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Thread: Russian Junior Ammo

  1. #1
    Boolit Master
    cabezaverde's Avatar
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    Russian Junior Ammo

    Some how, some way, I came into a number of the light green boxes of Junior ammo. I think it was given to me.

    Some reviews call it target grade, some say it is junk.

    Has anyone ever shot this stuff?
    Founder of the Single Shot section.

    A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.


    8 in the 10 ring, then I get a PING. Love my Garand.

  2. #2
    Boolit Buddy
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    I still have a couple of bricks of it around here somewhere. have shot it years ago, shot pretty well for me.
    Barry

  3. #3
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    what I have is garbage, steel case in the green box

  4. #4
    Boolit Master
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    Good for the price back then. Sticky and hard to extract in some guns, no problem in others.

    Maybe I failure to fire per box of 50, but would almost always go off if rim was rotated for another try. Accuracy was no worse than Winchester T-22. Dud frequency about the same, too.

    They used to be around $5/brick back in the Clinton Administration. The brass Juniors were a little more expensive, but still very reasonable. I’d use those in the guns that wouldn’t extract the steel Juniors. I used to buy a brick of one or the other at every gun show. Still using them.

  5. #5
    Boolit Master

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    Just for the fun of it, I bought a brick of the Junior steel cased ammo for #$15 during one of our past shortages.
    It functioned well in my Ruger MKII.
    It was fairly dirty though.

  6. #6
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    anyone want to buy some?

  7. #7
    Boolit Master
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    I got a brick of the steel case Jr to try. It wasn't very accurate.

  8. #8
    Boolit Grand Master Nobade's Avatar
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    The stuff I have will get the bullet out of the barrel most of the time, but it's everything from full power to falls on the floor at your feet. Pretty useless other than for trigger pull training.

  9. #9
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    It would jam up my Nylon 66! There's your clue...And hard to close the bolt and extract the fired case in my Remington 581. Luckily I only bought 2 boxes and I sat in a lawn chair and ran them through my Single Six till they were all gone. And then washed its mouths out with soap.

    Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk

  10. #10
    Boolit Buddy
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    I bought two cases when it was first available, sometime in the 1990's. Had two huge olive drab sardine tins in each case. Used it for shooting ground squirrels. The reliability was better than REM and worse than CCI. Accurate in my bull barrel 10-22. They seemed to do more damage to critters than regular lead solids. But that gosh awful smell, I swear the bullets are lubricated with rotten congealed fish oil. I recommend only shoot outside on windy days.
    Last edited by ravelode; 03-05-2021 at 11:57 AM.

  11. #11
    Boolit Buddy
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    Considering what ammo is going for lately, person should be thankful to have any.

  12. #12
    Boolit Master
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    Back when it was available the green box (steel) was $5 a brick, brass $6. Brass cased was popular for training jr shooters in clubs with jr programs.

    If you can get it at a low cost it's worth trying, don't pay scalper prices for it.

  13. #13
    Boolit Master
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    I've shot a bunch of the brass cased junior in my BSA 12 martini. Tested it against CCI Green Tag, Winchester T22, Remington match and the brass cased Junior. The Junior won hands down. Only have a couple bricks left. There was talk on rimfire central at one time about importing the various grades of Russian 22rf. This was before the embargo on Russian imports. The two grades of Russian Junior, Temp,Sniper and Olympic. Sadly from what I remember you'd have to import huge amounts and required a lot of up front money. Though I could be wrong about the latter. Skip Otto did import some though I doubt he has any left. I have a bunch of the Czech 22rf but haven't had the time to test it. Frank

  14. #14
    Boolit Master Forrest r's Avatar
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    The junior ammo is getting to old now to be reliable. Shot some of the green steel cased ammo along with tons of the yellow boxed brass cased junior ammo.

    This was cheap ammo that opened a lot of eyes. Back in the 90's anyone that was really interested in shooting nra bullseye could lay down $500 (the price of a new s&w 41) and get an olympic quality 25m sport pistol and 5 cases (6000 rounds per case) of the yellow boxed brass cased junior ammo. This combo took a lot of shooters to the state level competition wise and several people became state champions with the combo.
    [IMG][/IMG]

    You need a good solid fp hit/strike to set the green boxed junior off and even then it was nothing more/better than the typical bulk pack blammo ammo of the day. It was however subsonic as was most of the imported russian rimfire ammo being imported at that time.

    Russians tended to view rimfire ammo as a training tool and made target velocity ammo's. Americans on the other hand use hv for everything, if it ain't got a v8 it don't go. A lot of those russian 25m olympic pistols were ruined by people using hv ammo in them. The breech faces on them would get peened/crack from being too soft a metal and being battered by the harsh recoil of the american hv ammo.

    I brought up a s&w 41 because I have owned both and shot both back in the 90's. If you took a s&w 41 recoil spring and cut it in 1/2 and then stretched it out +/- 1" you would have a replacement recoil spring for the izh-35m russian 25m pistol. Same with the mag springs, cut a s&w 41 mag spring in 1/2 and you have a replacement spring for the izh-35m mag.

    Anyway back in the 90's the junior green box ammo was a subsonic cheap training ammo to use in the target pistols & rifles. It made excellent practice ammo for the 50ft line. Sort of reminds me of the cci sv ammo people use today.

    An interesting link to the luckygunner testing the junior green boxed ammo. Everyone sees something different, myself I like the picture of them holding a ruger lcr with the cylinder open with the caption " Half of the LVE cases fired in the LCR-22 didn’t want to move without some help."

    https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/steel-cased-22lr/

    Funny they see stuck cases. I see lite primer strikes causing low powered squibs. Perhaps luckgunner needs to do a search on this website and see why people drill out the fp whole on their rifle cases when using powder puff/lite loads to keep the same thing from happening (stuck cases with extremely low charges) and shoulder setback. Those cases had just enough pressure to expand (narrow pressure window/had the same thing happen with a 308w) and grab the cylinder walls.

  15. #15
    Boolit Buddy
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    Just opened my last brick and shot 70 rounds of this ammo on Sunday. My Taurus TX22 worked perfectly for 40 rounds, then wouldn't eject. My Win 55 worked just fine with them.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check