out to a spot where we would test fire stuff, old gravel pit.

    He for sure did not shoulder the rifle, he held it at arms length and test fired it....as he somewhat expected the case failed due to the metal flowing due to internal pressure, it was a mess,,,did not HARM anything but lathe turned brass cases from that material were not useable. The gun owner had in mind to reform 22 hornet cases maybe and the project was handed off to him, never heard another thing about it. I know his Nephew and might someday move that whole project back here to my place 40 years after it started .

    I have at hand here some strain gauge pressure data developed by Harold Vaughn. He took a rifle case and fit it with a hydraulic line that went down the bore and came out the muzzle of a rifle. Here is the cartridge case he used.


    And he found that it took 12,000 psi to make the case fill the chamber and in turn start to stretch the barrel (hoop strain).


    Now when we make "tight neck" cases we can turn necks so the loaded round is around .0015" under chamber neck dia and we never need to resize necks. The number .0016" has often been quoted as the spring back factor for "normal" case necks, if we fire a case, and measure it...as long as it was a decent pressure load we can generally figure the neck in the chamber is about .0016 bigger than a fired case neck.

    So a test case, the first one anyway may never need sized if it is made .0015 smaller than the chamber if it were a brass case, and maybe even more clearance would work fine with steel. The Modulus of elasticity for steels is the generally the same no matter the hardness...so we could ensure that the pressure we develop would expand the case to seal the chamber (that may be an issue). I'm seeing roughly
    29.5 for steels...and around 15 for some brass alloys.

    We are not constrained by the considerations people mass producing steel cases encounter when forming them...ours would be "billet" cases .

    The problem area for center fire rifles is that a lot of case head just plain hangs out in the air ...and even best case there is an area where the extractor is that is not well supported.

    On a Remington 700 the case will extrude into the ejector hole as the first sign you have started to yield the case head, metal is flowing with each shot, even if the chamber is very tight and fits the case 100% the cases will not last long. Back the load off 2% (most of my experience with this is a case that holds 50 grains of powder)...and the cases will last forever.

    All a very interesting topic, I am working on a home brewed strain gauge setup of my own at present

    Bill
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  12. #32
    Boolit Master

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    TIME is also possible operative in why cartridge cases "work"...despite being fairly soft in the forward areas peak pressure only lasts maybe 1ms (1 millisecond)...Corbin says when swaging bullets one must allow time for the nearly pure lead to flow fully. So time is part of the equation probably ??

    Bill
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  13. #33
    Boolit Master

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    WB, that's very interesting and quite helpful, thanks for taking the time to post that. It is very much in line with what my friend has been telling me, a lot of which is engineering talk and kind of hard for me to comprehend but he get's a laugh out of that and dumbs it down so that even I can understand (most of the time anyway )!


    He is certain that given the time and effort that making cases from virgin 206 alloy brass will work just fine, he is however skeptical if it will be worth the time and effort required but then I can be quite stubborn in that respect. What this will involve will be a semi-sized turned case that will then be finished by either a high pressure press procedure (I have the means to do that) or better yet a forging process that would finish these cases to size but that might get a bit more complicated, still not out of the question here since it involves such a small relatively soft item. This would require inserting the semi-finished cases into a die and then either pressing or ramming an internal die into the case to finish form the case walls and compress the web/head area. While that may sound like a full industrial sized operation it should be very much doable in a small shop on a small scale and I have the means to make and harden a matching die set. Precisely limiting the depth the internal die would be required to properly form the web/head and the means to accomplish the force needed to do so would need to be worked out but both he and I have quite a bit of experience doing that sort of thing, I built parts that he engineered/designed (injection lube systems).

    I know this went from a simple rechamber job to making a cartridge case from scratch (or reforming an existing one) but it is not a new idea to me, I have been tossing this around since the panic induced RF shortage started. At first it was about how to manufacture some means of economically shooting RF firearms and I looked at everything from nail gun cartridges to reloading spent RF brass but nothing practical came of it, I am obviously not alone as many others have been doing this also and some have actually succeeded to at least some degree. However I remain convinced that a centerfire conversion is the only practical approach and obviously it's questionable if even that is practical for these smaller rounds, in any case there is only one way to know for sure and that's to try! This discussion has lit the fire again to try something one way or the other so ANY suggestions or thoughts are welcome and maybe with enough effort we might be able to come up with something workable.
    Last edited by oldred; 12-31-2015 at 02:24 PM.
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  14. #34
    Boolit Master

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    oldred I'd just turn them from an appropriate solid bar .

    Not sure if I mentioned it but there is a machine called a "swiss turn" that is perfect for a job like that. They probably use them for a lot of bullets that are machined from solid.

    My wife works for a company that delivers brass rod to a company that makes a lot of coax connectors, like used on the back of most TV's...they machine a lot of that stuff from solid. 45,000lbs of brass rod goes into the place one week and 43,000lbs of brass shavings come back to the foundry the next week .

    Bill
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  15. #35
    Boolit Master

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    Your case could be a hybrid as well .

