Jim Taylor
Foolin' Around In The Shop
Thursday, February 27, 2025, 13:10

Not much going on today. I was fooling around in the shop and got to wondering how the .22 Round Balls would do if I added a little powder? I have the primed .22 Long Rifle cases Denning sent me, so I decided to see what would happen. I got out my .22 bullet trap and set it on my desk.

Round Balls and primed cases

I loaded the first one with 0.35 gr. of Bullseye

I smeared a litle grease on the round ball and then I put a piece of plywood in front of the bullet trap to shoot into.

As you can see, the ball did not penetrate 1/2 of it's diameter and bounced out with quite a bit of energy. No, it didn't hit me. I had anticipated such a thing from previous experiments.

So I upped the powder charge.

And the results were about the same.

So I added more powder.

And the results were about the same. Thinking about it I knew from testing before that the priming in these cases would blow the round ball more than 2" down the barrel. Just the priming shot the round ball out of my Bearcat Shopkeeper with enough force to dent a cardboard.

As a last shot I loaded one of my "standard" loads that uses the 38 gr. HP that Sean sent me over 2.0 gr. of Bullseye. These do over 1400 fps out of the 6" Single Six.

Entrance

Exit

I looked for the bullet in the trap but all I found was lead dust.