Hi All,
I've been visiting here for some time, so I'm surprised that this is my first post. I'll try to make it interesting.
A friend has let me hold his 1872 Marlin XXX Standard pocket revolver, and has said that I can keep it, but with one condition.
I have six months to come up with 10 pieces of reloadable .30 Rimfire ammo. Before I had ever seen the gun I had one made
that would fit the chamber, headspace well and fire the primer without the need for an offset primer or rebated rim. The case, a .22 rim-fire primed shortened .22 hornet case with the rim thinned to .038", is beginning to look like the easy part. The bullet may be a bit more challenging.
Looking at the cylinder diameter, which appears to be the same from end to end, I'd like to use a heeled bullet. I'll slug the barrel this evening and see if I have a sizer that's close. I'm hoping that I can run 00 buckshot through a sizer and get enough length to form a heel on. I had made one bullet of .286" diameter that I mashed through a sizer I have since misplaced. I turned the heel on the first one and knurled the bearing surface, but the heel is too short to get good case tension.
I may be able to make use of a discovery I made quite by accident. I had forgotten the gas check seater was installed on the Lyman 450, and thinking I had just not given the arm enough pressure, watched a soft lead bullet stop moving downward and start moving outward as the pressure increased. The lower part, inside the sizing die, was .224" while the portion above the die had expanded to something like .30 caliber below the top punch. Looked like a short stemmed mushroom. This open-air-smash-swaging may help me get the initial size and weight I need for the .30 Rimfire. From there I can run the result through a sizer and turn the heel on the lathe if necessary. This is a low volume project, so I'm trying to keep it as simple and cheap as possible.
What I really need is some definite dimensions and weights from a genuine piece of .30 rimfire brass. I can make mine all the same, and using black powder charges I'm sure they'll be safe, (and wimpy) but I'd like to duplicate the original as nearly as possible. Anybody have one in their collection? Anybody done this before? The only measurement I can find online is the .286" bullet diameter.
Sorry if I ramble on a bit. I've done lots of odd case conversions, but this one has been keeping me up late.
Thanks in advance for any help or words of encouragement.
HD