22 Pellet / Primer Project

[PowPow]

Well, boarshead go some of us obsessed with loading 22 pellets into primed centerfire cartridges. Post your results and lessons learned here.


Put what caliber you are loading in the subject line.

[PowPow]

Well, I will go first.
22/250 uses Large Rifle Primers.
.
Started by drilling the flash hole to 11/64", put the brass in a sizing die to hold it.
3/16" would have been better but I probably broke that one trying to open a can of a paint or something.
Neck sized and hand primed with Win WLR primers.
Tried seating the pellet with with dies and then Lee Loader, but the pellel falls in the bras and it goes in the trash.
Finally just wiggled the pellet in with my fingers to hold only the bottom cup part.
Using Crosman pellets.
.
Results - out of 7; one did not make it out of the brass.
6 shot into a 3/4" group at 15 yards about 2.5" low. With a 1.5" scope ht, that means its not rising at all.
FWIW - shooting a paper target stapled to a cardboard box filled with phone books.
pellets broke the paper but not the cardboard, bounced off, onto the floor.
.
Next step is to try magnum primers, before I go drill for 209's.

[.22-5-40]

Perfect timing guys!  years ago, I had tried this with a .22 Hornet.  I wanted long range accuracy..so I added 1 or 2 grains of Bullseye..blowing heads out of pellets..resorted to .22 lead balls..worked but accuracy wasn't too good..gave up on project.  Lately, I have read posts of using the British Promethius..plastic cased steel cored pellets..I have seen some in Midway catalog under RWS brand.
   Well, last weekend made special trip of 25 some miles after speaking to salesperson who said they had something like them..come to find out..it was a lead pellet with a plastic insert!  Oh well, bought some Crossman Premium lead hollow points..these have a very thick head & should hold primer pressures.
    The problem with these waisted pellets is loading straight in case.
I got out my Wilson chamber type bullet seater & with primed Hornet case in die, I removed seater, dropped pellet in &...Presto!  A perfectly straight seated pellet!
   I haven't tried these as of yet.

[Rock Home Isle]

I was just talking to my Dad about this today and we were both thinking of the .22 Hornet...very Cool. 

[PowPow]

Tried to drill for a 209 primer before I go buy magnum primers.
I was drilling in to a 22/250, but this should apply to the 223 also.
.
Good thing is you can't accidentally mix it in with your good brass.
Bad thing is its going to be a pain to get the primer flush, and you will have to glue it in somehow.
.
209 has a seat diameter of .245", and .306" flange.
Drilled a 1/4" hole. Nice thing about this is if the pellet falls into the brass, it will come out the new primer hole.
With just the 1/4" hole the primer sticks out, and the breech on my Ruger 1-V would not close.
Started counter-sinking for the flange with a something/64" bit (.312" dia).
.
Never really got there when my wife made me come pull for Trent for Heismann.
.
At this point, I am hoping magnum primers get me where I want to be with this.
Looking for someone to report on a magnum primer, before I run across the county to buy some.

[sr sawyer]

Want to try this in my Hornet and 22-250 but which .22 pellets do you use?  The ones I have available are pointed with a skirted base.  Can't figure how these could work.
 
Do not mean to intrude or steal a post just want input so I can maybe add to the discussion.
 
Thanks, Ken 

[PowPow]

I'm using a skirted base round tip.
Seating is tricky because there are two small bearing surfaces, instead of one long one.
That's why I had to wiggle them in with my fingers, but with only the skirt surface seated.
Would love to hear of a better option to this.
anybody got a suggestion?

[Rock Home Isle]

At this point, I am hoping magnum primers get me where I want to be with this.
Looking for someone to report on a magnum primer, before I run across the county to buy some.

As an alternative to Magnum Primers...Consider BR (Bench Rest) Primers. They produce as much energy as a magnum primer, but are much more consistant.

