Any 22 Lovell Owners?

[38Special]

Wondered if any member here own or have fired the 22 Lovell with cast?

Thanks

[Green Frog]

The only 22 Lovell I ever owned was a CC Johnson high wall. Unfortunately the barrel was blocked hard about halfway through (when I bought it) so I never had the opportunity to shoot it. :(

Froggie

[gnoahhh]

I shoot an R2 Lovell and a Maximum Lovell (both built by Hervey Lovell himself), and I use the RCBS 55 grain and push it with fast-to-medium pistol powders- Bullseye, Unique, and 2400, 3.0, 4.5, and 7 grains respectively. Accuracy is so-so (an inch or so at 50 yards) and frankly I haven't pursued the experiment beyond that as they are bughole shooters at 100 yards with jacketed stuff and I have a plethora of other .22 CF's with which to pursue cast .22 shooting.

[uscra112]

I once fired a few rounds of cast bullets through an 2R Lovell built by Sedgley on a Ballard action. Used a Lee Bator GC bullet, alloy sweetened wheelweights. Charges 5 and 6 grains of AA#7. Chrony said 1750 fps., SD was over 50, accuracy nothing to write home about. All from memory, did not take proper notes. That rifle is only interesting to me because of the maker.

The 2R Lovell case capacity is identical to .218 Bee, so any handbook loads for the Bee will work. Using Linotype alloy you can probably go over 2200 fps. Lil-Gun would be the right powder for that. Otherwise stick to 2400, #7, or Blue Dot. Subsonic plinking loads with softer alloy, try about 1.5 grains of Red Dot or Bullseye.

Many, many Lovells were made using .22 rimfire barrels having .223" groove diameter. Shouldn't matter a whole lot, except that gunsmiths in that era were obsessed with tight necks. Cast bullets sized .225 may be too large to chamber.

Question: Do you have brass? The parent case for the Lovell was the .25-20 Stevens, which has gone out of print again. Watch Gunbroker for original 2R brass, (not cheap), or buy machined-from-solid at scalper's prices.

Of course we want to see pix of your rifle!

[Reverend Al]

Well ... sort of ... but not really. I'm going in the other direction and re-forming a bunch of .22 Lovell BACK into .25-20SS for my Stevens and Maynard rifles! Some of it is .25-20SS brass that was re-formed into Lovell and some of it is .22-3000 G&H brass. I bought 130 rounds of loaded .22 Lovell ammo in an auction just to get the brass. I pull them, reload them with a blank charge of cornmeal, and then fire-form them. (Sorry guys, but it's the only way I could find some more .25-20SS brass up here in Canada ...)

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

https://i.imgur.com/uq0FJ8f.jpg

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

https://i.imgur.com/2H3E5cH.jpg

[uscra112]

No toll, Al. The Lovell craze used up all the .25-20 brass back in the '40s, which is why G&H had Winchester make a run of the Lovell. So converting it the other way is just payback. :smile: And there seems to be no crisis shortage of the G&H brass, although prices are rising. A few years ago a fella gave me a pristine box of primed G&H in return for some trivial bit of machine work I did for him. Would now easily fetch $100 on Gunbroker.

[Reverend Al]

By the time the smoke cleared at the auction I paid about $1 Canadian per round for this ammo. Not too bad to my way of thinking since I've been paying up to $2 Canadian to get the empty .25-20SS brass I had before this batch. (This will now give me about 250 rounds of "shooter" brass to split between my two rifles.) I'll fire-form these cases using the existing primers and will recycle the .224 bullets for my wife's .223 Remington and make her some plinking ammo!

[uscra112]

Heckuva deal! New Captech brass was going for about $1.40 USD per piece when Captech shut down.

Don't discount the quality of that G&H stuff. It was made by Winchester to the highest standards of the day. Actually slightly lighter than typical UMC .25-20 and/or Captech, because Lovell shooters wanted all the case capacity they could get, but it's very consistent. (I've weighed and measured a lot of Lovell cases, of all makes I could get my hands on.)

[gnoahhh]

I love a thread that chats about anything Lovell!

