some thing cheap to shoot

[longbow]

I often circle around this subject myself and always talk myself out of a new rifle... I know, there is no such thing as too many rifles but the toy budget is rather limited these days after retirement so I have to be selective of what I buy.

I really wanted a .22 Hornet and have almost bought one several times but then I think I'd be better off with a .223, , 7.62x39 or .308 all of which are readily available and brass will be with us for a long time to come. .22 Hornet brass is not common here. .223 brass and .308 brass is everywhere and lots of range pick up available and 7.62x 39 is not far behind. Any of those three or a wildcat based off one of those cartridges ensures a guy can reload as long as powder and primers are available... and of course lead to cast boolots. They can be downloaded with .223 being a good substitute for .22 Hornet or RF.

So far I am using my Lee Enfield .303's loaded with Mihec 316410 130 gr. bullets as my lightweight plinker. Not quite as efficient as the smaller cartridges and mor elead thna a .22 regardless but still much less expensive than full loads with regular weight bullets. One of the other three may be in my future!

There are different ways of skinning that cat!

Longbow

[Garyshome]

Yep you should have bought your dillon when clinton was potus.

[jdgabbard]

I often circle around this subject myself and always talk myself out of a new rifle... I know, there is no such thing as too many rifles but the toy budget is rather limited these days after retirement so I have to be selective of what I buy.

I really wanted a .22 Hornet and have almost bought one several times but then I think I'd be better off with a .223, , 7.62x39 or .308 all of which are readily available and brass will be with us for a long time to come. .22 Hornet brass is not common here. .223 brass and .308 brass is everywhere and lots of range pick up available and 7.62x 39 is not far behind. Any of those three or a wildcat based off one of those cartridges ensures a guy can reload as long as powder and primers are available... and of course lead to cast boolots. They can be downloaded with .223 being a good substitute for .22 Hornet or RF.

So far I am using my Lee Enfield .303's loaded with Mihec 316410 130 gr. bullets as my lightweight plinker. Not quite as efficient as the smaller cartridges and mor elead thna a .22 regardless but still much less expensive than full loads with regular weight bullets. One of the other three may be in my future!

There are different ways of skinning that cat!

Longbow

This is one of the major reasons why I went with a barrel insert for 30 Tok instead of building a rifle based on the 30 Badger. It's cheaper to put an 18" barrel insert into a shotgun than it is having a barrel stub job done. Either way I'm going to be converting brass, and 5.56/.223 is more available than 38spl brass these days, so making brass is cheap when you don't want to buy brass. Plus, it only costs like 10-12 cents a round to shoot...primer, 4-5gr of Unique and 90grs of lead....

[dverna]

22LR is coming down in price. $35 or sometimes even $30 for 500 rounds. Makes it hard to justify doing all the work to load a centerfire down to that level.

Exactly.

https://www.targetsportsusa.com/winc...-p-112991.aspx

$330 for 5000 rounds shipped to my door. Doubt I could get primers for that.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

22 hornet and/or 223rem are great choices for cheap "simulated" 22LR shooting for when 22LR isn't available. BUT, my choice would be 222rem (since I have a CZ in that caliber) and since that caliber is more forgiving to cast than 223...and you can make 222 cases from 223. 22 Hornet suffers from the
thin tapered neck, but that can be solved with a K-Hornet chambering

[jdgabbard]

Exactly.

https://www.targetsportsusa.com/winc...-p-112991.aspx

$330 for 5000 rounds shipped to my door. Doubt I could get primers for that.

If you ordered online and picked them up in person from BassPro to save shipping/hazmat you could get to about $350 for 5k.... But definitely not the $150 we paid for 5k during the Obama scares...

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Exactly.

https://www.targetsportsusa.com/winc...-p-112991.aspx

$330 for 5000 rounds shipped to my door. Doubt I could get primers for that.

NormaUSA has Argentine SPP for $250 for 5K

[gwpercle]

The absolute cheapest thing I have found to shoot is the good old 30-30 Winchester .
I have a model 94 Lever , that I use as a single shot if the 115 gr. and 120 gr. cast boolits are too short to feed ... and my good buddy has a Contender with a 30-30 barrel ... that we loaded light boolits for .
What makes it so economical is availability of Brass . At the local public range it was left on the ground and in the trash barrels . I had picked up a 5 gallon bucket of 30-30 once fired brass before I ever owned a 30-30 Rifle !
The small case capacity of the 30-30 lends itself well to using handgun powders like Bullseye , 700X , Red Dot and Unique in light cast boolit loads .
And 30 cal. bullet moulds are common from 115 grs all the way to 220 grs ...
any mould chart will show the most designs to be in the 30 cal section .

Plenty of inexpensive brass , lots of boolit choices , medium capacity case ...

