22lr. why no steel casings?

T

taurus4life

New member
why is it no one makes 22lr in steel cases? at least none that i know of. it would already make a cheap round even more economical to shoot, also since you cant reload .22 it seems like a waste of brass.
 
The rimfire priming compound is in the rim. Ignition is caused by the hammer fall/firing pin rapidly compressing the two rim walls together to set off the compound which then ignites the main powder charge.

Brass is soft enough to deform those rim walls on impact, steel isn't.
Denis
 
Plus steel will not expand enough to seal the chamber when the powder fires and starts building pressure. If you hit it with enough pressure you might get it to form a tight seal against the chamber walls but the case needs to shrink back down a little or it will be very difficult to extract. It would also be quite difficult to form steel into a rimfire case compared to a soft malleable metal like brass or copper. Think of the cartridge case as a "gasket". It doesn't contain the pressure, the chamber walls and breechface do that. The case just keeps it from allowing pressure to escape and flow back down the sides and out the rear of the chamber instead of going down the bore. Any reloader will tell you that a very light powder load will not seal the chamber and you will see where the gas flowed back down the side of the case. It's called blow by. I believe that with a steel case you would get a LOT of blowby.
 
Do a bit more research guys.....steel-cased .22LR ammo has been made and used successfully for years in Russia, and has been made in smaller quantities in Germany and the US.
 
My friend and I shot some steel case 22lr out of a 10/22. I think it was some Russian stuff. It had a picture of a turkey on the box. It worked alright. I think we had 2 duds in a pack of 50.
 
Around 20 years ago, I bought several bricks of steel cased 22LR. I paid half for the Russian stuff that I would have for domestic brass.

We fired this stuff thru at least 10 different 22 rifles and handguns at the time. In some of the guns tested, we had a very poor reliability and in some 100% reliability. On the cases that did not fire, we noticed light firing pin strikes. Steel cased ammo was 100% reliable in one 10-22 and around 60% reliable in another 10-22. We shot the ones that did not fire thru a Ruger Single 6 and a SW K-22 and they all fired. We noticed poor reliability with a SW 41 and 100% reliability with a Ruger Std auto.
What it all boiled down to was the power of the firing pin strike on the steel case. The guns with strong firing mechanizms or springs were most reliable. As far as accuracy, the steel ammo was similar to high velocity domestic stuff.
 
It exists. I have most of a brick of some Russian Standard velocity stuff that was given to me, years ago. IIRC, the label says "Junior." I haven't been able to use it without stuck cases, lots of stuck cases. If I can't get it to extract from a bolt action rifle consistently, forget it.
 
It's not like it's any kind of hard steel, just a soft alloy. Remington made a little of it during WWII. You know they'd be making it now if they could save a buck here and there.

The older Russian stuff used to come covered with oil, as a rust preventative I suppose. What a mess.
 
also since you cant reload .22 it seems like a waste of brass
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I know .22lr brass isn't reloaded, but can't it be recycled? As in melted down and re-used in some way?

Does anyone know if this occurs?

Personally, 3 or 4 cents a round is plenty cheap for me but it is an interesting question.
 
Local metal recycler pays the same for cartridge brass regardless of if it is 22 or centerfire, about $1.20 per pound.
 
In that case, I stand corrected.
Never heard of it before.
Denis
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Corrected only in that it is made. Your reasoning is also correct in that it probably shouldn't be made and the problems mentioned above with it should be expected.
 
Because .22 is cheap enough already without trying to run crap ammo through guns. I have no issue with steel cased centerfire stuff, but constant failures to fire with steel cased .22 ammo turned most folks off when it was available. Dealers aren't going to stock ammo just to take up shelf space and get complaints about.
 
steel cased 22LRs do exist and are prevalent in Russia, Germany and a couple other eastern bloc countries.

Steel doesnt seal gas as well as brass which is true, but pretty much all Russian and German military centrefire ammo (as well as a lot of others) is steel cased and works fine for a once fire.

Also 22LR cases are never brass as far as I'm aware, they're Zinc and copper, brass costs alot.
 
I sometimes pick up 22lr brass at the range if nobody else is there. Don't want to get in their way.I do it to help(a little bit) with clean up. It doesn't make much difference. The local metal recycler buys it. Don't make much, its just my contribution to the environmental effort. I don't hug trees.
 
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