22 Savage Hi-Power Load Suggestions?

[MP44]

I just started reloading and it was for this cartridge. I don't want to invest much in equipment so I would like some loads with "store bought" bullets. I am interested in lead and jacketed loads from mild to factory spec.

[Cheshire Dave]

I have a 225462 mold that drops oversized bullets that I size .228 and load over 6 1/2 grains of unique. Shot very well in a CZ combo gun. I got rid of the gun still have the dies and mold.

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[Wayne Smith]

You would have to do some significant searching to find 'store bought' bullets of .228". It was an odd caliber. You might want to slug your chamber/barrel to determine just what your rifle will require before you buy in large quantities.

Where are you in VA? There are several of us on here that might be able to help.

[Texas by God]

I have a few Hornady .227" 70gr bullets that you can have. You will need to become a handloader with that obsolete cartridge. The metric equivalent is 5.6x52R if you are looking for store bought ammo.

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[Reverend Al]

I don't know if you have a Sellier & Bellot distributor anywhere near you, but they still offer loaded 5.6x52R / .22 Savage High Power ammunition in boxer primed reloadable brass at very reasonable prices.

https://i.imgur.com/JKo5Tz9.jpg

You'd likely have to search far and wide to find any old stock jacketed bullets in .227" / .228" 70 grain Hornady or Speer. If you want to shoot it very much you'd likely be best to invest in a suitable .228" to .230" 70 grain boolit mould ...

(We were just shooting my .22 HP 99 Savage 20" take down carbine at the range today by the way.)

https://i.imgur.com/rz2plS1.jpg

[kir_kenix]

Hornady occasionally produces their .228 70gr bullets. You might give Grand Island a call and see when/if they are planning on doing another run. Can't hurt to ask, and if they get enough interest maybe they'll run off a big batch of them.

[MP44]

I have a few Hornady .227" 70gr bullets that you can have. You will need to become a handloader with that obsolete cartridge. The metric equivalent is 5.6x52R if you are looking for store bought ammo.

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I would gladly pay for them.

[MP44]

You would have to do some significant searching to find 'store bought' bullets of .228". It was an odd caliber. You might want to slug your chamber/barrel to determine just what your rifle will require before you buy in large quantities.

Where are you in VA? There are several of us on here that might be able to help.

Williamsburg

https://shop.reedsammo.com/searchquick-submit.sc?keywords=.228

[MP44]

I don't know if you have a Sellier & Bellot distributor anywhere near you, but they still offer loaded 5.6x52R / .22 Savage High Power ammunition in boxer primed reloadable brass at very reasonable prices.

https://i.imgur.com/JKo5Tz9.jpg

You'd likely have to search far and wide to find any old stock jacketed bullets in .227" / .228" 70 grain Hornady or Speer. If you want to shoot it very much you'd likely be best to invest in a suitable .228" to .230" 70 grain boolit mould ...

(We were just shooting my .22 HP 99 Savage 20" take down carbine at the range today by the way.)

https://i.imgur.com/rz2plS1.jpg

Looks like mine. I did remove my Marbles tang sight and installed a no-gunsmith scope mount that a member on the Savage forum makes. I still need to get to the range to sight it in.

[gnoahhh]

Hornady occasionally produces their .228 70gr bullets. You might give Grand Island a call and see when/if they are planning on doing another run. Can't hurt to ask, and if they get enough interest maybe they'll run off a big batch of them.

Hornady doesn't even make them on a seasonal basis anymore. The bullets are ok, but too long for the nominal 1-12" twist of the old Savage barrels. Having them shoot well is chancy at best. (The bullets were intended for users of 5.6x52R European guns that typically have much faster ROT's.) If a shooter enjoys higher elevations, low humidity and temperatures he stands a better chance of success with those bullets fired from Savages with barely enough to twist to maybe stabilize them down closer to sea level. (Or if the owner is lucky to have a gun with a skinch faster twist produced by the sine bar rifling machine operator on a day 100 years ago when he was suffering from a hangover.)

The trick to making the Hornady .228 70 grain spitzer work reliably in a Savage is to shorten the bullet. I do it quickly and easily with a file trim die I made that removes .1" from the nose of the bullet. That little bit serves to take that bullet from a 2-3MOA performer to a 1-1½MOA performer (with peep sights), and only sacrifices a couple grains weight. The trim die guarantees uniformity from bullet to bullet.

Another protocol I observe with the .22 High Power is to not try to make a speedster out of it. In the bunch of rifles I have/had I always got better accuracy at a comfy level well below claimed velocity for factory ammo (and case life improved dramatically). Deer and other creatures died just just as well accordingly. 24-2500fps is just as effective in the real world as 2700fps (unless you're a tricky cross-canyon/mountain-to-mountain he-man :) ).

Of course, the Imp (old timey nickname for the .22HP) really shines with cast bullets. Pick a design of between 55-70 grains with a short blunt profile (magic number is .750" of length or shorter), size it to fit your throat, cram 6-10 grains Unique behind it, load up a sack full, and have more fun than is legal in Vegas on a Saturday night.

