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

Gents:

Just looking for some idears. Have a VZ 24 98 Mauser action that fits nicely in this Mannlicher stock. It is a very light/petite and old stock weighing 1.67# with a narrow barrel channel, probably best a #1 contour with a shank. The #2 contour Douglas would shave too much wood... No dogleg--straight buttstock, with metal buttplate--which is why I like it. Have Parker Hale LW bottom for it.

The barrel would end up 20"

Was seriously pondering a 6x57 but I don't need another deer rifle. So a 22 cal maybe...not to say I wouldn't shoot a deer with it, I would, and would like it twisted fast--heavier bullets for the 22 are interesting. Called coyotes maybe. Like that one dickhead I keep seeing around the barn...he gets it first...occasional beaver & coon. Not a lot of critter selection and the ranges aren't going to be long.

Some thoughts would be appreciated...

Hard to go wrong with a 22-250.

22 Nosler?? Might be just right for those heavier bullets you speak of.

The swift might be a good fit.....you can always load down for smaller game..

You guys don't see an issue with the 22-250 or the Swift's case capacity and a 20" barrel?

.22br or Dasher would be cool.

Don't see any issue with a 20" bbl'd 22-250 other than it'd be loud.

I'd be tempted to go 22br if I thought I could get it to feed.

Yeah, there could be some minor feeding issues for a 22br in a mauser 98...:)

Wondering if the larger cases would lose advantage of the 22-24" barrel and the 223 would be their near equal in a 20" tube?

Nope.




Travis

Never missed a shot and thunk 'Gee, I would have made that if I had a barrel 2 inches longer', have you?

22 Cheeta would be good for a 98 action.

22/6mm otherwise known as 224 TTH. would be a perfect fit in your Mauser. It is based on the 7x57 case which the 98 mauser was designed around,
Do 8 twist , load it hot or load it down. Good for mice to deer.

And to be honest, I'd do say a 6mm Remington in it. You can still sling 55's and 100's if you feel you don't have enough deer rifles.

Miss?

Well if you are gonna start being honest, I might as well hone up to the 6mm Remington having gotten a lot of play here, between the ears. Too, it's possible the 57mm case gets more favor here than others. Have a 6.5 barreled action that got first consideration, but its #2 contour is too big for the stock. And that one wouldn't have counted.

That case necked down to the 22 cal ought to produce some heat...maybe flame out of a 20". Had to look the Cheetah up and imagine it would too...:)

It's not about the 57mm case getting more play for play's sake. It's that a Mauser is a x57 rifle and they work the easiest with a x57 cartridge. Besides, why not use an intermediate length case in an intermediate length action.

Scott, I am with ya on the mauser--and was inferring that up to this point the 6mm had already more burned more glucose for the parts on hand, than any other caliber. It could still go that route--in the bigger picture, a 22 with heavier bullets, would be just as much deer caliber as anything else for my needs. Most of the matter is probably once fit in the narrow stock channel, the amount of barrel left around the hole.

*
Do appreciate all the responses, Gents.

I'm all for the 22-250 in it . One of my varmint/target guns is a 20" HB barreled 22-250, works perfect. One nice thing, you can always stop at Wally World and pick a box or two of Win. White Box and go shoot stuff.

Do appreciate the suggestions/experience, Gents. Well, fwiw, after some reading, measuring and tequilas am thinking the 220 Swift in 1:8. The Swift case looks to be a good fit. It may sound like a deer rifle, but it's not--the yard yote is bigger than the average around here...

I built a 1/8 twist 220 swift on a 1909 action and it is spectacular. Interesting to see how yours does in a 20" barrel?
Keep us posted

will do. It will be a while as the smith is backed up some--with a correspondingly rising orneriness ratio....

What type stock & scope on yer 220 did you go with?

tomk,

My 220 swift is set up a little different than what you have in mind. I did a 24" #3 Douglas barrel, Oregon black walnut stock.
I am a notorious scope swapper but at the moment I have a Bushnell 4200 elite 6-24 mildot reticle scope on it.

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 ?

No, the original stock doesn't appear to have been a problem as it shoots just fine now with the new barrel and bolt not contacting the breech.

I just grabbed the synthetic for mine because I didn't have a wood stock with enough material for the 1" barrel. It's a heavy beast, weighs 11+ lbs.

Most likely prairie dogs as it only has a 14" twist. I kinda like 55 grain bullets for Coyotes. But, I suspect that a 50 will do.

Lot of Swift brass on GunBroker. 27.00 for 50 plus shipping.

I get it if you need a 22 you need a 22, but if I was staring at a 20" full length stock carbine, I'd have to make it into a 250-3000, twisted right! If you want to shoot coyotes 75 grain hollow points, or 80 Barnes ttsx for everything. You could even make it an improved 250. Perfect to my eyes in a carbine like you want.

