Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada 65 grain 224 bullets - Home made using RF cases and commercial jackets

I just finished doing up another 65 grain bullet using commercial jackets. On the left is a 65 grain bullet with a 50 grain core. The bullet on the right is also a 65 grain bullet, but the bullet jacket is made from a fired RF case. The core on the RF cased bullet is 55 grains. 5 grains heavier. The RF jacket is thinner than the commercial jacket. The RF jacketed bullet will expand more rapidly, but using either, coyotes will not know the difference.

I wanted something similar to the 63 gr. Sierra SMP.

The RF jacket was made from Winchester 22LR. The commercial jacket is a J4.

Some additional info. I will try these from several rifles. The 20 inch Rem 700 223 Rem will probably manage about 2950 fps. The 223 Wylde barrel is longer - 24 inches - and should make 3000 fps.

I will also try it from a 225 Win. It has a 24 inch barrel also, and should reach 3200 fps or a little better.

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Okay, here are the completed cartridges I put a 55 grain Cam Pro bullet beside the home made 65 grain, for reference.

Nice Steve...often, but with this post especially, you take me back to the late 80's or thereabouts. I lived on the border, within sight of Brockville Ontario. A couple of times I met, at our gun club, a Canadian guy who spent part of the summer near there. He'd be shooting bullets of his own making, .224's jacketed with fired rf cases and larger, don't remember for sure, but jacketed with, IIRC, fired 9mm brass. I think he was from somewhere up in the direction of Peterborough.

That's cool! I have only met a couple of guys who made their own bullets.

I guess I was in my early 40s and this older fellow in his 80s was shooting an ancient single shot Hornet. He got all excited when he saw my home made bullets, and we talked for about 2 hrs without firing a shot. 😄

You meet the most interesting people on gun ranges!

The two test rifles. The Contender has a 24 inch barrel, but is a few inches shorter than the 700 with a 20 inch barrel.

Steve, I enjoy reading the Canada section of the campfire but rarely reply. I sorta feel as though I’m interrupting the conversation since I’m not Canadian. 😁. As I’ve said many times before, we couldn’t ask for better neighbors. My reason for “interrupting today is to thank you for your interesting and informative posts. I don’t know anyone that has made their own jacketed bullets so I find this thread very interesting. Thanks for your always interesting contributions. 👍

Thanks for the kind words. I would suggest dropping by my site, but for the first time in 24 years, it's been down for a few days. I have a brief explanation of bullet making there.

Despite the pandemic and shortages, I am still able to shoot a number of calibres.

Don't be shy. Jump in if you want.

Were you making .224 bullets using 22LR cases for jackets at one point? I seem to recall someone doing that. Seemed like a good use of 22LR brass although I bet it would be time consuming.

Yes, I have been doing this for 20 years. For my 222s and 223s, I use 22LR cases almost exclusively. For my more powerful 22 centrefires, I use commercial jackets.

I was under the impression that anything that drives them faster than around1700 would make them turn into a puff of dust! I have been using them in a K-hornet TC pistol barrel. Now I will run them in my .223s. I just had no confidence in the higher speeds. The 22 case was said to be too brittle. I have commercial cases and the Corbin dies to straighten them along with a Corbin press. Have made .429 bullets and .357 all lead target bullets. It is all the fun I can have with my clothes on. He Haw! Be Well my Canuckistan friends, RZ.

The bullets I make are jacketed bullets, not cast.

Way back when the 22 Hornet and some other cartridge were brand new, finding jacketed bullets was difficult to impossible. For that reason, they created jacketed bullets made from 22 LR cases in order to push them at the unheard of speed of 2200 to 2400 fps. The only way to do this was to wrap the lead in a material that could withstand the higher velocity. That was when using 22LR cases as jackets was born.

Steve, This is probably a dumb question but are you melting the lead and pouring it into the jacket or is there some type of swaging that you do?

There's no such thing as a dumb question.

I used to pour lead into what is called a core mold. It produces little cylinders. I found that I preferred to cut cores from rolls of lead wire.



