New rimfire round

[uscra112]

.25 ACP wouldn't have anything to headspace on in a .25 Stevens chamber. There is a guy on the forum here who's been making stuff based on the .25 ACP though. Chev. somethingorother.

Sleeving the Marksman barrel up to fit the 101 would be a whole lot easier, methinks!

[Mk42gunner]

Okay, I was thinking the semi rim might give enough support for headspacing the cartridge. It is awful small though.

Robert

[uscra112]

And it uses a .251 bullet. Despite some claims, every .25 Stevens barrel I have is ~.257 groove.

[Traffer]

An idea that I have been thinking about is the suggestion that 22WMR could be loaded with a heeled bullet.
Checking the dimensions it looks promising. Would be a 243 Caliber rim fire. There are plenty of 243 Win barrels out there especially for the H&R Break barrel, (I have one in 45/70) A chamber adapter could be made so that the 22 WMR With a 243 heeled bullet (Lets call it a 243 WMR) Could be loaded to shoot considerably faster than the standard 2000 fps WMR 40 gn...WITH ACCURACY. Remember the problem with the 22WMR is the lack of stabilizing rifling. A 243 barrel with 10-1? Rifling just MIGHT make a FINE caliber...perhaps way outshining any available Rim fire round to date.
The good part is the ease of testing this conversion. Aside from making the ammo (piece of cake for me) All one would need is a 243 Barrel with an adapter.

[uscra112]

BTW I fired three of the centerfire rounds into the backstop a little earlier. With the snow cover and the dim light I can't make any claim to have hit what I was pointing it at. But they all fired and extracted normally. 1.9 grains Bullseye, 65 grain bullet. Sounded supersonic, so next batch of loads will be 0.1 grain less.

[uscra112]

A 6mm rimfire. For 2000 fps you'd need a jacketed bullet or at least a gas check. Either way forming the heel might be interesting. What would be your bullet weight? Powder space would be scanty, so peak pressure to get 2000 fps. might have to be pretty high.

[dtknowles]

I think if we are going to have a new rimfire cartridge it should be something new. Yes, it would be nice of some of the old rounds could be reissued from time to time but something new that fills a nitch would be nice.

I suggest 8 x 25 mm rimfire with like a 100 gr. bullet at maybe something like 1000 fps. Would not chamber in any old weak guns. Could use a lead or plated bullet, should be as cheap as .17 HMR or .22WMR

Tim

[koyote]

22 WRF.

easy answer. no outside lube, no heeled bullet, shorter than, but chamber compatible with 22WMR. high velocity gets you into the 200ft lb. range.

bigger? meh. why? what's it going to do that .22WMR doesn't?

okay, sigh. bigger. well, you aren't aiming for 2800fps in a rimfire, so let's just dispense with high power 6mm. (edit, someone actually talked about a higher power one while I was typing that out, hah) might as well focus on utility. so, you need a "ball" round for target and cheap plinking, a "HV" for more moderate hunting, lets go up to muskies and coons for this, okay? and you need enough case capacity to make the garden gun great again (shot. #10 and #9 shot)....

so, .32 long rimfire. Except you'll blow the back out of the favorite after a while, so better use a different chamber (and heeled bullets suck) so.... 32SWL rimfire.


(personally, I'd rather people just made handy stuff in .32SWL, but you wanted rimfire- why, I dunno)

[303Guy]

Maybe because all the years I've used a 22 rimfire, I wished for something a bit bigger, like a 25 rimfire or a 32 rimfire. Same velocity but bigger and heavier. A 22rf is pretty small and while it works just fine for its intended application, a 25 or 32 rings my bell. A 32 may be a bit overkill so in my mind a 25 is good compromise. A healed bullet can be driven fairly fast, like at stinger velocities which would make it quite versatile.