With an anything x 57 action, I'd be looking hard at .257 Roberts. I had a Ruger 77 RL .257 which had a 20" barrel ... worked fine. 75 grain Sierras for splattering fuzzy things, 120 grain partitions for gathering stuff t' eat.

Tom

I'll vote for a .224 Weatherby...

I wouldn't go with a Swift or TTH in a 20" barrel, it will only handicap it.

I've posted my 220 Beggs "Russian" pics before, but here is a couple more.

Appreciate the post, Butch--is that a mini action? I had to look that one up--an improved Russian case?

That is a knock-out rifle--fiddleback does it for me. Who did the metalwork and the stock?

One of my favorite Mausers was a 6mm Rem I built on a VZ24 action; that cartridge really fits the gun well. I went with the AI version; the 6mm Rem is one that actually shows some decent gains from Improving if you're into that sort of thing. It's been quite a while but I don't recall doing any work related to making it feed well, I think it was GTG with no action modifications.

The 70gr TNT, while not a sexy high b.c. bullet, was accurate, cheap, and an absolute hammer on coyotes. It was a pretty good match for the application.

Yeah, that would be the smart move for that large ring action.

A mini-mauser in a scaled full-length stock would make a beauty carry piece

I currently have three Mausers in 6mm Rem. Just unscrewed one of the barrels so I could convert it to .220 Swift. This one will be a lighter rifle, one that lends itself to carrying. If I really wanted a hot 22 caliber "repeater" on a Mauser, I'd build a .224 TTH.

I like the 6mm Rem just fine, its just that when someone asks me what steak I like best, I don't usually reply, pork chops.

It is actually a factory 220 Russian with a slight radius at the shoulder-neck juncture. The 22o Russian is an excellent accuracy cartridge, but has a habit of the case growing in length. Gene Beggs found that a reamer with a radius at the neck shoulder juncture eliminated the stretch.
It is a mini mauser, barreled action in 7.62X39 that I bought in the middle 90s. I chambered it first in a 270X39AI as a young person's deer rifle. It was very accurate with very little to no recoil. Decided to redo it and James Anderson made 4 or 5 custom bottom metal, Ed LaPour did the 3 POS safety and has a Timney Trigger. I chambered the Shilen barrel. Kerry Stottlemyer did the custom scope bases. The wood came from Roger Vardy and Dean Zollinger did the carving. TurnBull did the rust blue. Oh, by the way, I had the LH side of the receiver cut like a Mauser98 and also the thumb cut.

Z: we had a fab shop cutting steaks for restaurants when I was a considerably younger...I never said pork chops...:) My dad always said, the rib makes for a good roast...

Am curious what you would consider a NY Strip

Butch, I wondered. The thumb slot is a nice touch and the woodwork around it. Didn't catch the receiver contour, though. Do prefer a thumb slot--they are handy once you use them a bit.

Appreciate the info and custom rifle pics, gents

Why, Chicken breast of course!

Nice rifle Butch. Yeah, James did a nice job on that Mini Mauser action. I did that for a gent that had an FN commercial once. He really liked the Thumbcut, so I gave him one.

.220 Howell

.22/6mm on a Interarms Mark X action,Montana Rifle Co. barrel 26" and a 1-12" twist,Bell & Carlson stock.

Would be my choice... with the exception of the twist..

I'd go with a one in 7, allowing you to shoot any of the newer 80 to 90 grain
bullets also...

Thumb slot was for looks only.

That looks like the rig for that country, Elk.

Agree Seafire, on the rate of twist. Those are interesting to me.

Butch, that was meant in the sense of thumbing down cartridges, not in using a stripper clip

Appreciate the replies, Gents.

check out a 221 fireball, anybody i know who took one out into the field after using mine had one the next year, super accurate, and deadly beyond its size,20 inch barrel would be perfect fit for a fireball,Lil-gun powder or the new CFE-Blk makes the fireball shine, my standard load of 15.4 grs.Lil-gun pushes a 40 gr. v-max to 3400 fps barrel life is forever!

While I love the .221, the OP wants to build on a Fullsize standard 98 action:

"Just looking for some idears. Have a VZ 24 98 Mauser action that fits nicely in this Mannlicher stock. It is a very light/petite and old stock weighing 1.67# with a narrow barrel channel, probably best a #1 contour with a shank. The #2 contour Douglas would shave too much wood... No dogleg--straight buttstock, with metal buttplate--which is why I like it. Have Parker Hale LW bottom for it.

The barrel would end up 20"

Was seriously pondering a 6x57 but I don't need another deer rifle. So a 22 cal maybe..."

The .221 doesn't lend itself to use in that action, unless you find one of the pretty rare FN target models with a .223" size bolt face.

Which is why I built mine on a Rem 700.

I wouldn't mind mind bumping into one of those FN target model actions...:)

It is an interesting cartridge, just working with mine in the past few weeks.