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Sunday, February 24, 2013

How 22 rimfire is made

Part One


Part Two
Courtesy of WiscoDave

Having worked in an Army ammo plant the process isn't unfamiliar to me, the machinery is just much smaller and there aren't as many steps. Our transfer presses cupping and shaping the grenades were rated at 300 tons per square inch and shook the ground when the punches hit the die tables.
The mortars were cut from billets and ran through a hot press before machining.
But all in all it was the same basic process, except for the loading part. Our parts were sent to a separate facility for the explosives.

5 comments:

  1. That was really interesting, thanks for posting it. It does beg the question of why is it I can't find a single box of .22 locally for the past month and a half if that one plant alone can crank out four million rounds a day though.

    Assuming there are several other manufacturing plants for the different brands, I would have to estimate that the total capacity, per day, in this country has to be at least 20 million rounds.
    Where is all of this disappearing to?
    No joke, I live near Portland Oregon, a big town and not one outlet has a box of shells that makes it to the shelf in the town I actually live in. The local Walmart only gets TEN BOXES when they get a shipment! There are 4 Walmarts within twenty minutes of me and they are all the same.
    At three boxes max per customer that is three people who can get shells and one guy gets one box. For an entire Super store!
    I can order it online but haven't run low enough to bother yet.

    It's just crazy.

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  2. Excellent post, having grown up in a machine shop. Then having worked as a tool and die maker for a defense aerospace sub-contractor and then in the haz-mat storage container production, metal stamping and forming presses and such are no mystery to me.

    While it has been a few years, it is always interesting to see mass production presses going at it.

    We are losing or have lost the skilled trades needed to make products in this country.

    It is a shame as almost every High School used to have metal, wood, mech, welding, electrical shop and building trades classes for the blue collar skilled trades.

    It's now almost gone, we will pay a price for it.

    Very good post, MORE!!!

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  3. That was fascinating
    MM

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  4. Excellent post, very informative. My buddy owns a sporting goods store. I managed to score three bricks of CCI .22 ammo from him last week. He had 150 bricks come in and they were gone in three hours.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 4 million rounds a day, and not a single .22 cartridge on any gun store shelf I can find.

    ReplyDelete

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