Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats 22 cal suggestions for bolt build

That's a beauty. Am a sucker for black walnut with lots of fiddleback. That's a drooler.

This full-length stock has fiddleback the entire length, spaced closely but it is quite thin and light, and more so on the starboard side

Ditto on scope swapping--life is short.

22 creed

I really like the swift for the cool factor but finding brass is a major pain.
If i had my heart set on a 22 cal rifle I would go 22-250 for sure

Not planning to shoot it much, really. Horn, Win, & Norma offer 220 Swift brass. Horn is right reasonable.

Building off a vz24 means you are limited to cartridges with the same boltface; .473". The two most common rounds that fit that bill are the .22-250 and .220 Swift. Next, you have to decide if you want a repeater or single shot. The .22-250 is pretty short and can be reluctant to feed without a good deal of work. The swift, while longer, is semi-rimmed and also picky when it comes to feeding. Either are likely to produce some muzzle flash in a 20" barrel, less so that a .224 TTH.

That said, I just completed rebarreling a .220 Swift on a commercial FN action last night. And will be barreling up another action with a lighter profile barrel.

Last nights project has a barrel length of 26.5" and a muzzle diameter of .920 and weighs 11.6 lbs. The next will be more like .750" muzzle diameter.

I have a .22-250 on a SR Mexican Mauser. A real tack driver.

Appreciate the input, z1r...and the gif, of course

Another vote for the swift. I love my swift and will never be with out one for as long as I live. I don't seem to struggle with finding brass like some of the others.

I have been shooting the 220 Swift for the past 30 years........would get the Norma brass 10 times out of 10

I have converted a surplus 98 Mauser to 223, I am not a good enough welder for the extractor mods.

I do just fine taking metal off a VZ24 to be a 7mmRemMag or 300WinMag, but the 223 is a hard project.

The McFarland book describes the 98 Mauser to 222 project. He shims out the bolt face.

If you don't mind the fuss of case forming, the .22/6mm or Cheetah or TTH, or whatever the heck you want to call it, just because it might be easier to get it to feed. Ask your smith about that. If he thinks feeding won't be a problem, then .22/250 for sure, though the Swift is very cool and retro.

So, I completed two Swifts on standard 98's this weekend. Stacking in a magazine is of course an issue due to the rimmed case. But, both rifles fed flawlessly with two rounds in the magazine as long as the rim of the top cartridge was placed ahead of the rim of the round below it. Can't wait to get to the range this weekend.

some pictures of those rifles seems appropriate...:)

FWIW I had a 20 inch Barrel on a .22-250 and was getting 3573 with 55 grain bullets...

Appreciate it Ingwe. That ought to cover anything....

What rifle did you have it in?

I'll try to snap some at the Range on Saturday. One is just a rebarrel. I just duplicated the barrel, then threaded and chambered it. It's an old school varmint rifle.

I've been wanting to put one of those together for a long time, then something else always comes up. Maybe one day.

Appreciate it. I like the old school stuff

Tomk,

Here's the old school rebuild. Owner insisted on a new barrel because it wasn't shooting well. I found several items out of whack and tried to talk the owner out of a rebarrel. He insisted on a new barrel and I was happy to oblige. So, I duplicated the old barrel with a 12" twist SS Blank, fixed the fact that the bolt protruded beyond the inner torque ring and set the headspace at minimum instead of .008", and was pleased to see it shoots bugholes.



So, just to prove to myself that the old barrel was fine, I found an old bolt with a bent handle, a ratty old 1909 Argentine action which I trued then drilled and tapped, and headspaced the barrel to. Fitted it in a Kevlar stock a friend made for me, and fired two rounds to get on target at 50 yds, then two more at 100. The shots fired at 100 yards were touching. It was all the factory ammo I had.

Nice work Z. Coyotes?

Have an affinity toward ratty old mausers. Neat to see one in a synthetic--though I hope you know you may earn a special place in the afterlife as I did for doing that--as I have been told here.

Perhaps good mauser smiths like yourself are exempt, though...:)

Was the original stock part of the problem?

Can you say....muzzle blast? The 220 Swift is all about speed. Why castrate it ?