[243dave]

For more power--- (1.)use magnum primers.  (2.) take your brass(no primer) and fill it to the bottom of the neck with epoxy and let it dry.  Drill a hole starting at the flash-hole all the way to the top.  The reason for this is so all the KABOOM reaches the pellet and not lost and scattered out in the empty brass.  A long thin paneling nail and a hammer is used to deprime it.
Dave

[jhalcott]

 Many years ago when I was an apprentice machinist I made a few stainless steel .223 cases with a hole thru them. They worked quite well for shooting stray cats. My B-I-L showed me HIS Sheridan 5mm pump air gun. Those 5mm pellets were almost as expensive as my primers and just as accurate.! Wife made me quit using the .223 before I'd get arrested. As I recall, I was using Magnum rifle primers because they shot the pellets thru more phone book pages than standard primers. A cat at 40/50 feet was in mortal danger. When I got my .17 Remington model 700 i tried to shoot .177 pellets thru it. I sized them down to .172 in a home made sizer as they were.005" to big. Lousy accuracy! Then I tried "breech seating" the pellets! What a brilliant idea, but still lousy accuracy.
  Now I'm back to the old air rifle or Speer plastic .44 bullets

[boarshead]

       Powwow,  thanks for all the work, you've done, I'm buried at work and will
get to check in on the experiments, once and awhile.  From what I could see on
sportsman guide,  the brass had 3 or 4 center punches at depth of the neck where
you wanted the pellet to stop.   Thanks, Bud

[StrawHat]

I do this with a 22 WCF chambered rifle.  I use Hornet brass and a primer, no powder.  Accuracy is so-so but there are a lot of pellets to try, one of them has to work!
 
When using larger cases, you can drill them to accept the shotgun primer.  Using the proper drill bit (it is numbered or lettered but it is a lot closer then a 1/4" bit), the primer are held it by friction.  A chamfer on the primer hole allows the primer to seat flush with the case head.  A big advantage to the larger cases (larger than Hornet) and the shotgun primer is that you can now load the pellet through the case head and control how much sticks out from the case mouth. 
 
Good luck and keep posting results.

[jlwilliams]

  I had some success with this sort of thing in the past.  One thing that helped was getting some 7/32 od brass tube from a hobby shop.  It had thin walls, I don't remember the exact specs.  Anyway, I cut a piece to length so that it slipped down into the case and was just long enough to fill the area from the base of the case to a point just short of the mouth.  A pellet's length short of the mouth, to be aproximate.  That way I could push the pellet in and the skirt would bottom out against the tube.  That kept it sitting straight and kept it from falling down into the case.  It also focussed the primer blast.  It worked OK but the tubes tended to want to move around a little.  I never got around to my next step which was to be experimenting with epoxying or soldering the tube into the case.  That would likely have worked.
 
  The big problem I had was that I was using .223 as the basic case.  the short neck made it hard to use the heavy pellets you really need to use (Beeman Crow Magnums or an RWS extra heavy who's name I don't recall).  You need a heavy pellet to keep the  blast from ripping the pellet apart, and the heavies are too long for the 223.  I think that the Hornet would be the best case to do this with.  No Hornet, and never got around to soldering the little buggers together.  That was where my experiments with this stalled.
 
  I also had some fun with 7.62x54 cases modified to use 203 primers and a ball.  I don't remember if it was buckshot or a muzzle loader ball.  I know I tried a bunch of available lead balls and eventually found one that worked.  That used a brass tube too, but that one I did solder up.  It worked well enough.  I took a few shots to confirm that the ball was consistently clearing the barrel and hitting a metal plate about 25 yards away.  I should dig that one back out.  Maybe even make a few so I can really have some fun.  I never took it far enough to determine if it was accurate enough for target practice or powerful enough for small critters.

[PowPow]

Some discussion about focussing the blast by reducing the case volume.
Seems to me its the expansion of gas that drives it pellet down the barrel, like compression ratio in a car engine.
Wondering if focussing the blast is anedotal, if there were noticable differences.
Seems like the incremental gain of reduced volume of the case would be minimal compared to total volume as the gas expands down a 20+" the barrel.
Got to keep it simple to keep it fun.
Thoughts?

