quote:

Originally posted by Bob from down under:
Looks like its time to dust off the .17 rem. Its up the back of the gun safe somewhere. With all the new info with blue dot it will be cheap to run. Still got the cases and bullets in the cupboard to. $ 4.00/100 rems on the old price tags.

Bob,

be careful with Blue Dot in that 17 Rem.. I haven't worked with it yet.. and based on the arguements on the other trhead on the small rifle forum.. if you use it, I'd recommend working up very low and in 1/10 grain increments....say starting out at about 30% of full capacity....

until I get there to test it out myself, I don't feel real comfortable with Blue Dot and the 17 Rem....I believe it is a viable powder, but parameters are much tighter than on say a 223...

I am also estimating the max velocity might be in the 3000 fps range...can't say until I get there and see for myself...

Cheers,
I hear you. I'll be looking for a post from you re BD and 17 rem before I dust thigs off. Thanks mate.

Both of my 17HMR rifles have new homes, but for a different reason. I wasn't happy with the HMR's terminal performance on PD's. The 22H is getting used more; however, the new love of my life for short range PD's is the 17AH. With a 1000 fps more horsepower, the HMR is no match. Plus, I can load it for less than what the HMR costs.

I enjoy shooting the 17 and 22 rimfire rifles. Eley 17 HM2 ammo was on sale at $ 3.97 per box in Jan of this year so I got a bunch of it. Last year I found a good buy on 17 HMR ammo. I ll be shooting the 17 rimfire rifles for some time. Its unlikley that I will ever sell my rimfire rifles. But I may be doing more reloading for the centerfire varmint rifles.

I go to Wyoming every June to shoot pdogs. It's on a very large ranch that has certain fields designated rimfire only. These tend to be the honey holes. So, I'll be keeping my 77/17. It's the only thing I use it for, and it's only once a year.

My hat goes off to all you guys who are able to find the ammo for your 17's. Personally, I never had one and don't wish for one; for rimfire, I'll stick to the good ole 22lr. If I need more firepower, I'll step up to a small centerfire. I sort of see the 17 rimfires as a "bandwagon" that a bunch folks jumped on, and some of them now regret it. Am I wrong?

Davis Goertzen

While ammo prices will keep it lightly used, it's 100 yard accuracy is a real hoot to play with, and ours will not be going anywhere.

here in the UK we pay £10 to £14 ($20-$28) a box for 17hmr and 22wmr

Anyone know why you can pick up a box of HM2 ammo for $5/box but HMR ammo is still 12 or higher? I dont see the logic in that!

The HM2 was nearly did on arrival. Be like introducing the 44 special after the 44 mag. The other thing was the lack of guns available. They annouced all kinds of guns in HM2. But very few ever made it to market. They never could get the semi autos right. The cases have a habit of splitting. So revolvers are a no go with the cartridge. So it is very simply that very little HM2 ammo is selling. Lots of people are hooked on the mag so the price will be considerable more. Simple supply and demand. Way more supply than demand on the HM2. The mag is the opposite. I figure it won't be long til you cannot pickup a box of HM2. The mag is without a doubt here to stay.

I bought 500 rounds of .17HMR on sale last spring (early 2007) for under eight bux a box mail order. That will last me a long time. I only shoot 3 rounds at the range to check the sight at the beginning of each summer, then usually one round per ground hog shot in the back yard. It isn't a rifle I take to the range to shoot for fun. It has a fire mission - killing GH in the back yard, and it does that very well.

My 93R17FV isn't for sale, and own't be.

I shoot all the center fire varmint rifles for fun (.22 Hornet, .223 Rem, .22-250, and .243 Win.). I reload for all of them. If I end up out of .17HMR, I'll just suck it up and buy another box. A box lasts me a couple of years, sometimes longer. There isn't anything that works as well as the .17HMR for the back yard fire mission.

I suppose I could get a .17 Fireball, but that just seems like a lot of work. I can buy enough .17HMR to last me the rest of my life and then some for way less than the price of a rifle, dies, brass, etc. for a .17 Fireball.

Some times the rifle you already have is the least expensive alternative. It is in my case.

Fitch

My only move toward a .17 was buying bargain priced set of 17 Ackley Bee form dies. One of these days a 17 HMR Contender barrel will get rechambered.