[uscra112]

The niche that isn't being filled now is the "garden gun". Or the "rook rifle". Bullet of 80+ grains at subsonic velocity. Quiet, but energetic enough to kill a groundhog or a 'coon at range up to maybe 30-40 yards. Or a fox in the chicken coop, without scaring the livestock. I imagine that that was a major market for all those .32 RF Favorites and #4 Remingtons. They were a tool for small farmers and exurbanites who grew kitchen gardens and kept chickens as a matter of course, (as my old Dad was still doing in the 1950s when I were a wee lad). Who does that today? Almost nobody, and those that do are like as not gun-fearing wussies. So the market isn't there.

That said, I'd like still an 80-100 grain frangible bullet in a cheap, subsonic cartridge. Why? Ricochets have always been a problem with .22s, and ever moreso today. The modern .17s firing thin-skinned bullets don't ricochet, but they get their energy from high velocity, which makes then loud, and no suppressor can fix that. Suppressed, a subsonic .32 or 8mm would be almost silent, but that leaves to ricochet problem. A frangible bullet is thus a necessity.

I haven't seen any in decades, but we used to be able to buy .22 short "gallery loads" that had a sintered bullet which would turn to powder when it hit anything substantial. Wouldn't penetrate 1/2" plywood ten feet away. Why can't that be revived ? Maybe our bullet-swagers on the forum should be turned loose on the problem? Make them strong enough to penetrate the chest cavity of a 20 lb. varmint, but no more.

Prior to WW2 somebody was experimenting with a .30 caliber bullet cast of very high antimony alloy with a very deep hollow point. It was "glance proof", but I've never heard or read anything about the concept since.

[Traffer]

22 WRF.

easy answer. no outside lube, no heeled bullet, shorter than, but chamber compatible with 22WMR. high velocity gets you into the 200ft lb. range.

bigger? meh. why? what's it going to do that .22WMR doesn't?

okay, sigh. bigger. well, you aren't aiming for 2800fps in a rimfire, so let's just dispense with high power 6mm. (edit, someone actually talked about a higher power one while I was typing that out, hah) might as well focus on utility. so, you need a "ball" round for target and cheap plinking, a "HV" for more moderate hunting, lets go up to muskies and coons for this, okay? and you need enough case capacity to make the garden gun great again (shot. #10 and #9 shot)....

so, .32 long rimfire. Except you'll blow the back out of the favorite after a while, so better use a different chamber (and heeled bullets suck) so.... 32SWL rimfire.


(personally, I'd rather people just made handy stuff in .32SWL, but you wanted rimfire- why, I dunno)

The ONE great drawback for a 22WMR is poor accuracy. For the reasons mentioned earlier the modification to a heeled bullet in the same case COULD WELL solve that problem. Powder coated bullets between maybe 65 and 40 grains with more speed and accuracy than a 22lr for about 2 cents per round IS appealing to some.

[uscra112]

Curious. I've never had a .22 WMR. Why would the accuracy be poor? Surely they are rifled at least 16 inches per turn, same as .22LR for same weight bullet.

Doing an extremely rough model in Quickload, (I can only guess at powder capacity) I don't think you can get past 1800 fps with a 65 grain bullet without going past 35,000 psi. Need precise weight of a fired case in grains to get any closer to reality.

[dtknowles]

22 WRF.

easy answer. no outside lube, no heeled bullet, shorter than, but chamber compatible with 22WMR. high velocity gets you into the 200ft lb. range.

bigger? meh. why? what's it going to do that .22WMR doesn't?

okay, sigh. bigger. well, you aren't aiming for 2800fps in a rimfire, so let's just dispense with high power 6mm. (edit, someone actually talked about a higher power one while I was typing that out, hah) might as well focus on utility. so, you need a "ball" round for target and cheap plinking, a "HV" for more moderate hunting, lets go up to muskies and coons for this, okay? and you need enough case capacity to make the garden gun great again (shot. #10 and #9 shot)....

so, .32 long rimfire. Except you'll blow the back out of the favorite after a while, so better use a different chamber (and heeled bullets suck) so.... 32SWL rimfire.