[gnoahhh]

I don't know if you have a Sellier & Bellot distributor anywhere near you, but they still offer loaded 5.6x52R / .22 Savage High Power ammunition in boxer primed reloadable brass at very reasonable prices.

https://i.imgur.com/JKo5Tz9.jpg




S&B (as well as Norma) factory 5.6x52R ammo is indeed good accurate stuff, but it's loaded hot. The result is poor case life when fired in an old Savage lever gun. Rear locking lever guns have a fair amount of flex when subjected to high pressures and empty brass exhibits evidence of stretching, even in my rifles that fortuitously have minimal headspace. Whenever a box of S&B's falls into my lap I pull the bullets (which are excellent by the way), dump the powder and reload with a milder load of 4895 or 3031.

The other thing with Euro 5.6x52R ammo is diameter of case heads. It typically runs a couple thousandths under what domestic .25-35/.30-30 brass does (the two cases normally used to form HP brass). We think it's a result of the translation from English to Metric specs.

All that doesn't matter (nor should it) to the once a year throw-the-empty-brass-in-the-trashcan shooter/hunter, but it does matter to the handloader who wants to get more than a couple loadings per case.

[MP44]

https://i.imgur.com/cu45Wbs.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RUJuj03.jpg

[Cheshire Dave]

As I said before I have a mold, reloading dies ,brass and bullet sizing h&i die that I'm not using PM me if you would be interested in buying the package. Mine was a 5.6 by 52 with a 1 and 9 twist and it was able to use Hornady 60 grain .224 bullets. Don't know how that would work in the Savage 99.

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[Wayne Smith]

Williamsburg

https://shop.reedsammo.com/searchquick-submit.sc?keywords=.228

I'm in Virginia Beach. I'm set up to cast but don't have a mold. If you can get a mold we can at least get together and make you some boolits. If you get Cheshire Dave's setup you are home free - we can stick his H&I die in one of my sizers and have your boolits lubed and sized when you go home.

[MP44]

I'm in Virginia Beach. I'm set up to cast but don't have a mold. If you can get a mold we can at least get together and make you some boolits. If you get Cheshire Dave's setup you are home free - we can stick his H&I die in one of my sizers and have your boolits lubed and sized when you go home.

I have dies already but I do not shoot enough to go thru the trouble or $$ for molds and molding. I have been loading .228 70gr Reeds over 25gr of H4895 ( found on another site ) and just purchased 200 64gr lead gas checked bullets from The Bull Shop.

[Cheshire Dave]

I just sent you a PM. I have 92 cases formed from 30-30 or 25-35 cases. And 20 Sellier& Beloit.

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[richhodg66]

https://i.imgur.com/cu45Wbs.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RUJuj03.jpg

That scope mount is a pretty hard to come by item.

Brass is easy, one push through a FL sizer with .25-35 brass is all it takes.

Somewhere in my stuff I have one of the Lee Bator molds they sold through Midsouth that drops at like .229. Haven't shot any, kind of got away from this project for a while.

By the way, gnoahh has probably forgotten more about the ,22 HP than anybody else knows about it, I'd listen to what he has to say concerning loading for it.

[MP44]

I have some of the S&B loaded rds and a few brass. The 25-35 is what I have been using to reload, I ordered 150 pieces. gnoahh is where I got the H4895 load.

[Bill*B]

.22 Savage shooters, check this (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_American_Museum_journal_(c1900-(1918))_(17973692960).jpg) out!

[gnoahhh]

As much as I like the .22HP, nowayinheck would I face off against a tiger with one like that guy did! I would want at least a .25-35. :)

[Bill*B]

Amen, brother! Yet, Reverend Caldwall (http://www.amoymagic.com/AM_Caldwell.htm#tigerfriends) is credited with 48 tiger kills. One of these he recalled as:

"The finest trophy taken from Fukien Province in years I shot in May, 1910. Two days previous to my hunt this tiger had killed and eaten a sixteen-year-old boy. I happened to be in the locality and decided to make an attempt to dispose of the troublesome beast. Obtaining a mother goat with two small kids, I led them into a ravine near where the boy had been killed. The goat was tied to a tree a short distance from the lair, and the kids were concealed in the tall grass well in toward the place where the tiger would probably be. I selected a suitable spot and kneeled down behind a bank of ferns and grass.

For more than two hours I sat perfectly still, alert and waiting, behind the little blind. I had about given up hope of a shot when suddenly the huge head of the man-eater emerged from the bush.

I had implicit confidence in the killing power of the gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring. A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a matter of precaution. The beast measured more than nine feet and weighed almost four hundred pounds."

A family member related:

"Father's hunting was done in the spirit of the 117th Psalm. His gun did more than effectively reduce the man-eating tigers of South China. It brought us many and varied friendships. It was the key to the hearts of the mountain people, making possible the building of new churches and new schools. It even brought better health along the Coast. For the Lister Institute in Shanghai was to discover the source of the deadly fluke in the human body through a study of the tiger organs Father contributed to research. Thus it was that the rifle, together with the Bible, became a formidable weapon against the superstitions and diseases of the China Coast."

[Reverend Al]

Very interesting reading! (I checked out the links as well ...)

[Texas by God]

MP44, you have a PM.

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