Reloading Tales

I am excited to have the opportunity to share with you some great articles on the subject of reloading from a local expert, Jim Northum. Jim has been involved in reloadng for quite some time and I know you will enjoy his extensive knowledge, as well as hearing about some of his valuable learning experiences. Enjoy...

Tales of a Wildcatter

by Jim Northum

Back in the late 70s & early 80s I was shooting the 22 Hornet & 218 Bee quite a bit. I had several of these little rifles which I really liked to shoot – low recoil & muzzle blast and cheap to reload due to tiny powder charges and lower cost bullets.

However there was no glaring problem. Accuracy was nothing to write home about, unless one was complaining. Groups ran around 1 ½ to 2 inches at 100 yards which was not exactly exciting. I ran the so called “fast Hornet powders & round nose bullets” to no avail. I bought an expensive rifle (manufacturer will remain unnamed) and had 2 custom jobs built. Just about the same accuracy from the cheap and expensive. Needless to say this was getting to be not much fun.

I found a gunsmith in California who would modify the Remington 700 action to use a rimmed cartridge, single shot if course. I thought this is it, excellent trigger, any number of quality barrels, one piece stock and easy scope mounting. As an afterthought he mentioned if the action was modified for the rimmed case, it couldn’t be un-modified to use rimless cases. The idea died with that statement, I didn’t want to ruin a good action for something that might not work. Back to the drawing boards.

Since I couldn’t modify the action, why not modify the case? I took some fine grained ball powder and established the weight of a full 22 Hornet case. Then I cut a 222 case at the shoulder, filed the neck & shoulder piece square and dumped the Hornet case full of powder into it. By trial and error, I shortened the case until it held just about the same amount of powder as the Hornet. Basically ½ inch of case was removed while the neck and shoulder angle remained factory stock.

Prints for a reamer were drawn up and sent to the reamer grinder, a Shilen standard grade barrel was ordered, a Remington 600 barreled action dug out of storage and the whole mess dropped at the gunsmith. While the smith was doing his thing, I was busy making cases, quite an operation itself. Making a hundred cases was the work of several nights at the loading bench. Case capacity was about half way between the Hornet and Bee, right where I wanted it. After the required wait, I had my little wildcat named Shorty. With great anticipation I headed to the range loaded with Hornet powders and bullets.

Sad to say, it shot just about like any other Hornet or Bee, not too good. I fooled with it for several months with less than stellar results until I tried a powder much too “slow” and a bullet much too “heavy” for such a small case. As I upped the charge, groups got smaller and smaller. At 13.2 grains the little fellow would group around 3/8 inch at 100 yards. I shot several ¼ inch groups and had 4 shots into 1/8 inch. Do I waste the 5th into the back stop or try it? The fifth shot opened the group to about 3/8 inch. The right powder and good bullets were the keys to success.

I shot that little rifle over 2500 times over a several year period until the action was rebarrelled as a 222 which will shoot pretty consistent ¼ inch groups, or would when I was shooting a lot. I still have the reamer and toy with having another Shorty built, but the hassle of case forming is not as much fun now as it was back in the 80s. Having an accurate CZ model 527 22 Hornet takes some of the luster off the project as well.

I’m glad I went the wildcat route – once. Don’t think I will try it again.