(personally, I'd rather people just made handy stuff in .32SWL, but you wanted rimfire- why, I dunno)

Rimfire factory ammo should be cheaper than factory centerfire ammo. My idea for 8 x 25 mm rimfire is a little hotter than .32 SWL but not quite a .32 H&R. 8mm so that it will not chamber in .32 RF long. A 100 gr. bullet at 1000 fps hits a lot harder than .22 wmr or .22wrf

Tim

[koyote]

Curious. I've never had a .22 WMR. Why would the accuracy be poor? Surely they are rifled at least 16 inches per turn, same as .22LR for same weight bullet.

three main reasons-

1: far too many firearms made to fire both .22LR and .22WMR - and that's not good for either.

2: .22WMR is VERY accurate with a consistent load in a good rifle like a 452- but up until the last decade, no one was making decent rifles

and

3: no one makes match grade ammo. of the 100 odd .22LR chamber dimensions, you have a few dozen pairings with match ammo designed for benchrest and other super accurate shooting. almost on par with, sya, airgun expectations (you know, using 9mm casings as targets at 25 yards) - but you STILL don't have that for .22 magnum. Though in the past 7 years, you ARE getting basic match grade ammo out- at least from federal.

it's not more nor less inaccurate than, say, 38 or 45- just no one has ever bothered to really work it. Part of the reason for THAT is it's 30 cents per rounds, which is about 2/3 of what the 30-40 caliber, 80 grain subsonic, rimfire round is going to cost IF you manage to get someone to do barrels and all that.

[koyote]

Rimfire factory ammo should be cheaper than factory centerfire ammo. My idea for 8 x 25 mm rimfire is a little hotter than .32 SWL but not quite a .32 H&R. 8mm so that it will not chamber in .32 RF long. A 100 gr. bullet at 1000 fps hits a lot harder than .22 wmr or .22wrf

Tim

I've been shooting .22wmr for a longish while and it's always been more expensive than factory centerfire- yeah, somehow 4cpr .22LR has managed to be available and mostly accurate enough for soda cans at 50 yards with a decent rifle. .22WMR is closer to 30 cents per round in retail, never really got below 20 cents per in bulk- when 9mm was down to 15 cents per round for brass case, boxer primed.

the one thing I think would absolutely NOT work, is trying to get all new barrel and boolit machinery going. .32 at least has the .311 (or go 30 and make it .308, whatever - barrels. and boolits are made (.312 again is better for that, since you want fat and slow)

if someone can explain the economics and production scale of why an equivalent rimfire is going to be cheaper than a high volume centerfire, I'll listen. But- aside from availability of longarms in the chamberings, I'm still not sure why this isn't .32acp or .32SWL with a less consistent ignition .

not trying to beat the topic up. I'm honestly curious as to how/why a rimfire .32 would be more economical (or, sure, whatever- .25, .28, .34 caliber, whatever)

[uscra112]

Rimfire ammo ought to be cheaper. Less brass, fewer draws, no primer pocket to form, no separate primer to make and install, und-und-und.

BUT, the direct cost of manufacture is a remarkably small portion of the retail price of any consumer product. Average about 15-20%. (Womens' cosmetics are typically <5% btw. Major ripoff.) The rest goes to factory overhead, packaging, distribution, advertising, retail markup, and taxes. None of which are any different for rimfire vs. centerfire. One direct cost factor you can gain real savings from is volume. Changing over the mfg. line(s) takes time and costs money. Every day you're not pumping out 9mm at flank speed is burning overhead $$$. So the bigs won't do it. And a boutique mfgr. is not going to have the economies of scale. If it ever gets done, it would have to be offshore, and after the fiasco of Navy Arms .32 rimifire we know how poor the quality can be.

So I'm afraid this is all just a mental exercise, as much fun as it's been to speculate on.