    Soft solder a forward section made of normal cartridge case onto a base made of another material.
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  16. #36
    Boolit Master

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    The problem with turning them from solid is that alloy 260 (known in the industry as cartridge brass) has VERY poor machining qualities making it unsuitable for turned brass, the turned brass that is available is well known for it's tendency to crack so I "assume" something such as C360 alloy is usually selected despite being the wrong type of brass for cartridge strength. It seems to be a choice between trying to use a ductile material that's nearly impossible to machine into something as thin a a brass cartridge case or choose a machinable alloy that has poor ductility thus the tendency to crack upon firing.

    When this discussion first stated (it may have been the other thread) I mentioned that I turned a couple of cases using the very common 360 alloy and it was much too brittle, even after annealing the second case it made little difference. These cases may have lasted one or two firings before cracking and maybe even a few more but they were obviously not going to last long, also those machine turned 22CCM cases that were available a few years ago had a terrible reputation for only being loadable once or twice and often cracked on the first firing, or at least that was my understanding.
    Last edited by oldred; 12-31-2015 at 07:19 PM.
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  17. #37
    Boolit Master

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    How did the machined 5mm Craig cases do I wonder ? They were a lot thicker.....having a 5mm hole straight down into them.

    http://www.varminter.com/particles/5mmcraig.html

    This may have already been posted, if so I'm sorry in advance

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  18. #38
    Boolit Master Cap'n Morgan's Avatar
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    I'm pretty sure machined cases is the way to go. A double spindled swiss machine would spit out a complete case in a matter of seconds. Even with the walls being thinner than .01" it should not present a problem

    I have shot my 577/450 Martini Henry using cases made from ordinary free-machining brass. I used a chamber cast to get an accurate reading of the chamber and machined the cases to .001" under size. As long as pressures was held below 20.000 PSI, a case would easily last for ten firings before resizing (resizing= a few strokes with a file while spinning the case in a lathe) I never had a case that split.
    Of course, with a small case like the 22WMR it's important to keep tolerances as tight as possible.

    You don't have to worry about holding the bullet in place. Just machine the case with a slight internal step to keep the bullet from seating too deep. A tiny dap of cyanoacrylate glue will secure the bullet in place (or, if you use boolits, a sticky lube will do the same)
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  19. #39
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by Willbird View Post
    How did the machined 5mm Craig cases do I wonder ? They were a lot thicker.....having a 5mm hole straight down into them.

    http://www.varminter.com/particles/5mmcraig.html

    This may have already been posted, if so I'm sorry in advance

    http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...Mag-Centerfire


    Yep that's exactly my point, obviously they too found cartridge brass unsuitable for machining and I found at the bottom of the article that they also used the "half-hard" 360 alloy, the same alloy that I used making those two experimental (failed) cases a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they attempted to address the cracking problem by leaving the case walls thicker and thinning only the neck but with the 22 Mag the powder capacity has already been reduced by adding the primer so thicker case walls would result in a fairly anemic round. Unless I missed it I don't think they addressed case life but I would be very surprised if those cases lasted more than a couple of loadings, even after several attempts at annealing the 360 alloy cases I made they remained brittle and crack prone when subjected to flex compared to side by side testing of them vs some spent CCI 22 Mag brass.

    Really I don't think a 100% machined case is practical and that's probably why they have such a poor reputation, the very properties that are necessary to make to make cartridge brass (260 alloy) usable and long lasting are what makes it so difficult to machine. On the fip side the properties that make for a good machining brass are what makes it all but totally unsuitable for cartridge cases, the ductility just isn't there and can't be satisfactorily achieved by annealing because it's due to the alloy of the brass not the state of hardness.
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  20. #40
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by oldred View Post
    Yep that's exactly my point, obviously they too found cartridge brass unsuitable for machining and I found at the bottom of the article that they also used the "half-hard" 360 alloy, the same alloy that I used making those two experimental (failed) cases a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they attempted to address the cracking problem by leaving the case walls thicker and thinning only the neck but with the 22 Mag the powder capacity has already been reduced by adding the primer so thicker case walls would result in a fairly anemic round. Unless I missed it I don't think they addressed case life but I would be very surprised if those cases lasted more than a couple of loadings, even after several attempts at annealing the 360 alloy cases I made they remained brittle and crack prone when subjected to flex compared to side by side testing of them vs some spent CCI 22 Mag brass.

    Really I don't think a 100% machined case is practical and that's probably why they have such a poor reputation, the very properties that are necessary to make to make cartridge brass (260 alloy) usable and long lasting are what makes it so difficult to machine. On the fip side the properties that make for a good machining brass are what makes it all but totally unsuitable for cartridge cases, the ductility just isn't there and can't be satisfactorily achieved by annealing because it's due to the alloy of the brass not the state of hardness.
    Well That brings me full circle to alloys other than brass....back to steel or aluminum. The case capacity and lack of proper powders in canister grades no doubt will be an issue. I pulled a lot of 22lr rounds as a kid doing experiments, making my own "quiet" ammo mostly, pulled a few 22 magnum and they all seemed to be loaded to 100% loading density.
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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
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LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check