mossyshooter
Member
Reciently I sold my savage mk2 bv to make room for a 10-22 build in the near future. That left a bit of a gap in my gun locker. I have a bit of a wildlife problem at my work consisting of woodchucks in the summer time and major piggeon problem in the winter. Usually we just use a 22lr but since that gun is now gone, I got to thinking about making some low power 223 rounds. I wanted a bullet that would reliably expand. Turns out finding a jacketed bullet that will expand and or fragment at 22lr speeds was a bit of a task. I opted for a 36 grain barnes varmint grenade bullet for a couple of reasons. First of all if any bullet is going to fragment at 22lr speeds, this would surely be a top contender. Second was in the event that the bullet doesn't fragment, it will yaw and tumble severely. Look at the cross section of the varmint grenade bullet and you will see that the entire front of the bullet is hollow and all the weight is in the rear. For quite some time now, my favorite load for my 22lr was the aguila 60 grain sss round. By some miracle of god, it stabilied out of my standard 1-16 twist barrel but only just. It was infact so borderline that it would keyhole from a clean bore but once i got a couple hundred rounds through it, they were fantastic. Small game shot with them all had very nasty 1 inch wide exit wounds and the insides liiked like someone removed a 1/4 inch thick by 1 inch wide section of the animal for the length of the wound channel. Needless to say, they were very effective. For powder, I started with 4 grains of TrailBoss to simulate downrange ballistics. Turned out to be a fantastic combination in my 1-9 twist savage edge. Accuracy was cloverleafs at 50 yards. I'm not sure of the velocity because I don't have a chronograph but I think im right around 1100 fps because I am bracketing the sound barrier. Most rounds are subsonic but sometimes I get one that cracks. That was perfectly fine with me because these are loaded a little light to simulate downrange performance. Future loads will be loaded to about 1250 fps. I made a 4x6x8 inch block of 10% ballistics gel for testing figuring that that would be larger than the vitals on any varmint I wood shoot. I set up a box of newspapers behind the gel in the event the bullet completely penetrated the block which I expected it to do. I stood back 10 feet and fired.
The bullet entered and continued point first, leaving a wound channel similar to a round nose 22lr until 3.25 inches where it turned sideways. It continued sideways until approximately 5.5 inches depth where it began to break apart shedding jacket and core fragments along the way. At 6 inches, the bullet righted itself and continued point first until 6.5 inches where the remainder of the bullet fragmented. The bullet came to rest in 4 major fragments. The compressed powder core was in 2 pieces and the nose and rear jacket made up the other 2. The rear jacked appeared to exit the side of the block when the bullet tumbled at the 6 inch mark but with no velocity left as the rear jacket fragment was sitting on the bench and didn't even leave a mark on the bullet arresting box. The nose was lodged in the very edge of the 8 inch block. The 2 core pieces exited the rear of the block but again with no velocity and were again found sitting on the bench the gel block was sitting on. Total recovered fragment weight was 35.3 grains. Maximum permanent cavity diameter was 1.75 inches and occured between 3.25 and 5.5 inches depth due to the extreme bullet yaw. Maximum travel of fragments off of the main wound channed was approximately 1.25 inches. I added a little bit of pink dye so the wound channel would be more visible to the camera. It still didn't show up on camera well. I have to say the most difficult part of this was trying to get a good picture. Bullet path was from left to right.
What does this translate in real world ballistics? Well I think it translates into a very usefull and versitile load. On small game like rabbits and squirrels it would just leave a 22 caliber hole. A great think for shooting for the pot. On larger vermin like those voracious woodchucks. It would cause a lot more damage than a standard 22lr round with wicked wide wound channels at vitals depth and additional damage due to bullet fragments. Only down side is that it's still quite a bit louder than a 22lr and that was one of the goals of this project. Report is about like a 17hmr or a 22 mag without the sonic crack but still far quieter than even a 22 hornet. Overall I would have to say this was a very successful little r&d project.
The bullet entered and continued point first, leaving a wound channel similar to a round nose 22lr until 3.25 inches where it turned sideways. It continued sideways until approximately 5.5 inches depth where it began to break apart shedding jacket and core fragments along the way. At 6 inches, the bullet righted itself and continued point first until 6.5 inches where the remainder of the bullet fragmented. The bullet came to rest in 4 major fragments. The compressed powder core was in 2 pieces and the nose and rear jacket made up the other 2. The rear jacked appeared to exit the side of the block when the bullet tumbled at the 6 inch mark but with no velocity left as the rear jacket fragment was sitting on the bench and didn't even leave a mark on the bullet arresting box. The nose was lodged in the very edge of the 8 inch block. The 2 core pieces exited the rear of the block but again with no velocity and were again found sitting on the bench the gel block was sitting on. Total recovered fragment weight was 35.3 grains. Maximum permanent cavity diameter was 1.75 inches and occured between 3.25 and 5.5 inches depth due to the extreme bullet yaw. Maximum travel of fragments off of the main wound channed was approximately 1.25 inches. I added a little bit of pink dye so the wound channel would be more visible to the camera. It still didn't show up on camera well. I have to say the most difficult part of this was trying to get a good picture. Bullet path was from left to right.
What does this translate in real world ballistics? Well I think it translates into a very usefull and versitile load. On small game like rabbits and squirrels it would just leave a 22 caliber hole. A great think for shooting for the pot. On larger vermin like those voracious woodchucks. It would cause a lot more damage than a standard 22lr round with wicked wide wound channels at vitals depth and additional damage due to bullet fragments. Only down side is that it's still quite a bit louder than a 22lr and that was one of the goals of this project. Report is about like a 17hmr or a 22 mag without the sonic crack but still far quieter than even a 22 hornet. Overall I would have to say this was a very successful little r&d project.
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