BTW when you saw Cabelas offering 9mm for $10.00/50, that was because they were using it as a
loss leader, same as Walmart does with milk and eggs. Rapid turnover, low markup item that gets people into the store, hoping they'll buy lots of other stuff at higher markups. (Know where Cabelas makes the most $$$? Clothing. Another product family with low direct cost of manufacture and big retail markups.)

I still want that heavy, frangible bullet for loading .32 H&R brass to 1000 fps. at home. Anyone? Bueller?

Final tidbit. I remembered last night an explanation from an old Englishman of how rook rifles were used. The game as he remembered it was to break up the nests (rooks) of crows, killing the young and driving the adults elsewhere. That's why they were low power but heavy bullet rounds. Didn't have to be very accurate, only had to hit fairly hard at ranges under 100 feet or so, and be quiet enough not alarm the neighborhood.

[Bent Ramrod]

I remember those frangible .22s. “Remington Rocket .22 Shorts.” They came in a flat packet like Chiclets Gum and made a very satisfying shower of sparks when fired at an angle against a railroad track. Ah, the pleasures of innocent Youth!

Maybe they could be made in the home shop by running a magnet over grinding swarf, mixing what gets picked up into hot glue, and casting “gluelets” from the mixture. Not a lot of shooting galleries around to absorb the original factory offerings now.

Most of the rimfires up to .32 caliber in rifles were for shooting squirrels out of trees or decapitating perched game birds at distances measured in feet, back when there were plenty of both to shoot at. Such subsistence hunting isn’t done anymore; the “Woods Loafer” who only worked enough to keep himself in cash for ammunition and tobacco is as extinct as the passenger pigeon, and the 12-year-old boys who used to run the machinery to produce the rimfires (and learned the value of money thereby) were liberated from the exploitation of the cruel Capitalists and are now pontificating on social media and playing video games in their bedrooms. Not a situation conducive to making a profit on small runs of specialty products. The sporting aspects of what the subsistence hunters used to do can be adequately covered by the current rimfires.

Only the Third World, where capital is expensive and labor is sweatshop cheap, would have the potential to make oddball rimfire ammunition. I was pretty impressed by the Navy Arms Brazilian .32s myself. A friend had a S&W tip-back revolver that would shoot several cylindersful very accurately, and do it again after cleaning. A friend of his had a Marlin rim-or-center .32 lever action that shot as well as a 39. It shot as well in the skuzzy bores of my Ballard and Stevens rifles as any centerfire loadings I could make.

I just wish the Brazilians had made .25 Stevens as well, but there were more bureau-drawer revolvers in .32 rimfire than usable pistols and rifles together in .25, so the market viability is obvious. In an era where you have to prove profitability before you can even get a McDonald’s franchise, let alone finance the restaurant itself, I don’t see any new rimfires coming along. Even the Hornady Mach 2, a nicely utilitarian modern rimfire on the lines of the old, quiet, short-range rounds, seems to be dying. Only high velocity has a chance of selling.

[koyote]

Rimfire ammo ought to be cheaper. Less brass, fewer draws, no primer pocket to form, no separate primer to make and install, und-und-und.

BUT, the direct cost of manufacture is a remarkably small portion of the retail price of any consumer product. Average about 15-20%. (Womens' cosmetics are typically <5% btw. Major ripoff.) The rest goes to factory overhead, packaging, distribution, advertising, retail markup, and taxes. None of which are any different for rimfire vs. centerfire. One direct cost factor you can gain real savings from is volume. Changing over the mfg. line(s) takes time and costs money. Every day you're not pumping out 9mm at flank speed is burning overhead $$$. So the bigs won't do it. And a boutique mfgr. is not going to have the economies of scale. If it ever gets done, it would have to be offshore, and after the fiasco of Navy Arms .32 rimifire we know how poor the quality can be.

So I'm afraid this is all just a mental exercise, as much fun as it's been to speculate on.

