success in reloading a .22 long rifle for survival

[Chicken Thief]

I'm a (way) bit thick, but i don't get this!

A storebought 22LR round costs you something like 4½ cents/pop and you want to spend money on matches/powder/boolit and invest your time?


A squirrel collects in the fat times and stores for the lean.

If you invest half a Bud Light/ 2 fags per working day (@40 cents) then you can sqirrel away 9 22LR shots a day. In a working year (240 days?) that would be 2150 pcs.

I wonder how many you would need during a zombie attack/siege

[perotter]

A storebought 22LR round costs you something like 4½ cents/pop and you want to spend money on matches/powder/boolit and invest your time?

Just to do it. I can punch holes in paper with a paper punch cheaper(and smaller group size I may add) than I can with a rifle also, but normally punch them with a rifle.

[perotter]

Google 'anarchist cookbook.' IIRC, there are some recipes in there for primer mixtures. I'd include a link, but my .mil LAN won't let me access the material.

One of the simplest primer mixes is potassium chlorate, sulfur & glass. 50,30,20 by weight. I've had 100 mesh sand work well instead of the glass. There are dozens of simple workable primer mixes. A basic form(a nitrate & red phosphorous) of the P4 primer the US military is testing can be a DIY. Even under very primitive conditions.


For a rimfire non-corrosive mix of lead nitrate, lead hypophosphite & glass will work - see G. Frost's book or the the Ely patent it's self.

[TooTallDean]

I've been sniffing about, looking for info on priming compounds for rimfire because I want to try making my own .41 Swiss ammo.
Yes,,,,,,,,,, I know that there is a centre fire conversion for the Swiss Vetterli rifle, but my gun is all matching and not Bubba'd, and it isnt going to get Bubba'd by my hands!

[KCSO]

My grandfather ust to reload rimfires that way but he put the cases in a hand drill and spun them to get the priming under the rim better. Remember you are loading corrosive ammo with matchheads so clean it out with water.

[uscra112]

Just a little story about olden times. About 1961 or '62 a chum of mine had been making paper-tube "rockets" using matchheads for fuel. Somebody suggested he use an empty CO2 cartridge for the rocket body. He did. One of them ignited while he was packing the matchheads in, and it blew most of his hand off.

BTW I was present when he "launched" one or two of those things. He used a piece of 1" water pipe to launch them like a bazooka. The noise was like a 12 gauge, and we never found the "rockets". After he blew himself up, I realized that we all avoided serious injury only because the water pipe contained the shrapnel.

Draw your own conclusions.

[jh45gun]

I just do not see the need for it as 22 ammo is fairly cheap even at today's inflated prices. Just stock up.

[Shiloh]

I loaded some boxer primers with caps and found that it works but is far to sensitive as some went off just re installing the anvil in the primer.

I've seen that done as well but with matches as the compound. Never tried it myself. You are making a corrosive primer. Be sure and clean your weapon.
The potassium chlorate converts to chloride, a potassium salt.

Shiloh

[Raygun]

If you can reload .22lr you can reload anything. ...amazing!

[gnoahhh]

I read how Wendell Fertig and his Mindanao, Philippines, guerrillas reloaded .30/06's during WWII. They were running low on ammo for the '03 Springfields they were generally armed with, when one day Fertig observed a Filipino trying to clean his rifle with a brass curtain rod. The rod got jammed in the bore, and a light bulb went off in his head. He had the village women round up all the brass curtain rods they could find and had them cut into 1" lengths, and the girls patiently ground points on them using rocks, in the general shape of a bullet. Primers were resurrected using the above described method, with match heads. Powder was a stumbling block until a couple of boys dragged a Japanese sea mine in from the lagoon. They uncorked the mine and dumped out the powder, which they then used as cartridge propellant. They blew up a couple rifles until they got the 'load' worked out. Evidently, recoil was something to behold also.

