With the difficulty in producing top quality .22 rimfire ammo and the difficulty in the average shooter getting a fair range of it to test, plus the cost of the good stuff and the reluctance of some barrel makers to make .22 LR barrels, why not try to persuade the ISSF to change over to the .22 Hornet centrefire round?
It is readily available, with a wide range of powders and projectiles enabling excellent reloading prospects, it is small, it takes the round well out of the transonic region with all that this entails for wind drift, the cost would be comparable with the best .22LR ammo, you can load it with lead projs if you want, and most ranges would be able to cater for it (hell, our range backstop would handle a 120mm, fin stabilised, discarding sabot, anti tank round!)
Best of all it should be possible to simply rechamber your existiing .22 match rifle barrels for the round. Serious suggestion, people.
Centrefire .22 for International Target Shooting
Moderators: pilkguns, Marcus, m1963, David Levene, Spencer
Because:
1) Most .22LR rounds are produced for varmint control and that's why the cost is so low for all but the elite-level ammo;
2) You'd have to rechamber or replace everyone's rifle;
3) As I understand it, Hornet has more of a kick, so you'd make the sport even tougher from the RSI point of view;
4) It looks like a "real rifle round". Which means that outside the US which has a high tolerance for such things, target shooting would suddenly start attracting the attention of those that feel that any gun, any where, is a Bad Thing and needs to be taken away from someone by someone else;
4) They'd still be more expensive than .22LR
1) Most .22LR rounds are produced for varmint control and that's why the cost is so low for all but the elite-level ammo;
2) You'd have to rechamber or replace everyone's rifle;
3) As I understand it, Hornet has more of a kick, so you'd make the sport even tougher from the RSI point of view;
4) It looks like a "real rifle round". Which means that outside the US which has a high tolerance for such things, target shooting would suddenly start attracting the attention of those that feel that any gun, any where, is a Bad Thing and needs to be taken away from someone by someone else;
4) They'd still be more expensive than .22LR
Not sure everything you said is wholly true. I mentioned the cost of the elite rimfire ammo and that is the stuff I am talkiing about and I mentioned the need to rechamber rifles. However, the Hornet has very little recoil and is easily handled. As for using "real" bullets, well just about all countries in the world shoot bigbore target rifle anyway so I don't think changing to a low powered centrefire cartridge would raise any sort of stir.
Taking into account the fact that the case can be reloaded many times over and cases are relatively cheap as are the projs and primers, and there is a range of fast pistol powders that would make nice loads, then the cost is about the same as the premium smallbore ammo, perhaps even less - with the HUGE advantage that people can tailor make their own world class ammo, AND experiment to get the best possible accuracy out of their rifle without the need to travel to the UK to get access to a large number of .22LR batches for testing as is the case now for serious shooters.
It seems to me to be a very sensible sort of thing to do and your objections, whilst noted, are not sufficient to negate the advantages of using such a round, at least in my opinion.
Taking into account the fact that the case can be reloaded many times over and cases are relatively cheap as are the projs and primers, and there is a range of fast pistol powders that would make nice loads, then the cost is about the same as the premium smallbore ammo, perhaps even less - with the HUGE advantage that people can tailor make their own world class ammo, AND experiment to get the best possible accuracy out of their rifle without the need to travel to the UK to get access to a large number of .22LR batches for testing as is the case now for serious shooters.
It seems to me to be a very sensible sort of thing to do and your objections, whilst noted, are not sufficient to negate the advantages of using such a round, at least in my opinion.
Tom
It would here. We do have fullbore rifles, but they're all used by hunters. There are about seven people in the entire country shooting 300m 3P and the rest are all deer hunters. You can imagine the response of the average joe if asked whether he thought a ban would be a good idea given that we have a rising gun crime problem in Ireland at the moment.TomW wrote:Not sure everything you said is wholly true. I mentioned the cost of the elite rimfire ammo and that is the stuff I am talkiing about and I mentioned the need to rechamber rifles. However, the Hornet has very little recoil and is easily handled. As for using "real" bullets, well just about all countries in the world shoot bigbore target rifle anyway so I don't think changing to a low powered centrefire cartridge would raise any sort of stir.
