.22 rimfire alternative

[Traffer]

I worked a little on the gun that will house these little gems today. Mine should be on Monday. Trying to thread the barrel by hand. Threading it to 3/4 10 NC. Really really hard to turn the die on the barrel. I might have to go to a 3/4 16 to be able to thread this thing. Once I get threaded I am going to make a receiver out of a 3/4" rod coupler. I hope it will hold. The barrel is from an old Marlin 60 with the chamber cut off. The bore was pretty bad so I honed it a little with grinding compound. Haven't slugged it but It doesn't seem to have gotten much bigger. You can still see the microgroove rifling easily. Just want to hurry up and get it done so I can shoot me some nail gun rounds.

[Lucky Joe]

I lightly load these .358 cal., 74 gr., boolits and replace the .22 with my .38 revolvers and rifle.

[rbuck351]

The UPS guy got here late this evening with my case of black power loads. They fit nicely in my 22mag barrel for my contender. They are tight in three of my Ruger single six 22mag chambers and won't go in the other three so I put some 600 wet or dry on a dowel and honed them lightly until all were a push fit. I fired one in the Contender and all is well. I hope to set up the chrony tomorrow and see what they will do with 40 and 55gr boolits. I haven't shot the 22mags in several years because it costs about 5 times as much for the same results as my Hornets.

[flyer1]

The UPS guy got here late this evening with my case of black power loads. They fit nicely in my 22mag barrel for my contender. They are tight in three of my Ruger single six 22mag chambers and won't go in the other three so I put some 600 wet or dry on a dowel and honed them lightly until all were a push fit. I fired one in the Contender and all is well. I hope to set up the chrony tomorrow and see what they will do with 40 and 55gr boolits. I haven't shot the 22mags in several years because it costs about 5 times as much for the same results as my Hornets.

How will you keep the bullet from falling out of the front of cylinder of the single six? Thanks.

[rbuck351]

Cast and sized at .225 it's a snug fit in the cylinder throat. My 55gr nose rider boolit won't work because the nose sticks out the front of the cyl but I have a 40gr RN that stops about 1/8 inch short of the front of the cyl.

[flyer1]

Thank you.

[NavyVet1959]

The UPS guy got here late this evening with my case of black power loads. They fit nicely in my 22mag barrel for my contender. They are tight in three of my Ruger single six 22mag chambers and won't go in the other three so I put some 600 wet or dry on a dowel and honed them lightly until all were a push fit.

Kind of illustrates the inconsistencies in manufacturing when 6 holes that are done on the same gun at the same time are slightly different. Probably would have never noticed with regular ammo, but since we're right at the edge of manufacturing tolerance, we see the difference. On my NAA, I would say that the force required to put the power load in the cylinder is about like what it would be pushing it into a wet clay. Just enough resistance that it's not going to fall out, I guess. I didn't notice any difference in the 5 chambers.

[Traffer]

Wow, I just got mine. I measured one the diameter is .2420". A 22 mag Hornady 22 V-max measures .2360" That is .006" difference in the physical size. The Specs on 22 mag is .2420". That like everyone has been saying makes them either a very tight fit or just a fraction of a thousanth too large. My guess is that just about any 22 mag gun that has been fired quite a bit will chamber these charges. The bullet diameter on a 22mag is .224" the same as a 22lr and a Remington .223. And a quite a few other rounds. So .224 and .225 bullets and molds are plentiful.

[NavyVet1959]

I won a bid on eBay for a Remington 514 barrel (24.5" long) that is chambered in .22LR. No one else was bidding on it and I thought that just maybe I can use it to make a test barrel for the .25 or .22 power loads. Supposedly, the chamber end of those barrels are about 3/4" in diameter, so they would probably not have a problem with the pressure for *any* of the possible power loads, even the nickle cased ones (which I've never actually even *seen*).

[Traffer]

Wow I have a Remington 514 with a not so good barrel. Would you consider selling or trading that one? I have another Marlin 60 barrel (older version longer barrel) that has what looks to me a flawless bore. The barrel looks new except for a few bb sized rust spots. Let me know what you think.

[NavyVet1959]

Wow I have a Remington 514 with a not so good barrel. Would you consider selling or trading that one? I have another Marlin 60 barrel (older version longer barrel) that has what looks to me a flawless bore. The barrel looks new except for a few bb sized rust spots. Let me know what you think.

Shipping would make it not worthwhile. I sent you a link to another one that the seller had listed.

[NavyVet1959]

Assuming the original ad was correct, the breech end of the Remington 514 barrel looks like this:



I'm thinking that could reduced section could be threaded and then a "chamber" could be screwed onto it that was just the size necessary for the .25 caliber power loads. I don't think my mini-lathe could do that though.

According to Lar45 in this post, the dimensions on the Remington 514 barrel are:
Max Barrel Width: 0.755"
Shank Width: 0.590"
Shank Length: 0.755"

[Traffer]

I don't know about threading with a lathe but if you tried to thread that with a hand die it would not go to but up to the ridge because the die thread cutters are tapered and you lose some. What I did was cut off the end, (marlin 60 is similar with a smaller chamber end) then take the taper off the barrel and then see what size I had for threading. My Model 60 barrel is 3/4". Regular rod couplers are 3/4- 10 so I am trying to thread 3/4-10 so I can screw a rod coupler on the end and either use it for the receiver or use it to connect a receiver to the barrel. It is dang hard to thread 3/4 10 on a barrel though without marking up the barrel. I figured out a way to hold everything but I do not have the strength to turn the barrel and die on each other. Next I will try longer handles on the barrel end to see if I can twist it with longer handles. If nothing works I am going to thread it to 3/4-16 which does not cut as deeply and should be easier to turn the die on the barrel.
I may try heating the barrel first also.

