AusVarmint

I sold my CZ 17HMR to a mate up here, and part of the deal included a brick of Federal Premium 17gn ammo. Being an inquisitive little fella, he checked all the cartridges in the brick, the whole 450 of them, I had shot off one box out of the brick. He discovered there were around 40 of the cases split in the neck, so he pulled the projectiles and seeing I have a 17 centrefire, he gave them to me. I plan on trying them out one of these days, I reckon the 17/222 should be able to poke them out at something like the speed of light.

A couple of questions.......

1. Has anyone had a go at any of these in a centre fire, and if so, did they hold together at something like 4200 or more speed ?

2. What was the accuracy like ?

3. Now the real curly one, considering the price of 17 calibre projectiles, and the limited amount of lighter ones around, would it be false economy to buy a couple of 500 bricks of the same ammo, pull the projectiles, and then chuck away the rest and use them ?

I haven't checked the price of 17HMR ammo lately, but the brick I got for use two or three years ago cost me 150.00. Figuring 500 projectiles for 150.00 works out at 30c for one, not too bad in this time and age.

I am not deluded........................am I ??

if the necks aren't split aren't the pills crimped in, how you gonna get them out

and the 3gns lighter than a 20 gn vmax pill is gonna achieve what again, I think I missed it, was it twice the velocity or something significant to warrant the hassle of destructing the rounds to get the pills?

Yeah they are crimped in, but that isn't impossible to overcome with a good pair of pliers.

seriously, I reckon they could be removed with a little bit of experimentation.

3 grains lighter, but a hell of a lot easier to find, and probably cheaper as well, though am not too sure on that, I would do some home work first. As for performance, was thinking they will blow up nicely inside Brer Fox's head and not leave any gaping holes on exit, as they wont be doing any exiting.

I read somewhere recently a Mach IV was launching the 17 grainer at 4570 FPS

How fast do you think you would need to push them to blow them up?
Can you please trial this Camel?

DSD wrote:How fast do you think you would need to push them to blow them up?
Can you please trial this Camel?

Dave, I don't know if they will hold together at top speed, but I intend to find out just how far I can go, I don't have a crony, so if I can get the raw data, there maybe someone on here who could do a pretty close calculation for me using Quick Load or some other ballistic calculator.

My main objective is good accuracy, with out which speed is no good. Half inch or there abouts with these projectiles will do me nicely. I think that with them going even as slow as 35 to 3600 FPs, they are gunna make some good cavities in fox and cat heads, Ill even sacrifice one of my few remaining rabbits to see how they work on them.

I can tell you that 12gn 14 cal projies wont hold together at 4400fps get about 30mtrs out of the barrel and blow up into a puff of dust.
Ol 55

I was running a 17 ppc 20 odd years ago with 25 gr hornady at 4400 + pps went well on foxes tried 19 grn but I couldn't get them to stabilise don't rember barrel twist

Camel wrote: I am not deluded........................am I ??

Maybe........................................

Sorry, but every time I read this I think "gee, Camel you have too much spare time on your hands"

I shot a few foxes in my youth with the 25g HP's thru a 17Rem and I can not recall ever getting an exit wound. Regardless of range or placement nothing ever came out, yet in more recent times my young fella has shot a couple with it and had large gaping exit wounds so they must have changed those pills a bit over the years or foxes have changed

Cheers,
Waldo

Camel - I've been experimenting with Lehigh Defence projectiles in 18 grains. If the attachment "attaches" you will note from target 2 that I got a half decent group at 75 yards apart from No 4 which took my ragged 1/4 inch group out to nearly 3/4 " & I now have to start again. That was using BM2 & 22.8 grains , Quick Load ( which I got a member on another forum to help me with ) gave a projected 4300 FPS . my Magnespeed ?? gave me around the 4300 FPS before it fooked up . It does seem to have problems from time to time with the 17teens & sensitivity !!??. BUT there was no problem in arriving at the target with speeds above 4300 FPS so I don't think you should have any problem with your 17 grainers.
Hope this helps , which is probably more than my "attachment" will

Ross, unfortunately at the moment I do have too much free time, as to the other, you could just be right.

Re projectiles changing over the years, was discussing this with the old fella above, Hornady have definitely changed their projectiles over the years, I have a couple of boxes of 25gners sitting on the loading bench, they both have the same stock number, the only difference on the box is the oldest ones are called Spire Point and the new ones have dropped the name, they are just HP now. Looking at the hollow point, there is definitely a difference there. Cant remember if the ones I sold you last year were the older style box or the new, or even if they were a mix, might pay to check.
On Remington 25 gn projectiles, remember when they were sold in the little green/orange plastic flip top boxes by the 100, they were the good ones, those that came in the plastic bags, I believe were imported as bulk loose projectiles by one of the bigger distributers here, then they were re-packed into plastic bags of 100 and were sold pretty cheaply compared to the boxed ones. I suspect they may have been factory seconds or run out lots sold in bulk. They didn't shoot as consistently as the boxed 100 lots. It was not unusual to get a couple of odd looking projectiles in the occasional bag. This is just a theory of mine and a couple of others I have spoken to about it.

Barry, thanks for that mate, I think maybe a slightly faster burning powder might give a boost to speeds. I am going to give them a go with 2207, 2219 on the faster side, I am using BM2 in my rifle with the 22gn KK projectiles, I don't know what speed they are going, as when I tried them over Mick 7.62's magnetospeed, they didn't show up as having been detected, maybe they are going too fast for it to pick them up or his crony is like its owner, and just a little slow.

I may even give the 22KKs and the 17gners a go with some 2208, Im pretty sure that 4064 was one of the go to powders in the 17 way back when, and 2208 is reasonably close to it in burn rate.

4064 was probably as good as , but in my somewhat ageing memory 4320 reigned supremo until it became almost impossible to acquire. Then again , that was before the ADI's came along.
I like tis thread Camel - learning a bit more every post.

Camel wrote:Ross, unfortunately at the moment I do have too much free time,

.

Use it wisely and have some fun because when you ain't got it it's damn hard to find

A bit more on the Remington 25 (supposedly) grain projectiles, I have been having a bit of a discussion with Barry B and he was telling me that it was true that one of the distributors did bring in bulk loose projectiles and then bag them up into different sized batches. Barry tells me that the weights were all over the place, from low 24.0 grain to just over 25gns. Well today I pulled out a box of 17 projectiles that contained a mix match, there was 13 Remington 25gners in it, so I checked the length of them, lengths went from .501 to .509 over all, a fair bit of difference, the weights went from 24.1 (1) to bang on 25,0 gns (2), most were around 24.7, again not great differences as it stands, but worked out as a percentage of the whole weight, it is pretty significant. Looks like Barry was right about the factory seconds coming into the country.

The moral of this little story, I don't think I will be using any of Mr Remington's 17 calibre projectiles in the future, even if they can be found in good quantities and at good price.

Now back to the 17gn BT bullets I was given that were pulled from the Federal HMR ammo, I weighed 10 out of the 50 that I have, they all weighed spot on at 17gn, except one and that was 17 and a poofteenth, couldn't get a more accurate reading as I was using my RCBS 505 scales and they only go up in 10ths of a grain in the smallest increments, 17.1 was too much and 17 just wasn't quite enough, to get the marks to line up.

Although these samples are only very small, I think they give a fair indication as to why its a good idea to get premium bullets if you want best accuracy.