Old Article From Mike Beleveau - Not Cap & Ball Related

[tpelle]

Having been involved with handguns for going on a half century, I have gathered a fairly extensive library of "gun books". On cold, snowy winter days like today I'll sometimes pull one down and browse through it. It's fun to look back on "old" theories and opinions, and see which ones ring true today and which ones have been discarded.

Today I pulled out an issue of "Handguns '92", and noticed that one of the contributing authors was none other than Mike Beliveau, who wrote an article on the choice of the 22WRFM Automag II as a defensive handgun choice. His reasoning was that an inexperienced first-time buyer of a defensive handgun, having purchased something in 9mm or 45, would not practice enough to become proficient due to the effects of recoil and the cost of ammo ($15 for a box of 50 - Those were the good old days!). He also reasoned that a compact and lightweight pistol was more likely to be carried, and a pocket pistol actually in your pocket was better than a full-sized pistol in the gun safe.

I admit that I share in much the same thinking. My most carried pistol is a Bersa 380 ACP. It's compact, accurate and light, easy to conceal in a Don Hume IWB holster, and offers similar ballistics to the 1851 Navy, and nobody with a 51 Navy, back in the day, was considered to be unarmed for defensive purposes, were they? And my Bersa carries 9 shots instead of six, and I carry a second magazine loaded with 8 more that can be available in a couple of seconds.

But it was interesting to see a familiar name in an unfamiliar context.

 

[Old Fuff]

Mike and his observations were in good company. Bill Jordan also recommended the .22 WRM for back-up or off-duty carry- for much the same reasons.

 

[tpelle]

My only issue with the idea is that any type of rimfire ammo I've ever tried seems to have some (albeit small) percentage of cartridges that are sort of "duds". You will have a round not fire, and when you look at it later it will display a good firing pin/hammer strike with a crushed rim. However, if you re-chamber the same round and give it another hit on a different part of the rim, it will fire normally. I don't think I've EVER had a centerfire cartridge fail to fire.

This leads me to conclude that the process to distribute the priming compound into the rim is less reliable than the process that produces centerfire primers.

I seriously considered at one time buying one of those little Beretta pocket pistols - the Tomcat, I think it's called - but in the end just couldn't convince myself to do it.

 

[Jim K]

One reason for misfires in rimfire rounds is that on rare occasions the priming compound doesn't fill the entire circumference of the rim; in other words, there are gaps. But that is uncommon and the problem of misfires in high pressure RF rounds like .22 WMR likely has another cause.

.22 WMR and some other cartridges work at pretty high pressures; .22 WRM runs c. 24,500 psi. If you increase the pressure of a rimfire round, the brass has to be made thicker to contain that pressure without blowing out at the rim. That means that firing pins and springs that were perfectly adequate to dent the rim of a .22 LR will not be enough for the WMR.

And remember that firing a priming compound requires not just enough force to dent the primer (or rim) metal and crush the compound, but to do it very rapidly. Not only force is needed but speed in exerting that force.

So it the gun is marginal, as many converted .22 LR guns are, there will be failures to fire with .22 WMR. In some guns, mainly handguns, increasing the hammer mass may not be practical and increasing mainspring tension can create other problems, like a trigger that is very difficult to pull.

Jim