What more can you ask for... I vote for the 30-30 Economic !
Gary

[muskeg13]

Lots of good options presented here. Also due to Clinton and Obama, I picked up a used .22 Hornet (CZ527) with the main intent of developing a .22LR alternative. I also got a good gun show deal on an old Weaver V2.5-8X with adjustable mounts. I've never fired factory ammo in it and found working up duplicate .22LR and .22 Mag cast boolit loads to be very easy, despite the many warnings over many years that the Hornet is finicky and difficult to load.

Maybe I was just lucky. I don't believe much is to be gained by going to an improved Hornet, and case lives have been everlasting as long as you don't try to make it a .223 substitute. The still produced Lyman 225238 has been the most accurate cast boolit, with the Midsouth/Lee 50gr Bator the least accurate I've tried to cast and load for (probably just needs more load work, unlike the 225238 that was very accurate from the start). With the .22 Hornet, a little lead and powder goes a long way, and fillers aren't needed in this small case.

One tip to stress: When replicating .22LR and .22 Mag loads with fast burning powders (Unique, Bullseye Red Dot, ect...) try using small pistol primers. My group size easily was cut in half.

[Tracy]

I thought about this when .22 ammo was hard to find and expensive. My solution? .38 Special with a light cast bullet, or even a round ball (~70 grains). Another good choice is .32 S&W Long. I think a .315-.320 round ball is about 45 grains.

[Harter66]

Why is this always so difficult ?
The 25 ACP is the solution . The problem is that there aren't any revolvers or rifles for it ..
The reason this sucks is that there are dozens of 22 mags that only need a .251 barrel and the firing pin moved .1 .

The cartridge is the same case length as LR , shares bullet weights , there's only about 1000 psi between the 22 mag and 25 ACP and like .008 in gross dia .

[Hannibal]

I occasionally still buy .22 LR, but if I quit tomorrow, I will most likely never run out.

I bought a few cases once availability returned. I'll never need to buy any more.

[dverna]

NormaUSA has Argentine SPP for $250 for 5K

Thanks for sharing that! Best price I have seen since “it” happened.

[ebb]

When I first started thinking about this it was to simulate 22LR. but then and now I have more than enough 22LR to last till I am gone from this earth. The 22 TCM was the ideal answer, but they have changed the case some and I am unsure if the new design is compatible with the old. The 22TCM is a little bit under powered if I am going to do a center fire it ought to be 22 hornet power wise. So I thought just get a 22 hornet, I could never get the rimmed case to go semi-auto if I ever wanted to, the cases are too antiquated and many have trouble loading them without damaging them, and they are too long for what they are capable of producing power wise. But the economic side which was most important when this was conceived, says I need to do a 223 case, and I need to do 223 cheap jacketed bullets or cast. I have in my mind decided that 22 hand casted bullets may be too difficult for me and I don't hear of hardly anybody casting them. So it seems to me that to fit my criteria (many of you guys have picked a solution that is slightly different then me and I understand your reasons) So for me i need a 22TCM with a little more punch(maybe), or a TCM with an expanded neck to shoot bullets that I can cast if in fact the 22 cast bullets are prohibitively difficult to cast. So are the 22 caliber bullets to difficult to cast for a beginner?

[jdgabbard]

What is so interesting about this thread is how nearly everyone here has a different answer to what they see being the most economical to shoot. That said, some of this has to do what what that person has on hand, mitigating their upfront cost. And certainly which firearms they own plays into that decision. For me, it's 38spl, 9mm, or 30Tok with super light boolits and light charges. For someone else, it's the 22TCM. For another guy, it's the 30-30.

Truly fascinating how our current personal situations play into these.

[P Flados]

My 22 LR "equivalent" is a rimmed version of a 32 ACP in a stub tube contender.

At one point during the Obama years I realized that with my cast bullets, I could reload cheaper than buy 22s. However, my lead source (wheel weights) suddenly dried up and I decided that I wanted a 22 LR equivalent gun that could handle really small bullets.

My first solution was a SP-101 in 327 along with a custom NLG 55 gr bullet mold. It worked ok, but the case was "too big" to be real happy with my mouse fart loads. All of the free space made for big velocity swings depending on powder position.

My next solution was to stub tube a 7.5" 30 cal (from a scrap 30-30 pull) for my TC. I tried 32 S&W short but the cases were too small for me to reload without fumbling a lot.

I deepened the chamber to try some 32 ACP. The gun shot good, but my 32 ACP brass was not fun to load. The case size was much better than the 32 shorts, but the rims were very inconsistent in size from brand to brand and generally smaller than I liked. So I made up a big batch of brass 32 ACP in length but with the same rim dimension as the 32 S&W Long. I refer to it as a 32 ACPR.