Whether it is a cut wire core or the core from a mold, both have to be swaged into perfect cylinders. Because lead is dense, squeezing it into a cylinder in a core forming die produces cores that are very uniform. For example, the cores for 65 gr. bullets made from a 22 rimfire cases, the cores are all 55 grains. They vary by no more than 0.1 of a grain. Rimfire jackets vary by more than that.

I weigh the finished bullets and sort them, so that they vary by no .3 of a grain. Of all the bullets I make in one batch, typical about 200 bullets, the lightest to the heaviest is no more than .7 gr. If I was to shoot them all and not bother sorting, it wouldn't make any difference. There is a max of 1 percent difference. Sorted, it is less than 0.5 percent.

I wanted to follow up with some pictures.

Briefly, I sort the RF cases by maker, clean them up and make them into jackets using a jacket making die. You can see the Winchester and SK stamps on the bottom of the finished jackets. The jacket making die unfolds the rim and the result is a brass cup. When you sort the cases, there is a lot less weight variation.. This first picture shows an RF case that was made into a jacket beside a core. There is also a finished bullet. Of course, nothing has been cleaned yet.

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The core is squeezed into a cylinder using a core forming die. Bullet dies are approximately the same size as reloading dies, but larger in diameter. Here is a core seating die squeezing the finished lead core into the jacket.



After seating the core, they need a point, so the next die is a point former. In the picture below (left) is a bullet that has been pointed, but the tip has not been smoothed. You can see the lead that is squeezed out of the tip. The final die in the process is a tip former which cleans up the tip and makes it smooth. When making open tips or hollow points, a tip former is not required.



So I generally do up 200 or 400 in a sitting. When I make bullets from RF cases, I weight each one and sort them. Occasionally, I get one that is under weight. As you can see in this pic. I have a bunch of polished cases that I am weighing. They are supposed to be 60 grainers. Here's one that was underweight. The culled bullets are grouped by weight too. I still use 59.3 grain bullets, but prefer no more than 0.3 of a grain difference per box.



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Very interesting. In the third picture down of the two pointed bullets, the jacket looks copper color. A trick of the camera light or something else?

Good snag. Those are commercial jackets, not RF ones. I used that pic to display the tips. Regardless of jacket though, the pointing die leaves an unshaped tip,

By far, making jackets from RF cases takes the most rime.

They have to be sorted by headstamp for best uniformity.
They get their first cleaning in an ultrasonic cleaner to remove the dirt and as much of the burnt priming compound as possible. It is very abrasive.
They are annealed.
They are put through the jacket making die to unfold the rim.
They are cleaned a second time in an ultrasonic cleaner.
They are put in dollar store tubs for storage. The large tubs hold approximately 3500 - 4000 cases. I have approximately 50,000 jackets made. On the left, I have a few thousand commercial jackets in white boxes and clear plastic bags. Mostly 30 cal Sierras.



The cores take almost as much time. I get the wire from a recycler. It is cut to a rough weight - approximately 2 grains over the finished weight - lubed, and squeezed into cylinders.

After they are formed, the lube must be removed. I store them on a steel shelf because of the weight. The shelf has about 15,000 cores on it. I have more cores and jackets stored on another shelving unit.

Looks like the same press I use. It is a Corbin's isn't it? Be Well, RZ.

Yes, that's what I was thinking about. It's pretty cool. I just bought 10 000 55gr Campro bullets for .223, which will take me about 12 hours to load into ammunition- not counting cleaning the brass. Making that many bullets myself from rimfire cases or commercial jackets would seemingly take forever....But I find the processes interesting nonetheless.

forever is much better than never being able to buy again....

Yes, forever is much better than having to buy again. I make 224 and 6mm varmint bullets from 22 cases. Each of these buckets holds about 45 to 50 thousand usable cases. I have six left to process, but am in no rush. I have 10s of thousands of cores, jackets and bullets in various stages of assembly. I do some in the winter, or when the weather sucks.

Presently, I have over 15,000 224 and 6mm bullets completed, in boxes.


Yes. It is a Corbin Series II press. The precursor to the CSP that has been sold for a number of years.