Indians For Guns

I haven`t been near a bluing tank for years Asif - I do as little gunsmithing as possible nowadays ! .......... Although I do have a project in mind - as soon as I can find a good BSA Martini 12/15 as a `donor` gun.
Crumbs - I`ve just noticed that Abhijeet now has five rounds AND a cylinder-full........that`s getting towards serious armoury !

Wots he gunning for I wonder?Well, somebody better break out the ceramic chest plates...

Whats the donor gun project caliber going to be?

.22 Hornet.

The 22 hornet is such a lovely caliber!

I too have a future project planned for one as well. One thing I want to do is make a plinker that can shoot heavy bullets, the fastest twist I've seen in a hornet barrel is 1-14 and I'd like to do one with about a 1-9 twist so I could shoot 55 gr bullets at reduced velocities. Never seen that done before, and if I wasn't happy I could ream it out to 223.

Yeah, sweet little calibre. I can`t remember what the BSA Martini rate of twist is but it`s pretty slow as far as I know. That the calibre is best served by a heavier bullet is obvious when you compare the retained energy at 200 yards between - for example - the Federal 33 gr and 45 gr cartridges. Only 19 ft lbs difference at the muzzle but at 200 yds the 45 gr has 254 ft lbs of energy whilst the 33 gr has only 110 ft lbs. It`s a real shame that Federal have just dropped their `hot` loading which had well over 900 ft lbs of muzzle energy and retained over 600 ft lbs at 100 yds - something like 85% of what most other loads produce at the muzzle. A real little hot rod.
I want to retain the barrel of the Martini that I get so it will have to be a good one - any erosion forward of the chamber will be eliminated when the new chamber is cut.......not that you`ld expect to see much erosion in a .22 rf.
I`ve seen 12/15 Martinis that look like smooth bores when the bores are first examined but cleaning often shows the rifling to be deep and crisp - just years of bullet lube clagging up the rifling. Gun clubs never seem to clean the club owned guns.
The 55 gr load sounds like a really good idea. I shouldn`t worry too much about reducing the velocity - keeping it reasonably high will assist in keeping the trajectory as flat as possible. Should be really effective on varmints well out beyond 200 yards but with effectively zero recoil and reasonable noise levels. Nice gun for your boys to use as well. What action were you thinking of using ?
Mine will be for long range bunnies and short ( ish ) range Fox - 250 lbs ft of energy @ 200 yds is plenty enough for a good clean kill. Fox don`t require much to achieve a good kill.....they knock over very easily. Are Coyotes the same ?