BTW when you saw Cabelas offering 9mm for $10.00/50, that was because they were using it as a
loss leader, same as Walmart does with milk and eggs. Rapid turnover, low markup item that gets people into the store, hoping they'll buy lots of other stuff at higher markups. (Know where Cabelas makes the most $$$? Clothing. Another product family with low direct cost of manufacture and big retail markups.)

I still want that heavy, frangible bullet for loading .32 H&R brass to 1000 fps. at home. Anyone? Bueller?

I never bought ammo at cabelas. I'm PRETTY SURE sam gabbert wasn't selling S&B 115gr at 13cpr plus shipping as a loss leader. (15cpr until nevada got into the online sales tax game, then I had to use the alternate SG website....whatever. same price)

I'm familiar with the loss leader concept, though I'm not entirely sure it's applied correctly in the conversation. (milk, notably- where walmart has made huge strides in reducing cost by putting dairies out of buiness and having direct control of production. nevada economic stuff) - most grocery store core items make about 1% profit.

While it's true that production materials cost is often fairly low, it's not quite that easy- there's a lot of things that effect, say, the price per pound of "using less brass" versus , say, using more brass but having a tariff or tax break on brass because you do military and police contract (which you aren't going to have to 8x23mm rimfire) - same with something like the separate primer "cost" - what's the actual cost?

economies of scale really hit hard in the post "12 year old manual labor learning the value of a dollar" world. mechanization has some interesting effects, to be sure.

Small business, independent suppliers would be a great way to actually make it work...BUT.... that's where you run into the problems with rimfire. It's one thing when you cna source materials, but a small business having to form the brass, make the primer, prime the cases, and then load ammo? I dunno. I have a feeling that if it was doable, I'd be shooting my stevens favorite in .25 - even once in a while at $1 a shot. But I can get a small shop to do a run of as little as a few hundred of a wildcat (as long as the parent brass at least is available). And yeah, it's WAY cheaper if that run is 10,000 or 100,000 for a semi-automated garage based FFL06.

best thing, for me, about rimfire is I'm more tempted to shoot it and less tempted to mess with it. I've spent way too much time "working on ammo" than shooting in a few projects and it was mostly wasted.

as for frangible- I haven't pressed any frangibles. not sure- I know you won't be pouring them, but I know next to nothing about using a press and swager to do powdered metals and plastics. I'd GUESS that it's probably doable now with some of the powdered metals and modern polymers, especially with PC- but it's a new area and we need some garage mechanics out messing with it.

one thing about manufacturing- the entire process and model has changed. recently- like since the 90s. I've had to deal with the edges of that a bit, with the sheer cheapness of cnc and laser cutting and such. how that translates to brass? well- outside the box is a thing. I'd rather have 100 RMC CNC turned 28ga 2.5 inch shells for my belgian than 500 magtech. I dunno.

I think ramrod has a valid point- and i'm in that odd 1% of gun people. I still walk around with a gun and use it while hiking. not quite "sustenance hunting" - and I certainly shoot 80% of my rounds at a range - but I spend about 80% of my shooting time out in the field, here or down in AZ. I'd call it "woods bumming" but saguaros and salt scrub aren't woods. hah. And even i'm leery of a rimfire replacement for a woods bumming cartridge.

[uscra112]

Frangible bullet: #10 shot compressed in a matrix of some sort of brittle glue? Maybe inside a thin plastic or paper jacket, with a gas check base to keep it together in the barrel? Could we make it a DIY project?

[Mk42gunner]

IIRC the old gallery loads for the .22 Short were sintered iron, so probably not very good on the rifling on a gun you want to keep. To be fair, they were never meant for bullseye competition accuracy; the shooting galleries I remember at the carnival had a range of maybe five feet.

I do think you could swage some of the powdered metal into a bullet, the trick would be getting it to stick together while still being able to dsintegrate upon impact.

As was said, fun to think about, but probably not going to happen.

Robert