I took my .25 Stevens #2 Remington sporting rifle to the range today to try out my shop made rimfire and centerfire cartridges. Check out my video of the fun.



(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Seems like a great little round, and a very gun. 

Mike

At the risk of sounding stupid, what is the 25 Stevens center fire round?  I’m not familiar with that one.  Is brass available?  Has it been loaded commercially any time in the last few decades?  I would have thought with all the nice 25 rimfire rifles out there and as easy as some of them are to convert to center fire, it would be a popular round in our game.  OTOH, making 25 RF cases and using 22 acorn blanks for “primers” is a strategy that is well known to me, but fairly labor intensive in its initial stages.  Thanks for an informative post!
Froggie

This morning, before a 2.5 hour drive for our family Thanksgiving gathering, I started converting a few more .25 Stevens cases from centerfire to rimfire. The primer pocket was drilled out with a #2 bit. Then reamed with a .224" chucking reamer. Next was drilling it for the recess for the .22 acorn blank rim. Tomorrow I'll mill the relief slot to allow the firing pin to crush the acorn's rim.

OK, not to be argumentative but I need to understand.  The first 25 center fire target cartridge was based on an also obscure 32 cartridge that hasn’t been made for over a century.  It was larger in base and rim diameter than the 22 Hornet, and although there is a 25 Hornet wildcat, it’s not the same.  The long version of the 25 rim fire was different from either.  This cartridge, first developed by J Francis Rabbeth, was commercialized as the 25 Stevens, 25-20 single shot and a couple of others. I even have a high wall stamped 25-20 WCF, probably made before the actual 25 WCF was developed. 

With all of that madness that went on, now I’m trying to figure out whether you have an original barrel that was chambered in 25 Hornet then a rim fire version added later.  The more I have researched this, the more confused I get!

Froggie

would you describe the mods for the centerfire?  thanks  art

Since I don’t have a lathe, I had RMC turn 20 Stevens .25-10 centerfire cases a few years ago.

I went back to the range today with 34 reloadable .25 Stevens cartridges. At this point I'm still working to get the cases fine tuned. Happy to say all shot well. Depite a couple flyers  I think 7.0gr of Reloader 7 has the most potential.