Being that all 22 RF ammo producers have lost a bit of QC during or after production, in the past 30 yrs.
Has anyone toyed with the idea of pulling bullets removing the crimp from the case reloading powder and installing a new cast bullet.
One problem I wonder about is the crimp on shells including the big name ones Eley, Federal, etc.
I and others here have rim gauged, weighed and still have flyer's.... I have noted that some ammo in all lots have variances in the crimp, including a few that have the lead smeared over the case.. Just a though has anyone tried removing the crimp and if so was there any noticeable positive results?

I have never reloaded a rimfire cartridge. I was able to listened to several folks discussing the practice that had reloaded rimfire 22 lr. One of the advantages was to get away from the healed bullet. They had some success at the endeaver. But the club or organization quickly banned the practice for use in competition. 
The guys also ran into problems with the ammo manufactures when they tried to buy primed cases from them. The first attempts were with disassembled ammunition so they wanted skip that step and just buy the primed brass. I don't think that any one would sell them just the primed brass.
They were using breech seated cast bullets.
Ive also heard of some one pulling bullets and reloading the cases with black powder.
If you attempt to do it keep us updated on the progress. It has always been in the back of my mind as something to try.

Since I compete in the rimfire BR world more than fooling with SS guns I might offer a qualified opinion. As others have stated, match ammo in particular has probably never been better. Scores are higher across the board and there is consensus among high level competitors that consistancy has been extremely good. Eley, in particular, has made great strides. In their high end ammo EVERY bullet is visually instected with computer assistance before seating, as is powder charge. The EPS moniker refers to their proprietary Eley Priming System which now distributes compound quite evenly in the rim. You mentioned the disassembly-reassembly of ammo but it has also been shown that the crimp consistancy proves critical to performance and that, as well, has been greatly improved in recent years. While this next area has differing opinions, it has been my experience as well as others that when lots of the medium grade match ammo in particular that coincentricity can play a very important part in the equation. I do not measure each and every round I compete with but it has been my experience that certain lots of ammo exibit fairly pronounced trends as far as more runout or less and I use the Neilson guage as a useful tool when testing lots. If anybody has been thinking of one of these things go to their site and read the test data. I've an extra one I'll part with at a discount in interested. PM me.

Lapua has some new very expensive "25.00 a box" ammo for the benchrest crowd--should be available in a couple months.  Lapua says we can forget about lot #s.  At .50 a shot it should be pretty good.  leadball

SSTom,

  Yes...... Several(?) years ago a coupla of the guys from the Tulsa Ok. club did some experimenting as you're wanting to know about. My understanding was that using cast bullets was successful to a degree, but a lack of space in the LR case led to some work using the magnum cases.
  As someone suggested tho the practice was outlawed at the club and I haven't  heard anything more about it since. I thought about playing around with it to the point of actually getting a bunch of cases and bullets ready. That's where the idea sits right now.
  Trying to recall what a friend did along these lines but as I recall accuracy was ok but no better than what you can buy. I think he even tried some loads with BP.
  The big problem is, as also suggested here, of it being dangerous to pull existing bullets. The risk is probably low but all you'd need would be one mishap. The primed cases only idea would be great, but if you could talk a maker into supplying them you'd probably have to order something in the 100 thousand piece range, like they did when some shooters were looking Federal supplying a special run of cases. 100,000 was the minimum quoted.

I have been thinking about this for some time and have been able to pick up a few thousand primed cases that used to be sold by Remington . Have not got around to it. The project like many will be a long time in getting done. I do not know why they were available but were sold in boxes unprimed as well as in bulk lots of 500. I believe they are from the late 50's or early 60's. 
Cheers,
Fallingblock

Believe I would buy what is out there already loaded and practice, practice. Practice, instead of worrying about what you can load will help scores probably more than trying to build rimfire ammo. Just thoughts from an ole man. Jerry

singleshotom wrote on Feb 28^th, 2008 at 1:59am:


Tim !!!

I took it that the post started about common ammo... You are spot-on about the quality (and cost) regqrding the newer target ammo...  while all of my target rifles are .22's, I never paid 25.00 a box for anything..  

I need to sharpen other parts of my delivery before I get that hungry..

Ed....