Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Experiences with fouling and the 17 calibers?

VG is smoking bat schit again!

To the OP,

I am on my third .17 Remington. All factory tubes and they have all shot lights out. No fouling problems at all. And I do have a tendency to stand on them as well.

I love .17's.

If you're going to do the Ackley Hornet version I'd wait until the commercial version is out. I would hate to have a bastard chamber and dies with the commercial version right around the corner.

Travis

Thanks


Yea, I just missed a good priced 17 Fireball gun and probably need to start looking for a 17 fireball shooter.


Glad to see all the bad press was long ago and not valid.

Thanks

Allen

Ya, that bad press was long ago and not valid at all. I've been shooting factory barrel 17's since they first came out and I've never had any issues with mine. I'm sure a few folks did, just as a few have issues with other calibers.
The 17 Rem is by far my favorite caliber. I'm having my very first custom barreled 17 built on a Kimber action and I sure can't wait to get it back.
17's, Wipe Out, and Lock Ease were made for each other.

I purchased a used Rem 700BDL in .17 Rem many years ago. There was a lot of bad press about them concerning fouling so I took it home and spent 2 wks cleaning the barrel. The thing shot terrible. At 50 yds most of the bullets missed the target completely. Some went through broad side (key hole). Some of the holes had a little gray comet tail. I found out there was a "loose" spot several inches forward of the throat. I had it rebarreled only to have Remington recall my serial number for barrel replacement. The new barrel shot very well with no fouling problems. I was told that early barrels were not polished properly back then. The up shot is clean frequently and you'll have lots of fun blowing the head off woodchucks or whatever.

I have owned a Tikka LSA55 in 17rem since 1981 and used to shoot fox's to supliment my income. In 1983 I had a Shillen Stainless barell fitted due to the original one wearing out (I think). In 1985 the fox skin market went south and this rifle was then only used occaisionally (less than 10 shots a year) until 2009 when I started to do some ferral animal control work.

This rifle has always been very accurate until the 16 shot mark, then it has to be cleaned. I have just put up with this for many years!

I have always reloaded with ww760 (26.5g I think!), cci br primers, remington cases and hornaday 25g hollow points. Yep all my stock is still from the early 1980's.

From some of the above posts it seems that the powder may be an issue. What power would be recomended now for the .17rem?

I have also had issues with brass splitting the necks after 3 to 4 reloads and now have enough 204ruger brass to resize and form into .17rem brass, I'm told this is a much better way to go.

Whilst on powder, what recomendations for the other 2 guns I reload;

222 (55g hornaday sp) and use ww748, same vintage of course and would also appreciate a powder to suit this.

7x57r in a break open gun, just purchased this gun a couple of months ago and have dies and been shooting factory ammo to collect enough brass to reload. Looking at shooting 120g hornaday vmax and 139g hornaday sst.

Cheers,
James

17 Remingtons can be real copper foulers. There are a couple of things that I found that may help you out. Obviously, the barrel copper fouls with the velocity you are shooting.

1) try a load of 21.5-22.5g of H322, less powder fouling will
give you extended shooting strings. Velocity will be in
the 3850 fps. As you approach 4000 fps, copper fouling
gets out of control.
2) use Berger bullets only or a custom bullet that uses a J4
Jacket, your copper fouling will be much less! I can not
stress this enough

3) I waxed my bullets, and copper fouling went down to next to
zero, and the velocity standard deviation also went down in
single digits. If you want more information on waxing bullets
send me a Private message, it is easy and cheap.

Concerning your 222, H335 is a fantastic powder for the 55's. Since you have win 748, you may want to use it up. Accuracy will be at the very top end of the load data.

Ta Keith,

Originally ran the .17 as a dedicated fox rifle and loaded it for accuracy and minimum pelt damage.

The hornaday hollow points were the best projectile for this back then and I have used this load ever since, tried remington 25g hollow points which were not good on pelts and Bell 23grainers which had weight variations in the one box.

Fox pelts are worthless now so skin damage is not a consideration. I'll chase some Berger projectiles and see how they go! Just hope they flatten roos, dingoes and fox like the Hornaday.

I may have a hard time reducing the velocity though, it is addictive! From the above posts the inference was that the ww760 I'm using is dirty and causing some of the issues and that there are cleaner burning powders so will also chase some H322.

I'll keep running the 748 in the 222 as there are no problems, but only have a bit left so will need to buy powder and projectiles as I just loaded the last hundred on the weekend.

