.22 Remington BR

Although the .22 BR (BenchRest)Remington cartridge has never been that popular with hard-core varmint or small game shooters, it is, nevertheless, easy to load and fun to use. I call it my “no-sweat” wildcat.

History is an interesting part of any cartridge, so let’s begin there. In the 1970s when benchrest shooting was really starting to gain in popularity, thanks to advances in firearms, ammunition and especially bullets, Dr. Louis Palmisano and Ferris Pindell invented the .22 PPC. Based on the .220 Russian case, the aim was to produce an efficient cartridge whose sole purpose in life was to place shot after shot in one tiny hole at benchrest competitions. It did that with amazing regularity.

Not to sit by and watch, some four short years later     in 1978, Remington introduced a short, fat cartridge that was based on the theory and efficiency of the .22 PPC. Since the .22 PPC was formed from the Russian 7.62x39 military cartridge complete with an unpopular .445-inch rim size, Remington gambled on an upstart, new cartridge based on a very popular .308 case with a .473-inch rim diameter. Naturally Remington was not only thinking of a cartridge (and later a cartridge family) but also a vehicle to shoot it all in. Since the original .22 BR was formed from .308 brass – but with a small rifle primer – the rifle part would come easy.

There were some other problems, however, that made one wonder where Remington was really going with all this. In the year of introduction (1978), the parent company introduced a “universal” benchrest case (called the UBBR) in the familiar .308 length and profile. According to references, this universal .308 Winchester case – the word “Winchester” was dropped for obvious reasons – was made with thinner walls and specially annealed for case forming. According to Remington all you had to do was shorten the case and simply neck it down to .22    caliber. As mentioned, the case was made with a small rifle primer pocket in an effort to produce more uniform powder ignition in a smaller case.

In the same year, a 40-XBR target-type rifle was chambered in the .22 BR; in 1979 the same rifle was chambered for the 6mm BR, which was again nothing more than the .308 UBBR case shortened and necked to .243 inch. In 1980 the XP-100 was brought on line and chambered for the 7mm BR, again using the .308 UBBR case necked to .284 inch. Strangely, though, with all this hoopla, not a single loaded or formed factory case was made available until almost a decade later when the 7mm BR and the 6mm BR were brought out in factory loads in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

There was still another ironic twist to this Ilion soap opera. For instance, if you were alert enough you may have spotted that no 7mm BR brass was even available for the XP-100 for almost six years after this pistol was on the market. According to my Remington historical friend Jack Heath, the reason was a very high scrap rate when forming 7mm BR brass, and the problem was not solved until 1985.

So in all of this, what happened to the lonely .22 BR? While it has seemed to have vanished into the great beyond, the .22 BR Remington can be revived, but hurdles must be overcome. First, you have to form or neck your own brass. That is no problem if you know where to look for brass. The second is a rifle – again not a problem, and I’ll show you the easy way around both.

Before all that, however, let’s compare the .22 BR with a few close wildcat relatives. With safe reloading practices, you can, with off-the-shelf 50-grain, .224-inch bullets, raise the .22 BR to around 3,700 fps. The .22 PPC can churn up about 3,418, while the .22 CHeetah (which might not be a fair comparison as it exceeds the famed .220 Swift by about 10 percent) will hit close to 3,900 fps depending on barrel length and outside temperature. Still, to get a closer prospective using readily available commercial ammunition and still loading that 50-grain bullet, the .222 Remington can edge up to 3,140 fps, the .223 Remington, around 3,240 fps and one of my favorites, the .224 Weatherby, about 3,700 fps with 24-inch barrels.

With all that in the open, we can now start on the project. While nothing is chambered for the .22 BR on the commercial market, the first step is to check your inventory or purchase a Remington Model 700 short-action rifle that is chambered in the .22-250 Remington, .308 Winchester, .243 Winchester, etc., all with a rim size of .473 inch. My first choice was the .22-250 Remington because it was in stock, and the good folks at Remington agreed to help participate in the project. But why a Remington Model 700 BDL? I’ll explain in a minute.

Upon arrival, the action and the stock were separated and sent in two different directions. This project came to be simply because I could not find a sporter weight rifle chambered in the .22 PPC. Some years back, Sako had one, but sadly it has been discontinued. Sorting through my usual amount of “press” mail, an interesting item appeared from a company called E.R. Shaw (5312 Thoms Run Road, Bridgeville PA 15017). A company whose origins began in 1916 as the Small Arms Manufacturing Company, in 1975 it was purchased by Ed Shaw, himself an avid hunter and rifle enthusiast. Today the company makes sporter barrels for all popular and wildcat cartridges, not to mention some very interesting possibilities.

While E.R. Shaw makes barrels in various contours, diameters and lengths, the one that turned my head is the category in which Shaw will supply a barrel, polish and blue it and match it exactly to current Remington barrel contours. In effect, you can send your barreled action to Shaw, have a new barrel installed in a new and different cartridge and when you get it home it will drop into that same stock without any modifications, cutting or enlarging the barrel channel. Is that great or what?

That’s exactly what I did, and it all worked perfectly. In fact, if you’re not in the mood for the .22 BR Remington, how about the .257 Ackley, 7mm JRS or choose from a list of popular or wildcat offerings that is too long to list here. By this time the stock came back from having a recoil pad installed (my crusade for deleting those horrible plastic buttplates never ends). I tweaked the trigger a bit and installed a Leupold 12x scope in Burris high gloss rings installed on the rifle with Redfield bases.

