[Scottro]

I know this used to be a concern with corrosive-primed, and/or blackpowder ammo, but has anyone out there ever REALLY experienced "chamber ringing" or damage to a LR chamber from shooting .22 shorts ?

In over 30 years of shooting (which includes lots and lots of .22 shorts) I've never seen a hint of it in any of my .22s. And I'm not a gun cleaning fanatic. Generally, my guns get the gun string or bore snake every 2-3 bricks of ammo.

And if it really does happen, why doesn't it happen in revolvers shooting .22LR ? If "ringing" occurs, it would easily show up in revolvers, right ? Or for that matter, why doesn't the same phenom "ring" the throat of all guns shooting LRs ?

 

[ShootNut]

With modern ammo you would have to continuly shoot nothing but shorts over an extended period of time to see the effects of it. I have seen several in this condition, the carbon and lead build up in the end of the chamber makes it hard and in some cases impossible to get a LR round in it. Most can be fixed just by cleaning the chamber with the right solvent and brush.

 

[Mongo]

I was thumbing thru the Brownells catalogue and noticed item # 930-003-122. Its a .22 short conversion kit for a 10/22. Its made by Volquartsen. The kit includes bolt, striker, spring guide rod and spring, and magazine. It dosen't say anything about needing anything for the barrel to shoot shorts tru it. Its a bit pricey though. You could just buy an old .22 rifle that'll shoots shorts.

 

[USA Varminter]

You could buy a new .22 rifle for the price of the volquartsen conversion, plus the price of extra .22 short magazines for the conversion, you could get a scope.

The deal w/ shooting .22 shorts is that you must specifically clean the chamber as well as the barrel, not because its in the way of cleaning the barrel and just getting it by chance. Also most rifles designed to .22 LR will not chamber a .22 short from their magazine, some will but in others the lips on the magazine release the round before the tip is pointed into the chamber and it just jams there, requiring single loading, a pain in some tiny recievers under a scope.

But if you need to nail a raccoon on your bird feeder at 2 am w/ neighbors who live nearby but not in the direction of the bird feeder they work pretty well.

 

[Crete]

No, unless the Shorts were manufactured before 1926 and the weapon is left uncleaned for more that a few weeks.

Since such a combination is highly unlikely, there is no worry.

Older ammo (pre-1926) is fun to shoot, whether .22 Shorts or LRs/Longs, but scrub w/a brush and clean the bore with lots of hot soapy water, afterwards and before putting it away, unless you want to shoot some more the next day (not the following week).

Just use common sense with old corrosive .22 Shorts.

Now, modern .22 Shorts shoot fine in a .22 LR chamber. Just pass a Bore Snake through the bore once, after shooting 50 or so, in order to be able to chamber a Long or LR, later.

If you plan to shoot .22 Shorts all year long, or once a month, you don't need to clean the bore, until you plan to move to Longs or LRs, again.

Simple, no?

 

[Scottro]

I'm with you on this one, Crete. I don't believe corrosion/erosion is an issue w/ modern ammo. I just wanted to know if anyone had experienced any bona fide long term problems.

 

[Airedale]

In the late seventies I purchased a used S+W model 17 that was about 10 yrs old and looked like new on the outside. I had pretty severe extraction problems with LR ammo and opon examination I could see rings in each of the chambers about half way down. No matter what kind of solvent I used I could not get them to come out. The empty case sticking was so bad I sent the gun back to S+W to see if the rings could be polished out. I got a call from the repair department and they told me that the rings were caused from firing shorts. Also if the rings were polished out the chambers would be just out of spec, so to make it right they recommended a new cylinder be fitted. The question is not if shorts can eventually damage a chamber because they can. The question is how many shorts does it take before you start seeing damage. I will tell you what I am not about to find out because I will not use them in any of my guns. If I have to use some sort of low powered ammo it will have the long case.

 

[frosty03]

I have heard that one over and over. I love shooting shorts...still do.

I have a 541-S that has seen a steady diet of the little rounds with no loss of accuracy. If I would shoot a lot of shorts, give it a good cleaning and then your LR rounds will do fine. They will not dirty the chamber any more than a LR round, but they will put the fouling a bit shorter in the chamber and can make a LR round hard to chamber.

I have put thousands of rounds through the 541-S. When I swab the chamber and put match ammo in it, it is still my most accurate rifle...bar none. I have had mine since 1979 and it is still going strong.

Frosty

 

[MikeL]

The lead build-up in the chamber can be cleaned out with no damage. The situation with Airedale's gun was that the sides of the chamber erroded from the hot gases (similar to throat erosion on centerfires). When LR was then fired in it the case bulged out into the rings and wouldn't extract. It must have takent a LOT of Shorts to cause that.

 

[Airedale]

Mike you are exactly right on what was happening to cause the fired cases to stick. I can tell you that the damage to the chambers was so slight that you could hardly see it. If I fired just a couple of rounds I could eject but things were a little sticky. Three or four it got worse and a whole cylinder full I would have to bang on the ejector rod. The gun being a revolver compounded the problem because of multiple chambers. I thought it was a bad cylinder with some tool marks. Smith And Wesson diagnosed the problem as firing a steady diet of shorts. I did find out later that the only ammo the previous owner fired in the gun was shorts. I tracked him down because I thought S+W might be trying to give me the business on a defective gun but they hit the nail on the head. The bottom line is if enough shorts are fired they can burn in.

 

[9588]

I have a K-22 from about that era, and I have fired a LOT of long rifles through it. It has what is likely those same rings in the cylinder as Airedale had. I have tried all kinds of polishing to remove them, but no luck. I leave them alone. They don't really bother me because they are at the end of long rifle cases. I wonder if cylinders from that time were soft enough to pit from gases after a few years. I only shoot bulk ammo, but I wonder if longer cased ammo would stick. I may try some Mini-mags or such soon.