Will send a PM about the waxing - will it hurt?

cheers,
James

keith,

In my experience it's a lot easier and cheaper (both in terms of time and money) to apply something once to the bore than to every bullet. It costs maybe $2 to apply Dyna Bore Coat to a .17 barrel, and then its in there for the life of the barrel.

It's funny you mention this. I settled on H414 (same thing) back in the 80s in my 17 Rem for three reasons. It was very fast, it grouped well, and it flowed nicely through the skinny case neck. I was using CCI-BR primers too but they wanted to spring leaks at the radius so I switched to 450s instead.



Hmmm? I betting you're just hoping he'll bring it back so you can sell it to yet another poor soul. (How many times have you swindled people with that same rifle anyway? )

Klik,

Well, though I've certainly purchased a bunch of rifles from Ingwe when he was behind the counter at Capital Sports, this particular .17 Remington came from an ad on the Campfire Classifieds. And I do believe old Ingwe has retired from the retail gun biz, as of a couple weeks ago....

geedubya you are spot on. good advice.

.17s vary.

My first .17 was a TC Contender carbine barrel in .17 Remington. It did indeed have fouling issues affecting accuracy. Groups with a freshly cleaned barrel went under .75 inch. At about 16-18 rounds the groups opened up to over 2 inches.

My next .17 was a Remington 700 BDL. It'd shoot accurately for about 70 rounds, then suddenly accuracy fell off.

In both cases, a good scrubbing and some copper solvent would return the lost accuracy. Don't know if it was relevant, but in those days Remington made their own 25 grain .17 caliber hollowpoint, they hadn't yet switched to using Hornady's bullets, and the Remingtons seemed to be a lot more accurate in my 2 rifles.

My third .17 was a 700 rebarreled with a #8 contour PacNor barrel. I went as far as 165 rounds without a cleaning one time and accuracy did not appear to change. It lived primarily on the then-new 20 grain VMAX at about 4300 fps.

My most recent was a 700 LVSF. I don't recall how long a string I shot with it between cleanings but I never saw accuracy drop off. I still have the barrel in the closet, I switched it out to build a .204 at maybe 1000 rounds fired. I 'spect it'll go back on an action someday.

I spent a while with a .17 Fireball; it lived on 20 grain VMAXes at about 4000 fps. It fouled a little for 50-100 rounds, after that, I never could get any blue fouling on a solvent patch. It was a blued 700 SPS.

My HMR (ruger heavy barrel 77/17) fouled a teeny bit for the first 30-40 rounds, since then, nary a hint of copper.

Lot depends on how smooth the barrel is to begin with. Rough barrels foul, and the faster you push bullets, the more they foul. Its a bit harder to make smooth barrels as the bore size goes down, but obviously many barrel makers have figured out the trick.

Just concluded my first experiment with the .17 Remington 700 BDL mentioned earlier, made in 1973. With a clean bore, it started shooting 1/2' to 1" 5-shot groups at 100 yards with handloads using Benchmark and Big Game.

Shot it 110 rounds without cleaning, mostly with Benchmark and various 20-grain bullets, before groups started to open up. Cleaned it today, and the big problem seemed to be powder fouling, as the bore-scope showed only a few tiny smears of copper fouling. Dunno if it would have shot well longer with Big Game.

Will probably install DBC next, expecting time between cleanings to at least double and maybe triple.

Told ya'...




Travis

Impossible. I've read on the internet that they foul plugged shut after 5 rounds..

And that's the good ones. The bad ones only take 2 rounds.

Todd Kindler of the Small Caliber News sells a wax called SPL that will reduce copper fouling significantly. It will also reduce the Standard deviation down to the single digits, cheap also!

I found a Remington M700BDL in .17 REM today for 599 if I remember correctly. If anyone is interested PM me.

Thaks for bringing this back to the top.


Since starting this post I have several 17 caliber guns, one of which is a Cooper 21 in 17 remington. I didn't like it's poor grouping and a few issues, so I returned it to cooper for a once over and evaluation. They said even after I thought I had it squeeky clean it had severe copper fouling, they fixed it and shot 2 each 3 shot sub 0.100" groups and returned it to me.


I bought a box of 50 of the HSM ammo they test fired, mounted the scope tonight and hope to duplicate their findings....


I need to get a borescope.

Allen

Believe me, Dyna Bore Coat will improve things considerably.