New potential for 22-250?

T

TrueBlue711

New member
I'm not a reloader, so this may be a dumb idea. I don't know. With the introduction of the 224 Valkyrie, it made me think: what if somebody took that long skinny 90 grain bullet from the 224 Valkyrie and put it in the 22-250 case? Is that even possible? The bullet diameter is the same to the best of my knowledge. I would think you would just need to seat it deeper in the case to keep the over length of the cartridge the same. And I don't think the 22-250 has bullet grains higher than 70 grains. The thought of a 90 grain bullet with a BC of .563 in a 22-250 makes me wonder about the possibilities.
 
You could fit it, though you would likely have to seat it very deeply to avoid jamming it into the throat of the barrel. Then you would want your targets to all be no more than about 20 yards away, as the 22-250's 14" twist would be unable to spin a bullet that long at a fast enough rate to stabilize it. By 100 yards they will be tumbling and the groups will be shotgun patterns. Like any long .224 bullet, it needs a fast rifling twist. The SAAMI standard for the 224 Valkyrie shows a 7" twist.

Incidentally, Sierra and other match bullet makers have had 90 grain .224 bullets for decades, so this has been an experiment that has been possible to do for a long time. Some folks shoot them in the .223 in the AR, single-loaded, but the with fast twist barrels.
 
And the Valkyrie throat is about 0.017" longer for the longer bullets, so you'd probably need to get a special 22-250 reamer made with that longer throat.
 
Running various 90 gr bullets through QuickLoad with .22-250 and COAL reasonable for the application, it seems that 3,000 fps is about the most a person should hope to get.

At 3,000 fps, every stability calculator I plugged the numbers into spit out (or otherwise lead to the conclusion) that a 1:8" twist would be the minimum for a stable bullet. 1:7" would be better. 1:6.5" would be ideal.

Ironically enough... The 90 gr Valkyrie load is considered only 'marginally' stable by most calculators, with a 2,700 fps muzzle velocity and the 1:7" twist. I think some compromise was made, in order to be able to market the cartridge for both long range and varmint use, while using commonly available barrel blanks.
 
Essentially you would need a custom barrel.
Faster twist of the rifling and ream a longer throat so the bullet seats out of the casing further.
 
"it seems that 3,000 fps is about the most a person should hope to get."

Did those calculations include the use of a 1-7 or 1-6.5 twist?
 
My Remington 700 .22-250 has a 1:14 twist but my newer Savage .22-250 has a 1:12 twist.
Neither of them have a twist fast enough to come close to stabilizing a 90 grain bullet.

The 1:14 shoots 52 grain Berger Match #22408 bullets very accurately but the Berger stabilization calculator says they are marginally stable.
According to the Berger stabilization calculator, the 1:12 twist barrel is stable with 53 grain bullets and might be marginally stable with 55 grain bullets.
It shoots the 52 grain Berger bullets very accurately also.
Both also shoot the 52 grain Sierra SMKs #1410 and the 53 grain Sierra SMK flat base # 1400 very accurately.
 
It turns out that when you calculate the angular energy put into spinning a bullet, it is so much less than the energy of forward motion that it amounts to the eqivalent of fewer feet per second than normal shot-to-shot velocity variation, so it is usually ignored.

I've noticed before the stability estimators have some tendency to underestimate stability factors for the smallest calibers. I don't know why for certain, but suspect hollow points in a small bullet often have disproportionally long nose cavities so their actual centers of mass are further from the nose than the calculation is expecting.
 
"it seems that 3,000 fps is about the most a person should hope to get."

Did those calculations include the use of a 1-7 or 1-6.5 twist?
Click to expand...
Negative.
QL does not factory in energy losses (or changes in pressure), due to rate of twist.
 
My 28" 6.5 twist .223 90 gr will do 2700 fps but at an overload vs Hodgdon. It will bend or break Sierra bullets in flight, I use JLK or Berger.
Good shooter, I am sure the Valkyrie or a heavy bullet .22-250 would do more.

Question is will people keep buying the heavy bullets or will they go velocity crazy and waste the fast twist? Also, how fast can you go with a varmint bullet in the fast twist? I can break up 75 gr Amax at full speed.
 
I looked into the Valkyrie and while on paper it seems to be a good cartridge I can see no use for it on a bolt gun. It's main intent and purpose was to give the AR15 platform a viable 1000+ yard cartridge. It does that well by the early reports. On the bolt gun side there several other cartridges that are available in the 6mm and 6.5 mm caliber that are better choices. I may rebarrel one of my AR's for the .224 later on but I am in no hurry to do so
 
Savage offers a rifle in 22-250 with a 1/9 twist however I don't believe the twist to be fast enough for the heavy weight bullets being discussed. As already stated 1/7 twist would be minimun.
 
We're seeing more twist selection these days. The 14" 22-250 twist is what SAAMI lists for the standard pressure and velocity test barrel, so it is the defacto standard, but the AR's and .308 and others have had a number of twist rates available for some time and maybe it's a growing trend.
 
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