Neat approach to the .25-20 case problem. I don't blame you a bit.

Thank goodness I have what I think is plenty of Lovell brass to last me to the end. I hope.

If "they" intro'ed the R2 Lovell today, or better yet the Maximum, it would be haled as the best thing since sliced bread. Call it the ".22 Rimmed Creedmoor Short" or somesuch and sell a bazillion of them!

[uscra112]

Just a sidebar here: A few years back I purchased a very early Stevens 44, (actually a Model 108), said to have been rechambered to .22 Hornet. That's a bad idea for the Stevens, so nobody wanted it. I actually bought it only because it has some nice premium wood on it.

Little did I know that I'd bought a rifle that had originally been chambered to the long forgotten .22-20 "Harwood Hornet". Some dope had sleeved the chamber to re-ream it to the modern Hornet. It didn't shoot, which is no wonder since the barrel is .228" groove diameter, and the original throat is almost 1/4" ahead of the modern Hornet shell.

Took a lot of asking around to sort out what I had, (barrel is unmarked). Bottom line is that Reuben Harwood, in 1893 or 1894, necked down the .25-20 Stevens shell to .22, claiming that he could get 2000 fps out of it. He seems to have made and sold rifles for his creation from his shop, and mine must be one.

In my searching, I found a picture of the mysterious "Harwood Hornet" cartridge in a book by Harvey Donaldson, and lo-and-behold, it looks for all the world like a very-long-necked 2R Lovell! So close that when it came to repairing the bodged chamber of my little Stevens treasure, I used my 2R reamer!

Did Hervey Lovell know of the Harwood Hornet? Did Risley? Gotta wonder.

[Drm50]

I had a 22L awhile back on Stevens action. Have no idea on barrel or history of gun. I barrowed dies and made 20 rds. from my meger stock of 25/20ss. I only shot gun 20rds with 45gr Noslers. Wasn't that interested in it because I had a real nice Hopkins & Allen in 25/20ss and didn't want to sacrifice my brass. I did reload them and still have them just in case a 22L comes along. I would have to be more impressed with the rifle itself , not the cartridge to buy.

[uscra112]

It's fair to say that the Lovell was a specialty cartridge that only existed because the next step above the Hornet was the .219 Zipper, which burned a lot more powder per load. The Lovell was worked very hard to reach 3000 fps., pressures were insanely high, brass life was short. It was bigger than the Hornet, but not big enough. What the eastern varminters really wanted was Mike Walker's .222, and when they got that the Lovell quickly went into eclipse.

[gnoahhh]

Those were heady days for sure. A new .22 wildcat born every four hours for about 15 years.

What I lust after is a .22 Marciante Blue Streak. (.22 Savage High Power case blown out with a sharp shoulder and shortened neck. Insane claims of super high velocity. Al Marciante's wife was spotting for him at the range when he test fired the prototype and she remarked about the "blue streak" the bullets were making as they zipped downrange. I'll surmise it was the lead cooking out of the jackets.) Maybe I'll barrel up a 44 in it. Or not.

I do have a .22 K-Hornet on a Winchester 54 Hornet (with Lyman Targetspot), re-chambered by Mr. Kilbourn himself. It is a sweetheart, and lives side by side with my two Hervey Lovells. I like having pieces made personally by those old masters from the Golden Age of .22 wildcatting. Would that I had hung onto the bull barreled Highwall built up by Jerry Gebby, in R2.

[uscra112]

There weren't many powders available to handloader then. Nothing like today. They were all trying to find the magic case shape that would deliver the goods with the powders they had. Groping in the dark, too. No pressure guns, no chronographs, mostly.

Wish I knew who built my two Krags. The only one I have by a known gunsmithing firm is that Ballard, and the metal is great but it's got the oddest, ugliest buttstock you can imagine on it. I have takeoff barrels for Stevens 44 1/2, another for a High Wall, and a third for a Borchardt. None of those projects are finished. Story of my life. I want my epitaph to read "Dammit, I wasn't done yet!"

[gnoahhh]

Haha! I wish we lived closer- we could either encourage each other to finish stuff, or enable each other to tilt at windmills!