.17 Caliber ?

[MR.G]

I saw that North American Arms has come out with a .17 caliber mini revolver. What the heck is a .17 caliber? Is it like a crimped down .22? Why?

 

[dude]

it is a .22Mag necked down to .17 with a jacketed bullet............and it is a BLAST to shoot out of rifles. The balistics beat the hell out of .22Mag and the round is still supersonic out beyond 200 yards.

Taurus has a 6" revolver in s/s but there is no need for all that weight. If they come out with a 6" titanium I will pick one up right away.

 

[dude]

...........although a little NAA revolver chambered for the round would be a waste of time & steel

 

[Flying V]

Unless they made a 16" carbine version.

 

[Greybeard]

Question: Is it like a crimped down .22? Why?

Actually, I believe .22 Mag case necked down to shoot lighter .17 bullet. A neat concept to get more fps and flatter trajectory from rifles. If like their .22s, the NAA revolvers have insufficient barrel length to get the bullets anywhere close to fps out of a rifle.

I have one of their .22LR/.22Mag models with 1 5/8" barrel and believe it generates maybe around 1100 fps on a good day. .17 gonna be somewhat faster, but considerably lighter. Without more research on this end, highly questionable penetration.

Sounds to me like a marketing man is adapting a short-range mouse gun to be able to shoot a prarie dog cartridge ...

 

[bad_dad_brad]

You said it Greybeard. New cartridges are like new fishing lures. They don't catch fish, they catch fisherman!

That said, I bought the Marlin bolt action in .17HMR. A lot of fun, expensive (ammo) fun. And I get to thinking also how cool it would be to have a revolver in this cartridge.

A bit about the Hornady .17 HMR from a web site that tested it in a Ruger 77/17:

The .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR) cartridge was conceived to offer the rimfire shooter a flatter shooting, farther reaching, and harder hitting cartridge for small pests and vermin. The basic case for the new .17 is the same as the .22 Magnum. This offers many advantages in both the manufacture of ammunition and firearms. The .22 Magnum case is readily available, and was a natural choice for necking down to .17 caliber. From the rifle maker’s viewpoint, all that is needed is a different barrel, and their .22 Magnum becomes their .17 Hornady Magnum.

Hornady advertises their .17 with a muzzle velocity of 2550 feet-per-second (fps). Over the screens of my PACT chronograph, the .17 ammo clocked 2448 fps at a distance of 12 feet from the muzzle, so the ballistics information from Hornady is very accurate. While the .17 HMR was not invented to compete with the .22 Rimfire Magnum, comparisons are inevitable. 2550 fps places the .17 HMR about 700 fps faster than the .22 Magnum with a forty grain bullet. The shape of the 17 grain .17 caliber bullet also has a much sharper profile than any of the .22 rimfire bullets on the market. The .17 HMR is loaded with Hornady’s polymer-tipped .172 inch diameter spitzer shaped projectile, which is ballistically superior to any other rimfire bullet.

The initial starting speed and superior ballistic coefficient result in a shorter time-of-flight advantage for the .17, decreasing the effects of a crosswind and flattening the arc of trajectory. Comparing the .17 HMR with the 40 grain .22 Magnum, both sighted to point-of-aim at 100 yards, the .17 drops less than eight inches at 200 yards, while the .22 Magnum drops almost 21 inches at the same range. Wind drift of the .17 HMR is roughly half that of the .22 Magnum at any given range. Any way you cut it, the .17 HMR is the flattest shooting and fastest rimfire cartridge available.