The next step proved a bit more taxing. Since Remington does not make .22 BR brass or ammunition, I had a few choices. I could make  the brass (albeit a long, drawn-out pro-cess) from common, everyday .308 brass with a large primer pocket. However, according to Jim Stekl (original inventor of the .22 BR), it’s okay but not as accurate as employing brass with a small rifle pocket. A call to John Chisnall – he’s the product manager of ammunition at Remington – offered no encouragement in my quest. He told me 6mm BR and 7mm BR brass was out of the picture completely. Reason? No volume.

Jim Stekl mentioned Lapua still makes the brass at reasonable prices; Norma made it also at about double the “reasonable” price of Lapua. Skimming the pages of Gun List, an ad under the name of Blue Star Cartridge and Brass caught my eye, from which I purchased 6mm BR brass. [Blue Star is no longer in business, but Lapua and Norma still offer 6mm BR brass. – Ed.]

Forming .22 BR brass can be tackled a number of ways. As mentioned, if you simply can’t get 6mm BR or 7mm BR brass, you can, ina pinch, use the .308 Winchester case, keeping in mind that accuracy may suffer with a large rifle primer. Again, Jim Stekl tells me that using a case with a large primer is fine for varmints, but for the nth degree in accuracy (read benchrest), cases with small rifle primers are still best. For forming .308 to the .22 BR case, you’ll need the RCBS CFDS (case forming die set). This set is complete with an extended shellholder and neck reamer, but I’d really try to purchase 6mm BR brass before going in that direction.

The easy way is, of course, to purchase 6mm BR brass and order .22 BR dies and simply run each case into the die. In one deft motion you have a .22 BR case ready for action with the exception of some minor case trimming. Neck thickness does not change with this minor forming (from .243 to .224 inch), and the resultant case length is 1.560 inches. Trim all cases to 1.510 inches, and do not let them “grow” beyond 1.520 inches. Cham-fer the inside and outside of the mouth, install a good benchrest small rifle primer like the Rem-ington 71⁄2 or CCI BR-4, and you’re ready for the next step.

Despite a lack in popularity, it is surprising how much data can be found on the .22 BR. For instance, an older Hodgdon manual lists starting and maximum loads with seven bullet weights and five powders, from Varget to H-322. It is also worth noting that the .22 BR is very comfortable with a number of propellants, as only one of the loads went anywhere near 51,000 cup. Bullets range from lightweight 40-grain
Ballistic Tips to 70-grain softpoints. I was never a big fan of heavy 70-grain bullets in .224-inch guise, so my main interest, therefore, lies with bullet weights from 40 to 55 grains. One heavy bullet, a 63-grain Sierra, is shown for comparison.

To squeeze the most out of the .22 BR, each charge was dropped by a vintage Lyman or RCBS powder measure, then trickled up to the exact weight shown in the table. As the charges were dropped, I made a few notes about how well each metered and their load density. Varget metered great, grain for grain, even with larger granules. In fact, once the measure was set, there really was no need for trickling. H-322
metered easily, while H-335 and BL-C(2) flowed like silk through either measure as did Accurate XMR-2015 and AA-2460. When looking at case volume, notes show that Varget filled the case with 33.5 grains to the point of mild compression, and examples like H-322 (29.0 grains), AAC-2460 (32.5 grains) and XMR-2015 (30.5 grains) filled the case to the neck/shoulder juncture. Favorites like H-322, H-335 and BL-C(2) generally provided slightly less load density.

Bullet seating is almost a personal matter and borders on hear-say and sorcery, depending upon whom you talk to. In some pet rifles, seating bullets so they just touch the lands works fine; in others, seating the bullet at least one diameter into the case works even better. In the .22 BR, at least one-half to a full bullet diameter seating depth was employed – the former on lighter projectiles, the latter on bullets 55 grains and up. This allows for flawless feeding in the rifle while still allowing for a good measure of accuracy without unneeded or unwanted pressure problems.

The other problem that might arise when chambering a rifle for a cartridge that hardly exceeds 2.00 inches is feeding. In the .22-250 Remington action, placing the .22 BR cartridge in the center of the follower allowed for faultless feeding with all bullet weights. When the magazine was loaded with three rounds, they fed into the chamber if the bolt were pushed very slowly and the cartridges were stacked perfectly one on top of the other.

Armed with the Remington Model 700, a bag full of handloads and an Oehler Chronotach, the outcome was surprising. For instance, Varget filled the case to compression status on two loads, velocities were up there, but accuracy was mediocre. In fact, when the first group was fired (the first load listed in the table), three shots spanned a full 2 inches.

As I progressed, some favorites started to appear. Hodgdon’s H-335 was the winner on a number of occasions with velocity around 3,964 fps and group size just a tad over .5 inch using a charge of 33.0 grains under a Speer 45-grain spitzer. Still another was 31.0 grains combined with a Hornady 55-grain V-MAX. While velocity was down to 3,603 fps, accuracy was still under that magical inch. Hodgdon’s H-322 did well with the Sierra 52-grain hollowpoint boat-tail match using 28.5 grains for 3,352 fps and one-inch groups. Topping that was a slight increase to 29.0 grains for 3,439fps with an average group size of 5⁄8 inch. Of bullets in the 60-grain class and above, I’d go with that Sierra 63-grain semipointed over 33.0 grains of BL-C(2). Velocity was 3,433 fps.

The only load I would reduce would be the 55-grain Nosler Bal-listic Tip using 32.5 grains of AA-2460 that produced 3,734 fps with 11⁄2-inch groups. This one I’d start out with around 31.0 grains to be sure.

In the end, working with the .22 BR turned out to be an enjoyable experience with a cartridge that may have already been put to rest. Benchrest shooters really like the .22 BR, and as a casual varmint shooter I can see why. Velocities are high, groups are tight and this shooter is happy. What more can a guy ask for?

My thanks to all who helped in   this project, including Remington, Leupold, Burris, E.R. Shaw, Jack Heath and, of course, Jim Stekl.