Myth busting 22LR "No dud/Why dud" thread

[Remington1911]

It is interesting that, given we have been using rimfire ammo for around a century and a half that there have been so few variations in the number of strikers.

What that suggests--to me--is that at least somebody tried four or five or three strikers, and there was a good reason that never caught on. And, that will have spanned both the full range of variability in rim priming compounds, and the complexity of machining multiple pins.

Reliability of ammo is a funny thing. If you are only killing cans for fun, less-reliable ammo is a mere annoyance. If you were poor enough to buy ammo one round at a time, and each shot was the measure of eating or not eating that day, then it gets a bit more crucial.

I'm left with more questions than answers--an all too common bugabear of day-to-day life.

Personally I think it is a cost issue, and in a very distant second a what is the worst that would happen.

To start with the second, what is the worst that could happen, you miss a squirrel? Oh the horror.

To think back on the early rimfire cartridges like the original rimfire henry, I am 99% sure it had two. And that would swing into the what is the worst that could happen.....well you dead. Even back then to the company that made it, big deal, but if it is known you are not reliable....oh that could be bad.....dead company. Don't want that to happen, and that first henry was not set in stone yet, it could very easy die just like all the others before. I can't remember about the other rimfires of the "old days", but I am really sure the henry had two.

Now for a fun fact that I never knew, buddy had a "real" rim fire henry, and he shoots the thing.....well how is that you ask, is he using ammo from 1860? Nope there is a company that makes (made?) brass where there is a primer not in the middle of the case but down on the edge. Seemed to work just OK. When you load the tube you have to put the cartridge in so the primer is lined up with one of the pins...it does work if everything is lined up.

Thinking back I should have taken up his offer to shoot it, but I was a bit afraid to shoot something that old. Really you could shoot it, but it was basically what I would call a single shot.

 

[FL-NC]

I have tried multiple brand s of bulk 22 ammo of varying ages (all stored in original containers in airtight boxes) through multiple guns and had plenty of FTF. I have even tried to re-fire these rounds, sometimes in different guns, and they still went click. I blame QC/missing components. I have even found a few rounds when reloading mags that the bullet was missing (and obviously the powder too). But the Aquilla subsonics I bought in a brick in about 2012- and stored in a ammo can in a non temp control shed- have worked fine so far (about 44 rounds expended to date).