The recent proposal of a "22 Belk" in the discussion of the 22 K-Hornet got me thinking about the 221 Fireball. What I'm thinking is that maybe it's possible to shoot 221 Fireball as cheaply as match grade 22lr (about $0.10/round), but I've got questions.

To make the brass as cheap as possible, I'd want to use bulk, once-fired 223 brass. How feasible?

How many reloads would you expect to get when using reasonable (i.e., not hot, maximum) loads?

Would changing the shoulder to match that of the 17 Mach IV be of any real benefit, or just a nuisance?

Would lengthening the neck (maybe as far as to match the 222 Rem) help accuracy appreciably, or would it again be more bother than it is worth?

In short, what do you think of a "221 Longball" (essentially 17 Mach IV with a .224 neck that is .313" long) made from 223 brass vs. a normal 221 Fireball?

To make it as cheap as possible, I'd just stick with the 223 rem! You won't have to buy form dies or custom reamers.

If you aneal case necks, and your chamber isn't massively oversize, cases should last a long time.

I've got a .221 Fireball trim die and I've got lots of .223/5.56mm brass. The inevitable happened and I've been playing around with converting the .223 to .221.

Because the neck is formed from the body of the .223 case, it will be necessary to ream or turn necks. Also, forming is not always a smooth project in that things happen. Wrinkles, lube dents, splits (from unseen flaws), etc AND it is somewhat time consuming.

All that said, if I had no other .224 bore I wouldn't mind doing the work. However, I have a Hornet, a Bee, and a .223 Rem. Although I've got brass and dies for the .221 I still don't have so much as a Contender barrel for the Fireball. Given my addiction, that has to mean something.

InfoSponge---

That's all I shoot in my Fireball. I have a set of Redding case forming dies but it's just as easy to use a two dollar die you find in the junk boxes at gunshows. 25-20, 256 Winchester, and several others work to push the shoulder back.

Mine is a .242 neck and I get more than a dozen loadings out of one case.

I think the Fireball would be a better case with .050 more neck, but it's hard to argue with the one I have. It's great!!

All of my Fireball brass is Remington 221 brass, but after reading this thread, I went down to the workshop and had a play with a couple of dies and some 223 cases.

I neck turn all of my cases, so that doesn't represent any additional work. Basically I had a bit of a play with a Redding 221 body die, and that gave me a case that (apart from the enormous neck) looked pretty good. Chop that off, run it through the neck die, and then neck turn. Dunno what the runout is like, but it sure looks like a 221 case.