Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles ,221 Fireball

Went north of the house the other day to shoot some prairie dogs.

Been testing out a new load for the FireBall.

20.6 grains of CFE BLK behind a 40 grain VMax.

Groups at 5/8ths to 3/4 of an inch and is scooting along at 3650.

Seems a bit fast as I think the max load from Hodgdon is 20.8 at 3550. Might should drop it back some.

Overall, very pleased with this load.

Turns the little fireball into a pretty good performer.

I could tell a big difference in holdover and windage between this load and the old standard 19 grains of R7.

Love the Fireball!!

+1 Don't shoot mine enough, but love it.

Jim, do you have a 17 FB too?

221 FB = lots of fun in the varmint world.........

only better is the 20 Fireball (Vartarg)

3600 fps with 40 V max......

Do you have any idea of the case life with those hotter loads?

Yes. I have struggled with that rifle some.

Its next on the list for attention.

Not yet.

When I load up that batch, it will be the third loading with that powder charge.

Good enough for me since I've got so much brass and shoot that so little any more. i may have to try your super load. I've been using the old RL7 19 grains forever.

The load does not act hot, even though it is 100 FPS faster(3650) over my chrono at 20.6 grains.

Hodgdon list 20.8 grains as max for a speed of 3550.

No matter what load you settle on.....3550 is clipping right along for a .221.

That's great velocity for a .221!

When I was shooting one (a 700 Classic) Li'l Gun resulted in the best accuracy as well as very good velocity with various 40-grain bullets, 3400+ from a 24" barrel. Velocities with other powders were as good, but not accuracy.

Hmm, that rivals my 223 load.

Jim Conrad: I too am a LONG time advocate of the 221 Remington Fireball in a Varmint type Rifle.
I started out a long time ago (1993) with a Kimber (Of Oregon) Ultra-Varmint model - this Rifle has a wide forearm stock and heavy 24" stainless barrel and an excellent trigger.
This Rifle likes 40 grain Bergers bullets and 40 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips.
I never have loaded either of my 221 Fireball Rifles for speed but have loaded them for "accuracy" with good Varmint bullets.
My other Rifle is a Remington 700 Classic with 24" medium weight factory barrel.
This Rifle prefers the Nosler 40 grain Ballistic Tips.
THE most accurate 221 Fireball Rifle I ever shot though was one owned by my good friend Dr. Dale Mitchell of the Puget Sound country.
He "talked" (bought!) the fine folks at Remingtons custom shop into building him a heavy long barreled Remington 40XB-KS in caliber 221 Remington Fireball!
This Rifle was SO accurate that it was scary.
I shot it on a couple of occasions at the S.P.A.A. Range there on the Duwamish River in south Seattle.
One hole groups with it were the norm.
I also got to shoot this Rifle on a Rock Chuck Safari in Idaho.
What a wonderful gun it is.
IIRC Doc Mitchell used Sierra 52 grain bullets to get the best accuracy in his Rifle.
Good luck with yours.
I saw a lot of Prairie Dogs yesterday as I toured west/central Montana yesterday (9/29/2,017) chasing Guns and doing a gunshow.
Someone mentioned the 17 Remington Fireball - this is another of my favorite Varmint cartridges. Maybe the size, shape and shoulder angle of the Fireball case makes the Fireball family of cartridges so accurate/efficient?
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I have to ask why you guys choose the .221 Fireball over say the .222 or .223? Don't get me wrong, I love my little .221 Fireball Cooper, but given the factory ammunition availability locally I think that a .222 might have been a better choice. Here in the Midwest we don't have near as much to shoot at and don't have the long range shooting like you guys out west near the prairie dog areas. I wanted something larger than a hornet yet smaller and quieter than a .22-250.

Windfall: I was looking for an efficient, accurate and "quiet" Varmint round that was NOT a 22 Hornet.
I had "tried" MANY and various 22 Hornet Rifles made by Winchester, Anschutz, Sako, savage and one or two others and NONE of them gave me acceptable accuracy back then!
Eventually the folks at Kimber of Oregon made their Ultra-Varmint in 221 Remington Fireball - I got one and have never looked back.
One more quick 221 Remington Fireball story - my eccentric gun collecting friend and Varmint Hunting partner (Jack from Yelm, Washington) years ago had bought a Ruger 77 Varmint in caliber 223 Remington. He set it up with a high power variable scope and adjusted the trigger then set about load testing and sight in.
It shoot very well right away and often put 5 shots into half inch round groups.
After one year of use (mostly on Ground Squirrels) he got the 221 Fireball bug and against my advice (after asking for it) he had a Riflesmith shorten the barrel a tad and had it rechambered in 221 Remington Fireball.
That Rifle shot even better than it did as a 223 accounting for several groups just over 1/4".
He used it for a couple of years and then sold it - like I said, he is an eccentric.
If I find a Rifle (especially Varmint Rifles!) that shoot 1/2" groups I don't mess with them and I don't ever sell them!
Long live the 221 Fireball.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