("Hmmm. Should we ban the guns that killed Bambi's mom?" :rolleyes: )
Not here they can't. Reloading is illegal in Ireland because we've had a terrorism problem for over thirty years. Reloading means legal access to explosives and detonators (at least legally), and so it's banned. (So the fullbore guys have to buy new ammo after every shot). For the same reason, while you can get rifles from .22 up to .270, certain calibres (like .223) are banned because they're primarily military rounds and someone with a licence for a .223 could legally buy ammo and then illegally use it in an assault rifle - not the best thing given the terrorism problem we were dealing with when the law was written.Taking into account the fact that the case can be reloaded many times over
Well, no, not if you're willing to abandon a lot of shooters who are in the same boat as us. But if you want to do the whole reloading and experimenting thing, you can always shoot 300m 3P, it's an ISSF discipline that goes to the world championships and it's about the most technically demanding discipline the ISSF has. Meanwhile, those of us whose governments aren't as liberal with gun control laws as yours can just stick with smallbore rifles which are permitted in the vast majority of countries...It seems to me to be a very sensible sort of thing to do and your objections, whilst noted, are not sufficient to negate the advantages of using such a round, at least in my opinion.
How about the 17 Mach 2? I know under current rules it would still be illegal because (at least I think) .22 cal is required. I was at the NRA show in pittsburgh, PA on Fri. and several mfrs including Eley had their 17 Mk 2 ammo on display. Based on what I have read about the 17hmr (which uses the same projectile) this new round could well be much more accurate than the best 22lr ammo. It uses much less lead. Seems to me that I read that the 17 gr bullet only has about 9gr of lead. I think this one is going to be interesting. The really cool thing about this round is that nothing has to change except the barrel.
I don't presume to know what each country's shooting laws are and it is unfortunate that reloading is not permitted in Ireland. The Australian gun laws are none too liberal either and I suspect there is a competition on between the UK and us to see which can come up with the toughest, most restrictive laws.
Reloading is still permitted here (unless our new anti-terrorism laws are going to ban it). My aim in making the suggestion about the Hornet round was to try to find a way around the problem of trying to get world class .22 rimfire ammo for any country. I can understand that people in the UK who have ready access to Eley would not be too happy about this but here we are about as far from Eley as it is possible to get and getting the variety of ammo we need is a hugely difficult task, which other countries don't seem to have much sympathy for. It's different when the boot's on the other foot, isn't it?
Needless to say, my suggestion would never get up. Perhaps we need to be looking at .22 air rifles for 50m instead (same velocity so accuracy shouldn't be a problem) and it might shut up the anti gun mob as well.
Reloading is still permitted here (unless our new anti-terrorism laws are going to ban it). My aim in making the suggestion about the Hornet round was to try to find a way around the problem of trying to get world class .22 rimfire ammo for any country. I can understand that people in the UK who have ready access to Eley would not be too happy about this but here we are about as far from Eley as it is possible to get and getting the variety of ammo we need is a hugely difficult task, which other countries don't seem to have much sympathy for. It's different when the boot's on the other foot, isn't it?
Needless to say, my suggestion would never get up. Perhaps we need to be looking at .22 air rifles for 50m instead (same velocity so accuracy shouldn't be a problem) and it might shut up the anti gun mob as well.
Tom
Unfortunately, they vote. And there are more of them than there are of us. Which means that not taking their concerns into account isn't a viable policy unless, like in the US, you have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms (and that carries with it it's own problems).pdeal wrote:They are really just a bunch of busy bodies that want to tell their fellow citizens what to do.
.22 Ammo
Can't use any rifle round other than .22 rimfire on most indoor ranges where the vast majority of competitive junior shooting programs are held, particularly in the northern states.
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tim s
.22 centrefire
I appreciate the general idea of using a small centrefire round like the hornet, but it would add too much complication. There are a lot of .22" shooters who do not want to reload. Many of us, even here in the UK, don't even batch test, we just accept that "match" ammo will shoot better than we can. Having to rely on factory ammo would I fell put us at a disadvantage to those who do want to spend the time precisely reloading.
Tim S
Tim S
Re: Centrefire .22 for International Target Shooting
It's not a matter of simply rechambering existing rifles. Even if your rifle has an action long enough to handle the .22 Hornet (which most aren't unless they are based on the .22 Magnum) you still have to modify the bolt head for the much larger case and convert it from rimfire to center fire.TomW wrote:
Best of all it should be possible to simply rechamber your existiing .22 match rifle barrels for the round. Serious suggestion, people.
That's just not feasable. For most people you would have to replace the entire rifle. And because the rifle action is longer than the exisiting ones the current stocks couldn't even be used.
Even if you could rechamber the rifle you'd still run into problems with a lot of countries gun control laws because they are registered by caliber, changing barrels or calibers often requires re-registration.
You saw all the screaming recently when the ISSF wanted to change the rules on shooting pants. Just try and imagine what would happen if they made all current rifles obsolete!
It sounds to me like you just have an ammunition supply problem and need to work with the Sport Shooters Association in Australia to get better supplies imported.