[Chev. William]

3/4-10 is UNC, 3/4-16 is UNF, so you are probably thinking of easy to find taps and dies.
My personal thought is to go with 3/4-20 UNEF as even easier, just takes more Looking for the tap and die to cut them. generally a 3/4 diameter Length of thread will give full fastener strength but a full diameter length would yield a 'safety margin' against stripping.

By turning a "root diameter" Groove for the die to run its tapered section on to at the End of the threaded section you can end up with full depth threads for the full threaded length of the barrel tenon and a Square face to tighten the "receiver" against.

Best Regards,
Chev. William

[Traffer]

Thank you very very much. What a great advantage it is to get advise from an expert. I have to restate this to make sure I understand what you are saying: Basically 3/4-20 would meet the strength needs of this project. And the conventional reasoning in tapping and threading says that the same length of threads as the diameter is as strong as it gets. 3/4 the diameter may be strong enough. And turning a groove at the end of the threaded area to the root depth of the thread will give me a square end to tighten up to. In my mind I see the threaded area having the threads matching the die being not quite as deep at the end of the threading as the beginning. and I see this as a good thing causing a very tight fit on the last half turn or so of the tightening. I can also increase the width of the cut root diameter groove to allow me to cinch the receiver to top dead center to get the sight and tap holes on the barrel to be in the right spot. I am going to go with the full diameter of the barrel as the length of the threads. I already priced out the 3/4-20 tap and die on eBay. I can get them both for a total of $18. Please correct any of this that I may have misunderstood. This is exciting. You just took 90% of the uncertainty of this project out for me.

3/4-10 is UNC, 3/4-16 is UNF, so you are probably thinking of easy to find taps and dies.
My personal thought is to go with 3/4-20 UNEF as even easier, just takes more Looking for the tap and die to cut them. generally a 3/4 diameter Length of thread will give full fastener strength but a full diameter length would yield a 'safety margin' against stripping.

By turning a "root diameter" Groove for the die to run its tapered section on to at the End of the threaded section you can end up with full depth threads for the full threaded length of the barrel tenon and a Square face to tighten the "receiver" against.

Best Regards,
Chev. William

[NavyVet1959]

Well, I finally got around to disassembling the .25 caliber power loads tonight and weighed the powder charges.

The Omark "brown" S3 load had 1.4 gr of a charcoal colored flake powder in it and the Omark "black" S4 load had 1.6 gr of a powder that looked the same.





Fired both of them in the NAA .22 mag revolver with no bullet and they were very quiet. Probably not enough back pressure being generated even with the crimped case.

Since the powder charges seem somewhat in line with the previous .22 caliber test, I decided to give it a try with bullets loaded in the .22 mag cylinder.

Apparently the cylinder is slightly larger deeper into the cylinder since the bullets loaded deeper than when I was using the same bullets in the .22LR cylinder. The bullets ended up being all the way to the end of the cylinder and that was with them just barely pressed into the cylinder. I test fired it this way and then test fired it with the bullets loaded base first. Loading them base first let me push them firmly into the chamber and still have around 1/8" to the front of the cylinder.

End result -- gun shows no damage and my fingers are still attached.

[Traffer]

I was planning on opening some of the ones I received. I got the S2 orange one weighed and had a medical interruption. However. I weighed the powder 3 times in different environments and got 1.88 to 1.9 grains each time. My scale could be bad, not sure. But this is a disturbing development for me. Here are comparison pictures to 22rf powder.

[Traffer]

And here is a video of me burning some Winchester Super X powder, Some Hodgdon HS-6 Powder (which is what I use to reload 22rf) and the Powder from the Omark nail gun power load S2. I don't know much about speed of powder burning and these were not all the same amounts of powder but it does show some difference. It appears that the speed of the burns are from fast to slow...Omark S2, Hodgdon HS-6, and the slowest being Winchester Super X 22lr powder. Again I am waaay no expert. What do you think?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lo74oatngj...Burns.MP4?dl=0

[rbuck351]

Unfortunately burning powder in the open doesn't tell much about it's relative burn speed in a cartridge or for that matter it's power output. I shot my Ruger single six 22mag with a couple cyls of 40gr boolits and 48gr boolits. No signs of extreme pressure and the cases pushed out reasonably easy and no split cases. Accuracy at about 20 feet was as good as I can do with iron sights and this gun. I still have to chrony them but they appear to be doing as well as 22lr if not better.

[NavyVet1959]

When I used the gradually tapered nail in the (non-rotating) drill press to open up the .25 caliber power load, it just opened it a small amount, so it took a few taps to get it all the power into the powder measure tray. I was thinking that if I had wanted to add powder to the power loads for even more power, I would need to make a very small powder funnel and the opened up crimp could be resealed with a small drop of hot melt glue from a glue gun.

I measured one of the .25 caliber power loads and the body of it was 0.242". I searched through my miscellaneous drill bits and came across one that measured 0.246". I think that means it's a size #D. I have no idea where I came across a drill bit in that size. I don't remember ever having a set of drill bits that were *that* extensive in their sizes. The #C drill bit is 0.242", so it would probably be better and then if I needed a bit more space, a bit of 600 grit paper on the chamber walls of whatever I was building.