CFE BLK is on my list of powders to try, and I've yet to try the 40's in my fireball, but my new load with 20.9 grs of H322 and the 50 gr Zmax will stack them in one hole @100 yds if I do my part. I've had several 3/8" groups and a few 1/4" groups with RL7 and H4198, but this one shines in my unbedded 700LS.

I like my fireball for a lot of reasons but one of the main ones is that I can hold through the recoil and see the bullet strike. This is with a 40gr Vmax or BT over 19 gr of RL7. My rifle is a Remington 700 with a medium heavy barrel. Ground squirrels in Idaho are small targets and get lost in the recoil of bigger cartridges. At least for me.

I am going to download my 223 and my 22-250 to fireball levels for groundsquirrels, so I can at least enjoy the rifles.

No idea why I got started on .221's or as I like to call them.....22 Blackout.

Dad bought a xp 100 in the 60's. I guess thats how I got started.


I tend to pick a favorite and stick with it!

Including that xp100, I have 5 and could use a couple more.

.22 Blackout, I like that. The .221 Fireball spawned some nice cartridges like that .300 and the .17 Fireball and those are on the shelves locally. Not so the original .221 FB though. I've only ever seen one XP100 and know from watching that piece on the range where the Fireball name came from. Remington marketing has never been very good in my opinion and aside from the novelty factor, I could never see a really good use for an XP100. The cartridge got typecast with that weird bolt action pistol. I'm glad to see that it has a good following for you rifle guys here.

Windfall: Not to get to far off on a tangent here but I have killed a lot of Prairie Dogs, Rock Chucks and a few Coyotes with my XP-100 pistols over the years.
I have sold or turned into custom Rifles all my XP-100's in 221 Fireball but still have an XP-100 in 223 Remington that is impressively accurate, handy and fun to have along on my journeys and Hunts.
I was on a Hunt in SE Alaska for Mt Goats and my partner decided to harvest his Goat with an XP-100 pistol in 7mm Remington Benchrest - one shot kill he made with it and again very handy and easy to pack up those wet, slippery and steep slopes!
After several encounters with bigish Black Bears that Hunt my partner had that 7m/m Remington Benchrest re-chambered to 7m/m-08 Remington - now that rig produced a Fireball!
Don't sell the 221 Remington Fireball short - its an accurate, efficient, fun, unique cartridge thats easy on brass and barrels.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Jim, what brass are you using?

I ask because I was running a hot Blue Dot load (well past the Seafire Line) and it wasn't until the third loading that I got the first clue the load was stupid hot. And then it really started talking. Out of 100 cases of Rem in that batch, I ruined 45 of them, two blown primers and the rest wouldn't hold a primer any more. But until the blown primers, no sign at all. No cratering, no flattening, no extractor bright, no black rings, just sudden face full of gas. After the second snort, I pulled that batch and started over, much chastened.

The remaining Rem cases are all ticking along just fine after several more loadings.

Now I have other brass. There was NOTHING available by that time (thanks, Nobama) and I needed more brass. So, I learned a method and got the tools to smash and burn down 223 brass into Fireball. Takes serious annealing (twice) and a neck turn, but the result has been good brass with more than one headstamp. I've got some PMC, and some quality unknown a Fire member sold me from an arms plant reject bucket he'd bought. I did my first cases with Federal FC stamp, and they had pretty high defect rates, like 50 percent after first firing. Shot fine, just cracked and died.

Easier on barrels at 3000 than 3500 I'll say. Mine goes off with a little pop, and a puff of fur, no fanfare, just a very dead coyote. Oncwe on a fluke I shot one at 450 yards, but it didn't have enough energy to get the job done with my shooting. Someone more skilled maybe, but inside 300 no problem. I'd like more speed, but I think for what it is, I'll stay with 19 gr RL7 and use one of the 222's or 223's for more umph. The Fireball is fantastic for calling coyotes up close and... pfffft. Low noise.

I love my .221. I've got a CZ cut back to 20 inches with a 22lr can on it mostly just to protect my hearing a bit. Works great for coyotes as most I see are inside 200 yards.