I've tried to warn folks against the HMR,people flocked to it like sheep,i just shook my head at everyone running over the Ruger/Hornady cliff.
The .17 fireball or .17 rem will serve much better
for a handloader.
I ran up some loads to mimic or surpass the HMR in my .17 remington BDL
All Loads 20gr. Hornady V-Max
CCI magnum primer
2.185 O.A.L.
5ft velocity
7.0grs Blue Dot
2642,2660,2683,2615,2662,2640
8.0grs Blue Dot
2864,2853,2836,2864
9.0grs Blue Dot
3098,3119
I have not pressure tested any of these loads, and claim no responsibility with the use of these loads,just info of what i've done.
The blue dot loads work awesome in the .17 rem.

Here's a crow dispatched with the 7.0gr blue dot load.
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Campground/8979/crow.html

17 Rem,

Thanks for sharing..

I hope you know you will probably have a few flaming you heavily once they read your post...
but I wouldn't take them too seriously...

your work shows it works just fine...

each guy seems to know someone who got hurt, although at times they are fuzzy on the facts....

which they offset that with not acknowleging that tons of guys have used this powder, for thousands of rounds collectively, and yet we all have our eyes, ears, noses, thumbs and fingers....

kinda like swearing off riding in a car, because you know some one who was being an idiot and hurt himself.. so you figure that all cars are real dangerous and people should just walk...

Bet the recoil in your BDL is about the same I am getting when I shoot that 17 HMR in the Ruger or Marlin...

quote:

I sort of see the 17 rimfires as a "bandwagon" that a bunch folks jumped on, and some of them now regret it. Am I wrong?

There is some truth to your statement. It's apparently true of some who have posted in this thread - but only because the ammo prices have gone up so much. That is also true of all other ammo prices and all reloading components as well, which seems to be lost in the noise.

Aside from those folks who are sitting on a huge stash of reloading supplies, shooting costs have doubled over the last couple of years, and I expect them to double again.

It also sort of depends on the situation and why the gun was purchased in the beginning. If it was purchased to be a cheap accurage gun to go plink with, it's appeal is going to have deteriorated inversly with the cost of ammo, or maybe, because it's an emotional thing, inversly with the square of ammo prices.

However, if it was purchased for a specific task, like in my case, because it was the best cartridge for the job, it hasn't been replaced by any center fire cartridge or the .22LR.

In my case, there is not a better cartridge for shooting ground hogs in my back yard. I have no regret about buying the 93R17FV at all. It was cheaper than dirt, accurate as a laser beam, reliable as gravity, and the perfect cartridge for the job. My wife loves it for shooting GH in the back yard. So do I.

GH are a problem here in PA, and very distructive. My horse pastures are back there so I don't want bullets ricocheting.

The .17HMR is much less likely to ricochet than a HP .22LR (which are notorious for ricocheting all over the place), the little 17g polymer tipped bullet doesn't come out the other side of the GH, it doesn't make much noise, and it is laser beam accurate to 100 yards out of my Savage 93R17FV, which is all I need.

In my case, it was the best available bullet for the mission, so I bought the rifle. When I saw ammo on sale, I bought 500 rounds. I still have a lot of it left.

That's the only place I use it. When I'm out doing walk around hunting of GH trying to get them before they get to the backyard, I take my CZ527 .22 Hornet loaded with a 35g V-MAX pushed by 13.2g of Lil'Gun. That also works great, but it is more cartridge than I need to shoot them in my back yard.

So no, you're not wrong, there are folks who did that, but your are not completely correct either, because there are folks that bought them for a reason, the reason hasn't changed, and it is still the best cartridge for the mission.

There are still folks out there that need one of these rifles, and it looks like they are going to get some bargains buying rifles from those that are disenchanted by ammo prices and don't have a use for the cartridge.

Life is like that.

Fitch

Price keeps going up but some of the local stores still sell out occasionally, guns should hold their value for a while at least, unlike the hm2...

Fitch,
that's a lot of gun for your needs,
You might look into these
http://www.saubier.com/smallcaliber/eichelbergerinterview.html

quote:

each guy seems to know someone who got hurt, although at times they are fuzzy on the facts....

which they offset that with not acknowleging that tons of guys have used this powder, for thousands of rounds collectively, and yet we all have our eyes, ears, noses, thumbs and fingers....

