Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires modifying 22 rimfire ammo meplat

With the rarity of my favorite 22 rimfire ammo for many years now, I've found it useful to modify some of the available ammo.

The old man rarely spoke of Okinawa and I never asked. Sometimes things slipped out and I paid attention. He once told me that one of the first things he noticed when he landed was that the guys already there were busily "dumb-dumbing" their ammo. He had been told that was wrong, but no one gave a damn. They were there to kill the dirty, subhuman,!@#$%^&*()_ Japs.

I used that info to dumb-dumb my 22 ammo for hunting as a pre-teen. The old man delighted in the fact his kids used a lot of ammo. He always made sure we had plenty, but he bought the cheapest crap he could find. That usually meant round-nosed shorts of some type. We were expected to shoot squill and bunny, etc in the head. Ruined meat, ya know. I learned that rather than have some of my squill, not quite shot perfectly would crawl away to a hole somewhere atop the high red-oak canopy I hunted in, it was practical to dumb-dumb my round-nose shorts. I usually just used a rock or file to remove some the bullet nose to create a flat tip. It didn't seem to make any difference to aim-point or accuracy, using a single shot, open-sighted rifle. But they knocked the stuff outta the squill.

With low velocity ammo, a flat nose really helps, as we know. Left are the CCI Quiet modified with a Hammond tool. These are like real pretty and perfect. They work great. Measuring ten unmodified cartridges, showed an average weight of 49.7 grains and a variance of 0.4 grains. After modification, the average weight was 48.6 grains with a variance of 0.3 grains. The unmodified cartridge/bullet averaged about 1.1 grains heavier than the modified bullet. Average OAL of the cartridge with the unmodified bullets was 0.985 inches vs 0.935 inches for the flattened bullet, only a 0.05 inch difference. The meplat of the modified bullets was 0.13 inches. That compares with, for example, the CCI SGB (which I love) meplat of 0.12 inches.

On the right is the CCI short CB. Holding the cartridge in my left hand, with my right I simply took two strokes with a file to obtain the results shown. Not even close to perfect, they are what I used to do when I was a kid, and they work great. Unmodified cartridge length was 0.685 inches vs 0.655 inches for the filed bullet. The round-nose weighed 38.525 grains vs 38.1 grains for the flat-nose. The flattened bullet was 0.03 inches shorter and 0.43 grains lighter than the unmodified bullet. The meplat of the flat nose was 0.155 inches.

I have had problems with feeding the modified cartridges in a few action types.

Whether you use a Hammond tool or hit it with a file or even a rock (like I used to do), try putting those round-nose 22 cartridges to work, and lose less game.

Use to have one of those tools, but some how miss placed it..