That's smokin'.

If I hadn't lucked into a very accurate Hornet, I'd probably go for a .222, but the .221 is definitely interesting.

If this thread wasn't way down in the basement, someone would have already opined that your rifle's no good because it doesn't have a 1-8" twist.

Just to be contrary...

I find one can load a 223, to a Fireball or Triple deuce level and not have
to deal with all the brass availability issues...

but then again, I think odd things..

like having no real use for the 221 fireball...

but certainly highly regard the 20 Vartag and 17 Fireball...

Blasphemy!

I guess if I was my Grandpa, maybe I'd put up with downloading my one gun to do what I want it to. Thankfully I'm not. You might be shocked to learn some people own more than one varmint rifle. Also, I've never had any problem getting fireball brass. It's cool you have no use for it, but at the same time I have no use downloading a cartridge to do what another is already designed to do. The luxury of having more than one gun I suppose.

Loosely translated "I'm married and my wife won't let me buy a .221 Fireball", LOL.😄

yeah that's it! Ratted out! Damn it!!

Haha!


Its an interesting concept, I just have never done any down loading.

Each rifle has a specific job. No two rifles or cartridges are good at the same types of jobs.

If my wife ever found out the truth I would be sunk.

The truth finally comes out!

You're not an official "Rifle Looney" unless you have ALL the bases covered....22, .221, .222, .223, etc.

have no worries, I don't share such information with anyone who really isn't into shooting, especially
varmint cartridges... which starts out with Women and DemocRATS...

When all I had was a 30-06 I was tempted to buy some of those little plinking bullets that Speer sold. Never did it.

I of course bought the TNT and loaded it hot! No kids to pay for in those days....I was about 12. The extra powder did not hurt too much!

When I was prairie dog shooting north of Billings with a friend who lives in Billings..

we got his 12 year old son a 30/06....

I loaded up about 20 rounds with a 110 grain SP, running about 3500 fps...

We got the boy over dealing with recoil on the rifle.. by shooting ONE prairie dog at about 100 yds
with one of those bullets...that sucker exploded big time...

We let Tyler take the next 19 shots and he was having too much fun to worry about recoil.

Kid is now about 30 and a Montana State Trooper.. he still hunts with that same 06 annually...

Try around 20 grains of H335 under a 20 grain VMAX w/ Rem 7-1/2 primers. After the first hundred rounds went down the barrel and a few cleanings were done, my 700 SPS quit copper fouling and delivered 3/8ths inch 5 shot groups. A local cop wanted to pay more for it than I spent on it so I sold it ... 'twas a mistake. FUN cartridge.

Tom

Thanks for the tip. I have never, ever used anything other than CCI primers.

I see quite a few folks like the Remington primers....I will pick some up.

Grandpa kept a M54 Winchester behind the seat. Always with a box of 180 grain power points.

I killed many a gopher with that combo.

I have probably met that kid and did not know it. Every car wreck comes with a Highway Patrolman.

I like the Rem 7-1/2 SR primer because it has a very thick cup, seems pretty hot, and yet is very consistent.

Some of the small (.222 family) bolt face 700s have too much slop between the firing pin and the hole through the bolt face. It can be even worse if the firing pin spring is weak. Pierced primers vent through the firing pin hole in the bolt face past the pin itself and smack the friggin' sear surfaces together so hard it breaks corners off. Over the years I've wrecked 2 Jewell HVR triggers and 2 factory triggers that way. If you get a little extruded nipple on your primers after firing, stop. I ignored those ... sort of. Took too long figuring out what the problem was. Expensive mistake. I suspect a correct factory spring would be adequate but while I was paying for fixing I had my 'smith install an extra power spring in a GreTan firing pin assembly. I SHOULD, but have not, send the bolt off to have that firing pin hole sleeved / welded and rebored.

Anyway, CCI would be my 2nd choice. Probably WW third. Fed 205s last. I like the 205s a lot but I'm leery of them in the 700s until I've made sure the bolt face / firing pin hole / etc is right.

There's nothing really wrong with CCI primers. I had problems in my earlier reloading years (about 1 misfire per carton) but in hind sight those were user / learning errors, not product problems.

Tom

My .17 fireball makes the little primer craters from flowing metal into the pin hole. Its one of those Classic stainless fluted rifles with the fancy floor plate.

It was suggested on here that I send the bolt off, by Deflave I think in a past thread.

Not pierced one yet, thankfully.


Good info, thanks.

Winter is coming, Jim, take some of that fire money and send the bolt off for a rebush. Flave is right.