For TWP
My suggestion really wasn't based on the difficulties we have here in getting decent match quality ammo. This problem will never change for us and it has nothing to do with organising things here better - but I won't get involved in that argument.
The real problem with the rimfire round, as I understand it, is the difficulty that the few match quality manufacturers have in achieving and maintaining a supply of quality ammo that will produce possible scores from users' rifles, on a consistent basis, without the need for exhaustive testing by shooters.
I have seen evidence that rimfire ammo produced some 20 years ago had far better grouping capacity than even the current crop of Eley Tenex Ultimate EPS and that even this ammo can be spotty in its performance depending on the batch. This shouldn't be so in this day and age (or maybe it should, judging by the way things are going), and my feeling was that a better way out of this mess was to have a reloadable cartridge that gives SHOOTERS the chance of producing match grade ammo by way of their own efforts.
I suppose, ideally, that a reloadable .22 LR round would be the perfect solution but I can't ever see that happening either, although the idea is alluring. The Hornet round was the smallest .22 round that I knew of that could be used effectively as a substitute (and I am aware of some of the other problems associated with the use of this round, although they are not all that complex).
I don't believe the situation with rimfire ammo will get much better as time goes on. When the EU goes ahead with its ban on the use of lead projectile in a few years time, this will force the manufactureres and shooters to re-examine the whole business. Remember, the UK is now part of the EU and Eley is in the UK, ergo...???
My suggestion really wasn't based on the difficulties we have here in getting decent match quality ammo. This problem will never change for us and it has nothing to do with organising things here better - but I won't get involved in that argument.
The real problem with the rimfire round, as I understand it, is the difficulty that the few match quality manufacturers have in achieving and maintaining a supply of quality ammo that will produce possible scores from users' rifles, on a consistent basis, without the need for exhaustive testing by shooters.
I have seen evidence that rimfire ammo produced some 20 years ago had far better grouping capacity than even the current crop of Eley Tenex Ultimate EPS and that even this ammo can be spotty in its performance depending on the batch. This shouldn't be so in this day and age (or maybe it should, judging by the way things are going), and my feeling was that a better way out of this mess was to have a reloadable cartridge that gives SHOOTERS the chance of producing match grade ammo by way of their own efforts.
I suppose, ideally, that a reloadable .22 LR round would be the perfect solution but I can't ever see that happening either, although the idea is alluring. The Hornet round was the smallest .22 round that I knew of that could be used effectively as a substitute (and I am aware of some of the other problems associated with the use of this round, although they are not all that complex).
I don't believe the situation with rimfire ammo will get much better as time goes on. When the EU goes ahead with its ban on the use of lead projectile in a few years time, this will force the manufactureres and shooters to re-examine the whole business. Remember, the UK is now part of the EU and Eley is in the UK, ergo...???
Tom
TomW,
From what I've heard from those that have been there (and as such note that it's a second-hand opinion at best), Eley's problems are more to do with management practises than manufacturing processes - as I understand it, quality control consists of visually checking every tenth or twentieth round off the line. And as any quality control expert can tell you, you can check 100% of the product and still not have 0% failure rates....
Plus, we don't currently understand why the barrel/ammunition system is so chaotic (in the sense that small changes in setup lead to large changes in outcome) on a rather fundamental level, and I'm not aware of any research into the problem. So we don't even know if the problem is with the barrel or the bullet!
As to the EU lead ban, this isn't something I'm worrying about. If ammunition isn't given an exemption, then NATO will be rather inconvienced, to say nothing of standing national armies and the millions of hunters and sport shooters. I wouldn't ignore it - but I'm not sweating bullets (sorry ;) ) over it...
From what I've heard from those that have been there (and as such note that it's a second-hand opinion at best), Eley's problems are more to do with management practises than manufacturing processes - as I understand it, quality control consists of visually checking every tenth or twentieth round off the line. And as any quality control expert can tell you, you can check 100% of the product and still not have 0% failure rates....
Plus, we don't currently understand why the barrel/ammunition system is so chaotic (in the sense that small changes in setup lead to large changes in outcome) on a rather fundamental level, and I'm not aware of any research into the problem. So we don't even know if the problem is with the barrel or the bullet!
As to the EU lead ban, this isn't something I'm worrying about. If ammunition isn't given an exemption, then NATO will be rather inconvienced, to say nothing of standing national armies and the millions of hunters and sport shooters. I wouldn't ignore it - but I'm not sweating bullets (sorry ;) ) over it...
Sparks
I take what you say on board and I agree that the barrel/bullet combination seems to be the real problem with rimfire ammo (God knows why).
