Anyone else seen this 22lr reloading system?

[mtnboomer]

There have been "kits" to reload rimfire rounds almost as long as rimfire cartridges have been around. This in nothing new. But likely you've never seen one. "Why?" you ask? Because they are slightly better than useless - and dangerous. The priming compound has to be inside the rim of the cartridge (thus the term "rimfire") and there is no real good way to do this outside of a manufacturing facility. Don't waste your time or money.

 

[Blitzfike]

Back in the early '70s a friend and I played around with trying to reload 22 rimfire. We used the capgun caps for the priming compound, used acetone to make a slurry of it, dropped it into the cleaned 22 rimfire case and had a wooden dowel sanded down to a friction fit into the case mouth. We then used a drill to spin the case making the priming compound flow into the rim. Drying the cases before reloading was critical. We tried 22 cal pellets, which blew out the middle of the head, then some home swaged bullets, swaging the heel as a second swaging step. We used bullseye powder and never could get consistent results. Some went bang, some fizzled, some were hangfires and all made a mess in the bore.It was an interesting experiment, and with the mold available now and a GOOD priming compound, it would probably be doable, but getting the capgun flash powder to form a slurry and then dry properly would still be an issue. We even crushed primers and used the lead staphinate compound which worked best, but boy was that tricky. Have to do them wet and very slowly. You also have to do very small quantities at a time of either to avoid blowing yourself to kingdom come. I still have both eyes and all my fingers so I figure that at some point in the future I am going to have to thank a long line of guardian angels for their protection. The guys in the ammo factories have all the safeguards in place to dampen runaway chemical reactions before they get to the critical stage, fooling with priming compounds is not in my future as I have hopefully grown somewhat wiser with age.