Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 99 22hp takedown

Wood has been redone/replaced. Kinda like that forearm. If the lever has good case left on it I'm not for sure it's a reblue?

Don't think yur nuts for bringing it home.

Yep, I get 1912 also. Do you hand load? I have some brass reformed from 30-30 brass. Where are you located? There are several of us that shoot the HP in MD. My 1899H was made in 1912 also, Joe.

hp

Joe I would love to shoot with ya'll up in MD. I live in Escatawpa, Ms about 40 miles west of Mobile so it would be quite a haul. Just looking online, so far I have not found any of the 5.6×52mmR ammo in stock. I hate to add another caliber to my reloading repertoire, but it looks like I might have to.
I will send you a PM about buying some brass.

Thanks,

Carl

Im a big fan of the 22HP, if your going to shoot one you realy should reload, not to hard, 25-35 Brass is your friend, Buffalo Arms has 55 grain bullets! Speer 70 grain bullets are out there, but hard to find! wishing you Good Luck with your 22HP!

Hey Carl, I go the long way forming HP brass. I run 30-30 brass through a 250 Savage die, then a 25-35 die and then an HP die. It goes smooth and we have zero lost cases. Gary (gnoahhh) has done a lot of HP reloading and has said that the European brass, like the S&B, tends to be off a little and has short case life. I think others have said it does shoot well the first time. Wait and see what they say. The main reason I use 30-30 is it's all over the place free. Gary uses 25-35 brass and likes it. I think I have some formed brass down stairs, if I do I'll send you 20 on the house. I might have 20 69 Gr bullets down there too. All you'll need is some 3031 and primers, Joe.

See, John likes the 25-35 brass too, and he types faster than me, Joe.

Anyone .224 bullets in their reloads?

I've heard of people using 224's, but I think you need a special die to squeeze it down a little extra. The problem will still be using short bullets. I'm sure the range of 224's is near limitless, Joe.

Do a search on this site. The care and feeding of the .22HP has been hashed out every which way from next Wednesday. Get a set of dies, some brass (.25-35 or Joe's made from .30-30) some .228 bullets (Buffalo Arms is your best bet), and a can of 3031 and call me in the morning. Loading for the HP requires no special alchemy and very little voodoo. I think old Ken Waters did the cartridge a slight disservice way back when he did a Pet Load article on it, and since then everybody thought it was a freekoid to load for when it really isn't any different than any other cartridge- standard precepts apply.

Check the gun's headspace. That'll give you an inkling as to how well your brass will hold up under repeated loadings. (Shoulda done that anyway with an antique you plan on shooting.) Keep your loads light regardless, no need to try to make it perform like a .22-250.

I have, Pick the right bullets and they'll shoot fine. The 60gr Nosler Partition worked quite well with the few samples I did, got to play with it more.

If you think about it, a .228" bullet going down a bore that is .220" wide with .007" deep rifling has to squeeze .008" of copper backwards from 90% of the bullet surface - because it can't be squeezed outwards. Take a .224" copper jacketed bullet down that same .220" bore and that whopping .003" of free space in the riffling is going to be filled up immediately with copper squeezed in from the jacket because it's .004" oversized for 90% of the bullet surface. At 45,000-50,000 psi, copper is going to flow and flow fast. (bore and rifling sizes taken from Townsend Whelen's book from 1918).

Others disagree with me. They don't think that .004" from the oversized jacket will fill the grooves fast enough to prevent throat erosion. I don't plan on shooting thousands of rounds to prove either of us wrong.

I don't think it takes thousands of rounds to do that, Rory. Why take any chance at all with barrel steel from 100 years ago - last I heard Savage isn't making .22HP TD barrels anymore. It's also another reason I switched to shooting cast bullets as much as possible in the .22HP's. Lead bullets won't wear a barrel a teeny fraction of what gilding metal does - witness the ridiculously long life of .22 RF barrels.

Because I really, really like Nosler Partitions and finding .228 bullets that stabilize really well isn't easy or cheap.

I wonder how consistent old time bullet manufacturing was around 1912? Were they accurate down to .003" consistently? Anybody know?

Not as consistent as what we enjoy today. Speaking in terms of external dimensions they were pretty consistent. The biggest issues were what their bullets looked like on the inside- jacket thickness inconsistency both from bullet to bullet and within the same bullet, voids in the lead cores, etc. made accuracy something that those ancients would have envied us for, due to stability in flight (or instability in flight) issues.. Add to that the nearly universal use of cupro-nickel back then for jacket material which fouled barrels worse than gilding metal does, quickly throwing gilt-edged accuracy into the crapper. All that said, some pretty impressive scores were turned in regardless, and some pretty impressive animals were killed. (Target shooting records were nearly all set with soft lead bullets back then- scores which stood well into the "modern" era.)

No matter how consistent bullets are, it's all for nought if chamber, throat, leade, groove, and bore dimensions vary all over the map- and they did back then. Add to that sad state of affairs relatively inconsistent bullets and you see the challenge faced by our forebears. Today, we who mess with these old guns are well advised to monitor closely the dimensions I mentioned and strive to match our projectiles as closely as possible to them. Of particular importance is bullet fit to the throat- that is what determines straight entry into the rifling and minimizes gas cutting which impinges on accuracy too as well as throat erosion. Groove dimensions are almost secondary to throat dimensions in the that respect. (Doubly, no triply, important when seeking accuracy without leading when using cast bullets.)

Does all this matter to the guy who just wants to make his .22HP go bang a couple times a year? Nope. Does it matter to someone who takes the science of all this seriously? Yep.

In my .22HP tubes, throat diameters run from .2285 to .230, with groove diameters running from .227 to .229. With scenarios like that when a .224 bullet rattles around before being snugged into the rifling and bumping up to fill the grooves (if it indeed it truly does), it is always a source of amazement to me that .224's shoot as well as they do, and make me wonder just how how much better said rifles would perform with an optimally sized bullet.

One may ask "Why did Savage use a bastard size .22 bullet?" Back then .228 was the standard size for all .22 centerfires, starting with the .22-10-45 in the 1880's and continuing through the .22W.C.F. that was fairly popular well into the 20th century. (But note also that .22 CF's were not what you would call common.) It was the .22RF's that had the small bore sizes, and not all of them either. It wasn't until the 1920's when .22 centerfire experimentation started to take hold that the bullet diameter shrunk. That was due largely to the use of .22LR barrels as sources for centerfire conversions, and that stuck as industry standards were adopted when .22 CF's became factory offerings. (Even then the .22RF standard of .222-.223 held sway briefly- witness the first factory .22 Hornets- but quickly segued into our familiar .224.) .22 centerfire experimentation/popularity didn't gain traction until the 1920's and later mainly because bullet technology didn't exist before then to make them a viable high velocity proposition, due in no small part to the shift from cupro-nickel jackets to gilding metal.

On the subject of reloading for the 22hp. have had good success with 63 grain Sierra semi pointed bullets behind H4895. Groups about an inch at 100 yards
Steve

Steve, is that the Sierra SI1370 bullets? I ordered a box yesterday from Natchez along with my dies. BTW, Natchez has the SI1370 bullets and RCBS HP dies on sale.

Carl

Carl, That is the same one. My load is 25.0 grains H4895. Not real fast but accurate. I have a 24" barrel. Sorry for the late response.
Steve