OK here's an update. Apparently during the conversion from black powder to smokeless, there was concern that the new more powerful cartridges would be used in older weak firearms, so for safety's sake they made these new cartridges slightly larger to prevent chambering in old rifles. Also to further capture market share the Remington and Winchester autoloading cartridges were made just enough different to not be interchangable. That would ensure that people who bought Remington rifles bought Remington ammo and likewise for Winchester. I did discover that the case O.D. and rim diameter of the Remington automatic round is the same as that of the current production .22 winchester magnum rimfire (WMR) and also the obsolete .22 WRF.
So in the true spirit of invention I tried this. Using a tubing cutter, I cut down some 22 WMR shells to the propper length. I made a tool to resize and slightly bell the case mouth. I also made a tool to crimp the new shorter case into the canilure of the bullet. I reseated the bullet into the shorter case. I started with varying ammounts of powder, working up from half original charge. I kept adding powder until the rifle cycled the bolt and picked up the next round. This rifle has a fairly strong recoil spring and I found that it took a nearly full case (not quite all the original 22wmr charge) to cycle. Feed was not reliable and I found that case length was critical. Needless to say this was a very tedious process and it didn't take too many rounds before I lost my desire to make cartridges.
A search of the internet yeilded a few articles on this rifle with more than one post from owners stating they used 22LR ammunition. It also reveiled collector ammunition priced from $60 to $435 per box of 50. I decided to try the 22LR. I got about the same reliability and maybe even better. It would cycle a couple rounds then jam. Spent cases were slightly larger diameter "fire formed" to the larger chamber. Extraction and ejection were good. Feed problems were mainly more than one round jaming up the action. I looked as if the magazine tube spring was pushing one round all the way into the chamber and another round partially up into the path of the bolt as it tried to close. Cartridge stop mechanism not working properly?
Next will be to make a few more rounds and check accuracy. The bore is in great shape for the age of this rifle. I expect due to the non-corosive smokeless powder of this cartridge.
Steve