With reloaded primers, 1.7 gr TG and a 55 gr bullet made from range scrap I get a great 890 fps load for offhand practice shooting at 30 ft. Last time I figured my out of pocket cost for the materials, it was like $1.05 per hundred. My current usage rate is about 1000 rounds per year for this gun.

And now I am actively working on going “the next step”. Although the 32 ACPR works great, it has a downside. I have a good bit of brass but not enough to do more than a couple of months or so of loading at one time. Doing a really big batch in Jan - Feb would be so much better. Increasing my 32 ACPR brass stash will involve either more cost or more effort than I want.

So, even before reading the OP, I had decided I wanted a new option that would use the 9mm as a parent case. I can get all the 9mm brass I want for free as range pickup. I will be doing another Contender stub tube or possibly a liner. I have a 7 TCU Contender barrel that was a carbine cut down to 14”. When cut down, the bore was found to be well off to one side and it was then sold to me cheap. I have 30 cal and 22 cal junk barrels on hand. Either could be used. However, I think the 30 will be easier to form for the brass and I am already set up for the nice 55 gr 0.312” bullet described above. For my needs, the smaller the case capacity the better. This is making me lean toward a neck say 0.3” to 0.4” long. I will be making D reamers and dies out of cheap material I have on hand. I think I will call it the 30 ELC (Extra Low Cost). My out of pocket cost will be zip.

[dtknowles]

The cheapest thing to shoot is probably something you already have, but that is not so much fun. Yeah, got a 7.62x25 that works, got a .22 LR that works, got a 30-30 that works, got a .22 Hornet that works, got a 38 special/.357 mag, the list goes on and on. With primers costing 5 cents and .22 LR costing 5 cents, a couple pennies for lead for light bullets and fast powder. Cheap plinking ammo is going to be 5 to 8 cents apiece. If you save a nickel a shot it takes 10,000 rounds to save enough to buy a 500 dollar gun. Of course after 10,000 rounds the 500 dollar gun might still be worth 500 dollars maybe more maybe less. Kind of depends. Now saving 5 cents a round is not really that easy, there is probably a lot of labor and to be 5 cents cheaper than .22 LR it would need to be free.
Tim

[longbow]

jdgabbard brings up a good point and observation. For me buying a new gun to try to make sure I have something that I can likely get ammunition fo rduring hard times, I would be looking for something the military uses so if nothing else milsurp ammunition should be available.

If I was looking to duplicate .22 RF through say .22 Hornet the obvious choice would be .223 as it is everywhere. I don't relish the thought of casting and putting gas checks on tiny .22 bullets though. Maybe it isn't that bad but they are pretty small. In any case, I think I'd be looking at 7.62x39 then cast lightwieght boolits of around 11 grs. for it. .308 would also work but both are less efficient with the small powder charges (does that really matter?) and use twice the lead or better. I have .308 and .303 now.

However, buying a new gun isn't as economical as just using what I have. As stated right above if it takes 10,000 rounds to pay for a new gun that is a lot of shooting! Should we find ourselves in a zombie apocolypse I may wish I had opted for a .223 to take advantage of the abundant ammunition but otherwise I am thinking just downloading what I have works best for me.

Look at that! I just talked myself out of a new gun again! I have got to stop doing that!

Longbow

[dverna]

jdgabbard brings up a good point and observation. For me buying a new gun to try to make sure I have something that I can likely get ammunition fo rduring hard times, I would be looking for something the military uses so if nothing else milsurp ammunition should be available.

If I was looking to duplicate .22 RF through say .22 Hornet the obvious choice would be .223 as it is everywhere. I don't relish the thought of casting and putting gas checks on tiny .22 bullets though. Maybe it isn't that bad but they are pretty small. In any case, I think I'd be looking at 7.62x39 then cast lightwieght boolits of around 11 grs. for it. .308 would also work but both are less efficient with the small powder charges (does that really matter?) and use twice the lead or better. I have .308 and .303 now.

However, buying a new gun isn't as economical as just using what I have. As stated right above if it takes 10,000 rounds to pay for a new gun that is a lot of shooting! Should we find ourselves in a zombie apocolypse I may wish I had opted for a .223 to take advantage of the abundant ammunition but otherwise I am thinking just downloading what I have works best for me.

Look at that! I just talked myself out of a new gun again! I have got to stop doing that!

Longbow

Nice to see a Canadian with a brain…lol. I bet you didn’t vote for Trudeau.

I am a dual citizen so can take some liberties. Loved the country but left in 1995 when I saw the writing on the wall.

You narrowed it down to the same calibers I am heavily invested in. .223 and .308. Will never run out of brass and can be loaded to cover a lot of bases. I don’t plink with them as I have better options but like you said, I would have to shoot a lot of rounds to justify another powder burner to save on lead and powder.

[beshears]

The best for cheap shooting is cast your own bullets from scavenged lead in a 9mm or 38 Special.
Primer .09, powder .04, bullet .03.