Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors .228 Bullets

Was visiting a LGS today in Belchertown Ma. and in the "odds & ends " corner there were 4 or 5 boxes of .228 77gr spire point bullets , 50 to a box, $14.99 per box. Custom bullets but I don't recall the name, none I had ever heard of. If anyone can use them PM me for contact info. Please be someone that will use them and not just triple the price to resell.

77 grains? Might be too long for our Savages. One way to find out though- someone should buy them and measure them. If longer than .750" they may well be problematic.

Never thought of that, maybe work in a break action drilling or combination gun. If I get up there again I'm sure he will let me measure one.

Yeah, there's a lot of long heavy .227/.228 bullets out there. We tend to forget that we were not alone in employing that diameter bullet when in fact it was/is fairly popular in Europe for use in the 5.6x52R rifles that those guys used for alpine hunting in various single shot rifles - invariably with barrels rifled with faster twists than what we have suffered with for the last 110 years or so in our beloved Savages. Kind of like us with our .223's from a generation ago rifled with slow twists geared toward light-ish bullets when current trends call for devilishly fast twists and gi-normously long/heavy bullets for long range shooting. That's why European .22 HP (5.6x52R) ammo is such a hit-or-miss proposition when employed in our Savages.

Another thing we forget is that the "standard" bullet diameter for .22's in America back 100 million years ago was .227/.228, not the .224" we enjoy today. That didn't really change until the mid-late 1930's when .22 wildcatting took hold, fueled by the advent of the .22 Hornet (which was initially engendered via .22 rimfire barrels with even tighter bores than that, but I digress and am starting to even confuse myself). Suffice to say if one messes with .22 centerfires of any stripe older than 80 years old or so, one had best be aware of the bore diameter and rate of twist if optimal performance is the goal.