Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors 22HP A.I. Dies

Anyone have or know where i could get a set of dies resonable for my G in 22HP AI? I have been making my own fairly easy but would still like a set. Thanks.

Joe

Try CH-4D.

Try CH-4D.

Echo chamber.

maybe not reasonable, not that hard fire form, which I am sure you already know

These are a little tricky to make. You cant just throw a normal 22HP in and fire form with a light load. It splits the cases apart. I have to do it in a couple steps using cream of wheat as a filler on the first step. Still not hard but time consuming.

I use Redding .22-30/30 AI 40 deg. dies but swapped the .224 expander button w/ the .228 from my .22 HP die. Not sure if Redding still offers them but RCBS does but there not cheap ( about $140 ) w/ 90-120 day delivery time. P. O. Ackley's book states cartridges are the same except for neck diameter and on my gun that is true. Using W-W .25-35 brass sized in .22 HP die, anneal at shoulder just below neck and fire formed using 27 grs. of IMR 3130. About 20-25% still split/crack at shoulder. Purchased 200 pcs. of Hornady .25-35 brass but haven't had a chance to try yet. Also, cases can only be reloaded once or twice before necks split. Might seem like a lot of wasted time and money until you start putting venison in the freezer. BTW, I know use .224 dia. bullets, 65gr. Sierra GK's or 64gr. Nosler BSB.

Ops................IMR 3031. Don't let your fingers get faster than your brain.

I make mine from 30-30 brass and have loaded them several times using standard 22HP loads without any failures.


Joe

Dgk, there's no good reason those for necks splitting that soon if they were well and truly annealed. When you say you only annealed the shoulders I'll take that as gospel, and kindly suggest that you include the entire necks in your annealing protocol. Concentrating/pinpointing heat in a small area not to include the surrounding areas will see said heat dissipating quickly and not get the critical area (or any surrounding area) hot enough.

Are you annealing before fireforming and again after? Brass will work harden a lot during such drastic alteration and needs to be annealed again afterward in my opinion. (But, as I've said before, my opinion may only be worth a bucket of warm spit!)