That reminds me so much of the Winchester AAHS basewad scare.Folks we're adamant it existed, yet no one could produce an actual blow up on the forums,though many claim they "knew someone" or were shooting at a club where one occured etc.etc.,also, not one individual could find one lodged in the barrel, many claimed basewad lift, but we finally attributed that to the ponsness press vs the mec, and the way they seat primers.
Yet on and on it went,the sky is falling, i believe many of the reports coming from the crowd of folks who'd used the old style one one piece compressioned formed hull all their lives, and hated to see it changed and cheapened, hard to blame them,but rhetoric and facts becamed quite removed.

quote:

Originally posted by seafire2:
Stopped in at the local sportsman's warehouse this afternoon...

they are now proudly marking bozes of 17 HMR and 22 Win Mag also, up to $15.99 per box..

Lets see, that should make it about 32 cents a round!!!!!

Well MINE is definitely available for a new home...

32 cents a round for a rimfire is ridiculous!

Some may continue to pay that kind of price...but the ammo companies are letting the lefties just price it all out of existence...

The lefties wanted higher ammo prices to cut down on gun ownership.. and the ammo companies are more than happy to give it to them...

Good bye Ruger 77/17!

My CZ 452 and the 4x12 Leupold Rifleman mounted on it went down the road last week. It was laser accurate and a lot fun to shoot, I killed 100's of squeakers with it. The price of ammo finally overcame the fun factor, and it ain't gonna get cheaper. Oh, BTW, I won't ever be purchasing another Leupold Rifleman scope.

On our annual Wyoming 4th of July hunt, we killed over 444 prairie dogs using the .17HMR and Savage rifles and Hornady ammo. Although ammo prices have gone up, the cartridge is still is good enough for our targets out to 175yds and the ocassional 200yd shot.

I love to reload BUT!!!!.........it's just plain fun to shoot something as accurate as the 17HMR and not have to think about chasing brass all over creation!! Just shoot and have fun! And I'm pretty darn sure that some of the 31 different 17HMR's I've either owned or put together for other folks are more accurate at 100 yards than some of the centerfire stuff I've had brought to me to work on or "fix"! And as far as the 17 centerfires being compared to the 17HMR, all I've got to say about them is that they are the ones(centerfire 17's) that will be relgated to obsolescence first due to the fact that the .204Ruger, 20Practical and various other 20's do anything the 17's could do(and some of the .224 diameters also) better, faster and with more inherrent accuracy! I like my 17HMR and will keep shooting them. GHD

Must be why I bought a TC Contender Carbine barrel in .22 Hornet and a Savage M40 .22 Hornet. With regular componants it's much cheaper to use than either of the .17 RFs and it's more versitile, especially shooting squirrels out to 200 yards. With cast bullets it equals the .22 WRF although gas check prices are also outrageous. But then I've a Savage 23B in 25-20 with a dandy plain base HP mould. Only cost is primers and Bullseye powder. At 2.5 gr a pound goes long ways. Never even considered buying a .17 RF.

Larry Gibson

quote:

Originally posted by ireload2:
The 17 HM2 seems to have been a total dud.
Local retailers are vastly overstocked with ammo they can't sell that they run sales on.
I suspect that in a couple of years the 17 HM2 will be discontinued and the ammo will shoot up.

BTW I was in China a couple of years ago. There you can drive for many miles on major highways without seeing power lines. Out in the stick you don't see power lines going to any of the peasants huts but you do see a pile of coal dumped on the side of the country roads here and there.
In the major cities they have trouble keeping the power on in the summer. They don;t have enough or very reliable electrical generating capacity.

Even though China is expending a massive effort to build their three gorges project as a hydro-electric generation system the major reason for building it was for flood control and irrigation.

They are going full bore on electrification of the country and buying every bit of copper for generator and transformer windings they can get their hands on.
They don't actually use that much copper for distribution lines, copper lines sag and break.
they make something called "copper weld" which is a thickish copper coating over high tensile steel wire, High Voltage AC only penetrates to the "skin" of the cable strands anyway, so using solid copper conductors for AC transmission is pointless.

for the "service drops" from the step down transformers to the individual customers aluminum wire is usually used.

China is also buying massive ammounts of stainless steel.
For their penstock piping, Turbine housings and
the turbines themselves.
Stainless steel is far more resistant to the cavitation pitting that usually happens with hydroelectric turbines.

but for all that the pricing of 17HMR ammo is price gouging pure and simple.

Yes the metals prices have risen dramatically
but there isn't enough metal in a box of ammo to justify the original price let alone the increases since.

Greed.



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