I wouldn't be feeling too safe about lead projs by the way, simply because armies use them. Have a look at this little gem re a new bullet for the US Army:
"In a program it says has cost about $12 million so far, the Army in 1994 started researching ways to make a more environmentally friendly 5.56 mm bullet. It's used in the M-16 rifle, a weapon issued to every Army infantry soldier, and an estimated 200 million rounds are shot a year.
Researchers studied different combinations of metal to design a slug that would perform the same as the old one, have the same density, ballistic quality and so on, said Michael Dette of the Army Environmental Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
They settled on a tungsten composite slug and kept the old copper casing to produce a bullet Dette says actually turned out to be more accurate and causes less barrel erosion. Soldiers won't notice a difference, he said.
The Army, which produces ammunition for all the services, started limited use of the new version in 1999 and is producing 50 million rounds this year for practice at a new range in Alaska and an old contaminated one in Massachusetts.
Officials hope the switch to lead-free slugs will be complete in 2005. "
Just as an aside, I am a bit amused by the remark that "soldiers won't notice a difference". No, it will still kill them. Pity the concern for the environment doesn't extend to human life.
I take what you say on board and I agree that the barrel/bullet combination seems to be the real problem with rimfire ammo (God knows why).
I wouldn't be feeling too safe about lead projs by the way, simply because armies use them. Have a look at this little gem re a new bullet for the US Army:
"In a program it says has cost about $12 million so far, the Army in 1994 started researching ways to make a more environmentally friendly 5.56 mm bullet. It's used in the M-16 rifle, a weapon issued to every Army infantry soldier, and an estimated 200 million rounds are shot a year.
Researchers studied different combinations of metal to design a slug that would perform the same as the old one, have the same density, ballistic quality and so on, said Michael Dette of the Army Environmental Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
They settled on a tungsten composite slug and kept the old copper casing to produce a bullet Dette says actually turned out to be more accurate and causes less barrel erosion. Soldiers won't notice a difference, he said.
The Army, which produces ammunition for all the services, started limited use of the new version in 1999 and is producing 50 million rounds this year for practice at a new range in Alaska and an old contaminated one in Massachusetts.
Officials hope the switch to lead-free slugs will be complete in 2005. "
Just as an aside, I am a bit amused by the remark that "soldiers won't notice a difference". No, it will still kill them. Pity the concern for the environment doesn't extend to human life.
Tom
.17 Mach II
Folks,
From the perspective of both a competitive shooter and a propellant manufacturer, I'd say the Mach II has possibilities. There are a myriad of reasons, but suffice it to say that the round is showing some signs. I have yet to consider the political perspective on the whole thing, but I see one down side.
If I'm training in my back yard with a .17, the supersonic crack could piss off the neighbors, where my 5:00 AM shooting is not currently noticed with the standard .22.
Ken J
From the perspective of both a competitive shooter and a propellant manufacturer, I'd say the Mach II has possibilities. There are a myriad of reasons, but suffice it to say that the round is showing some signs. I have yet to consider the political perspective on the whole thing, but I see one down side.
If I'm training in my back yard with a .17, the supersonic crack could piss off the neighbors, where my 5:00 AM shooting is not currently noticed with the standard .22.
Ken J
Ken: I was thinking the same thing on the noise. I shoot in my yard too but civilization is coming my way. I figure eventually the centerfires will be a problem at home eventually but subsonic match ammo is hardly noticable more than 100yds away.
It will want to try a 17mk2 barrel on my 2013 though. If the thing proves to be more accurate than match 22lr ammo it would seem to me that at least a special class for local matches would be a good way to explore its potential.
It will want to try a 17mk2 barrel on my 2013 though. If the thing proves to be more accurate than match 22lr ammo it would seem to me that at least a special class for local matches would be a good way to explore its potential.
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Val
Even though .17 HM2 will most likely be superior to .22LR in most aspects, including accuracy (and even appearance - that little cute thing), it is unlikely that the conversion will ever take place. Instantaneous conversion to a different caliber is out of the question. With a gradual conversion, where both calibers would be allowed, the scoring on paper targets would be different for both calibers; for electronic targets, the scoring would be the same (since the device measures the distance from the center of the target to the center of the hit), but with scoring on paper there's a problem that nobody would want to bother with.
Thus, the sport of shooting is stuck with the obsolete .22LR for days to come.
The only problem with HM2, as I see it, is that since the round is jacketed, the centerfire cleaning procedures apply.
Thus, the sport of shooting is stuck with the obsolete .22LR for days to come.
The only problem with HM2, as I see it, is that since the round is jacketed, the centerfire cleaning procedures apply.
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Lee Sellers
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