[jlwilliams]

  That may well be.  I've turned the 'focused blast' over in my mind a few times too.  While it would likely mean more pressure at the start of movement, does it realy translate to more practical 'umph' at the muzzle?  That I don't know.
 
  What I do know is that when I went to putting a piece of tubing into the case I got consistent seating and no more pellets dropping down into the case.  Having the pellet sitting square to the chamber and bore is critical because the skirt engages the rifling, so any help it has in engaging it evenly translates to better accuracy.  Guys who are way further into air gunning than I am sometimes use a seating tool to engage their pellets into the breach.  From what I've been told it makes a noticable diference in sports where they are measuring the tinyest variation.  Anyway, once I picked up a piece of tubing and cut a couple pieces, the whole process of loading these little buggers got easier.  The confined chamber may or may not have really helped.  The pellet sitting up front and square helped big time. 
 
  The way I was loading them was to prime the case with a hand primer, then put the pellet in.  I just started the pellet with my fingers then pushed it home by pressing it nose first against a piece of soft wood.  Worked easy enough.
 
  I never tried the tubes with a 203 primer in a small (22) cartridge because the tubes were so much smaller than the 203 primers.  It worked well in the 7.62x54 because the primers are smaller than the ID of the (IIRC) 5/16 tube I put into them.

[Larry Gibson]

For shooting 14+ gr .22 cal pellets;
I've altered 22 Hornet cases to take LR primers with 350 - 400 fps
I've altered 22 Hornet cases for the old Rem 97 shotgun primers with 450 - 500 fps
I've altered .222 and 223 cases for both the 97 and 209 shotshell primers 400 - 500 fps
I've altered 25-20 cases for the shotshell primers (25 cal pellets)
 
All worked very well for short range gallery loads.  To maintain accuracy a wet patch through the bore is necessary every 10 rounds to keep the primer residue (real gritty) to a minimum.  Tried shooting Belding ground squireels with them....not really accurate enough nor enough power for clean kills. Works well for mice in the house though. Fun target practice inside too!  A real pellet rifle is much more effective for hunting, especially a .22 cal that gives an actual velocity of 650+ fps with 14+ gr .22 cal pellets.  My RWS M54 .22 cal with CPs (800 fps) is deadly to 50+ yards on rats, squirrels and rabbits.  An accurate .22LR with CB Longs is even much better and many times quieter than the magnum level air rifles.
 
Larry Gibson

[Glanceblamm]

An accurate .22LR with CB Longs is even much better and many times quieter than the magnum level air rifles.

Interesting thread but I was waiting for this to come up. Mine are the CB shorts (29 gr @ 750 fps) with that heavier bullet providing a lot more thump that the lighter pellets.
They are very quiet but you need to take a good look at your intended target range (say pest control) because they will bounce even on the sod.

[PowPow]

...Mine are the CB shorts (29 gr @ 750 fps) with that heavier bullet providing a lot more thump that the lighter pellets.
They are very quiet but you need to take a good look at your intended target range (say pest control) because they will bounce even on the sod.

After fooling with it for a few days, I think I am going back to the Henry with CB shorts.
Would have been nice to have a Ruger 1-V pellet gun.

[Glanceblamm]

Would have been nice to have a Ruger 1-V pellet gun.

Would be nice to have the Ruger #1-V 

[jwill58]

Would have been nice to have a Ruger 1-V pellet gun.

Would be nice to have the Ruger #1-V 

I know this is an old post but I just had to add my two cents. I had this same idea about twenty years ago. I had a Rem 742 semi auto in 30.06, but what gave me the idea besides being a ballistics nut was I had bought some "Accelerators" which if they don't make them anymore...these were .22 55gr bullets seated in a plastic sabot (308 cal in size). I would pull the 55gr slug and insert a 38gr hp 22 slug and man o man  ! The 55gr velocity was rated at 4000fps ! I didn't have a chrony back then so I don't know what the lighter slugs were.....they turned a watermelon into water though.I know this isn't what you had in mind...but it might give you a different tact to think on. You can buy sabots in a lot of different calibers today  Im curious what we will see next on this idea.
                                                           jwill58