The whole point of that exercise was to provide ammo to be used in killing Japanese soldiers and then take their rifles and ammo with which to continue the fight. Young Filipino volunteers were admonished to bring their empty '06 brass back with them after a fire fight. If a poor little scared kid forgot to police up his brass, he was made to go back to the ambush site and get it. Those guys took reloading very seriously!

Eventually the U.S. came to their aid and smuggled in 'real' rifles and the '03's were retired. (The 'real' rifles were M1 Carbines, because the submarine smugglers could transport a lot more rounds of .30 Carbine ammo per trip than anything else- space on a submarine being way more precious than weight.)

So endeth your history lesson for today!

[MusicMan]

I have a Rocky Mountain Arms .22 that uses paper caps to spark black powder to drive a #4 buck into a forcing cone, elongating it into .22 barrel. Seems like this would make a good survival weapon.

[I'll Make Mine]

I have a Rocky Mountain Arms .22 that uses paper caps to spark black powder to drive a #4 buck into a forcing cone, elongating it into .22 barrel. Seems like this would make a good survival weapon.

If you can keep your caps dry (and make decent black powder), this could serve for many years (and there are a lot of #4 buck in the 8# canister that's the only size I've found for it). Where did you get that piece, and are they still making them?

[gnoahhh]

The thing is, one is still dependent on store-bought items, be it caps, matches, lead, chemicals, etc., that has to be bought/bartered for ahead of time and stored for possible apocalyptic need. Why not just lay in a big stash of .22LR's and be done with it, thus freeing oneself to worry about more important stuff like how to avoid an apocalyptic event? If a few thousand .22's won't get me through a tough time, then maybe I don't want to be around longer to 'enjoy' the world as it will be.

On the other hand, since I was a kid I was fascinated with the possibility of reloading .22's so have found this thread fascinating.

[MusicMan]

Bought in early 70's I think. A google search came up with this:
Made by Rocky Mountain Arms in the early 70s? They were designed by Dick Casull of .454 Casull fame. They were made in .44, .36, and .22. They loaded from the rear with a swivel breach, not from the front like a normal muzzleloader.

[I'll Make Mine]

Wow, the granddaddy of in-lines (or the great-great grandson of a Revolutionary War musket with a similar loading setup) -- Ferguson? How did it handle breach sealing? In the 18th century version, that was the failure they could never solve, that kept that design from putting repeaters in the hands of ordinary soldiers 70+ years before the Henry.

[bigbore442001]

This is an interesting thread. I have thought of reloading 22 lr for one purpose. To make a higher powered 22 lr for sole use in a Ruger Single Six or TC Contender. I hunt on public land and if you hunt at night you are limited to 22 lr due to the laws. Thus I have always wanted to make some specialty 22 lr that has more power.

Ideally I'd like to see a 45 grain semi wadcutter style of bullet at the maximum feasible velocity for raccoon and other game. Maybe I have too much time on my hands.

[I'll Make Mine]

Bigbore, don't forget you need to have a heeled bullet to work in the .22 LR chambers and barrels -- if you use a modern "inside lube" style, the bullet will be too small to fill the grooves and you'll get poor accuracy and possible leading. Pulling the bullets out of .22 cases to reload them isn't too hard, and I've seen loose .22 bullets in the standard weight with the correct heel (sold for the cap-n-ball version of the tiny NAA revolvers), so stepping up the powder load a little isn't completely impossible -- but it seems like an awful lot of work for the amount of gain; it's probably simpler to get your state's laws changed (say, allowing any .22 bore below an energy figure that matches something like .221 Fireball or .22 K-Hornet).

Edit to add: even a law change to allow any .22 or smaller rimfire for night hunting would be a big help; that would give .22 Magnum as well as .17 Mach 2 and .17 HMR.

[nanuk]

a gaschecked boolit design would probably work for a heeled boolit, as long as it was not too heavy, requiring a deep chamber.....

OTOH, you could use .22 Longs...