New musings with the 218 Bee

you HAD 218 bee. since that one has been taken, you just have to buy another one!!!(if the Missus says.)

I seem to remember a incident at the Canadian boarder involving a 218 bee.

Also, I’ll be 28 in a few weeks.

This Ruger #1 rifle is proving to be very predictable in load development. Starting low and working up seems to give vertical stringing with about 5" top to bottom spreads starting out. Slowly working up in .2gn increments has the top to bottom spread slowly getting smaller but staying vertical. Once it gets to the point where the vertical stringing quits it is within a couple tenths of a grain of its most accurate load for that powder, bullet, primer combination. Go past that point and groups stay round but open up.
Another good load for this rifle has been found with the Ranch Dog bullet at .226" diameter with 4.7gn of Alliant American select and the CCI # 500 SP primer.
This load should be running about 1700 to 1800 fps so not real fast but with that 80% meplate on the Ranch Dog bullet should be a very effective load for edible small game.

Your right Jr. its a fairly heavy gun even with its fairly slim barrel. The real attraction for the purchase was the price. I have always felt the Ruger #1 was better suited to big bore calibers where precision accuracy is not as important as with small bore varmint type chamberings. In my experience stock Ruger #1 rifles dont shoot all that good without some modifications at least the ones made before Ruger started hammering barrels.          . Not to say that they wont but just saying out of the box accuracy has not been better than just fair.
That though is a point of interest for me now because I do enjoy the challenge of developing good loads in any rifle though there have been a few in the past that after several hundred shots I have given up on as impossible to get even fair accuracy from.
Since in the first week of being in my possession I now have two good shooting loads and so far have only tried cast bullets it is already proven itself to not be one of those rare buggers that for whatever reason was relegated in my opinion to junk.
         Still as you said it is a fairly heavy rifle for the cartridge and its limited range potential so will not be chosen for general walkabouts but is nearly perfect for gopher hunts where we drive in to a heavily populated area and set up to shoot for awhile then move on down the road to the next set up.
This summer I have had a chance to work with a couple other light weight rifles that are superbly accurate and well suited for walking with.
These are the two rifles I plan to hunt coyotes with this winter. They are the EAB model 97-D in 6mm BRM and the TC Encore in 250 Savage. These rifles with their best loads consistently shoot sub .5 MOA from bench rest with the jacketed bullet loads that I have developed for coyote hunting.
     Interestingly and luckily the 250 Savage with it 120gn bullet load and the 6mm BRM with its best 100 gn bullet load have nearly identical trajectories and wind drift so learning one is learning both, a good thing.
I like to shoot the heavy for caliber bullet weights because they are less destructive to the pelt but at the same time pack plenty of punch for anchoring the tough critters. These will not make extreme range loads but anything to 400 yards is fair game.     You know I have extreme range rifles but they are much heavier which has become a problem for me on all day walkabouts. These much lighter rifles are a compromise that I wont have to pass on too many shots with.
     I tagged one coyote last year at 300 yards with the 6mm BRM and its 100gn bullet load starting out at a moderate 2500 fps and was surprised at the internal damage done.
If you remember those 25 caliber 120gn Canadian Imperial bullet I gave you with the 25-06 those are what I am shooting in the 250 Savage and they are incredibly accurate in that rifle.      It should be no less affective than the 6mm and as I said both have nearly identical trajectories.
You have never seen the model 97-D but I know you would like it. Its small almost petite , light weight , and accurate beyond belief. Its not fast but in my opinion accuracy trumps speed.    I call these two rifles good 400 yard rifles and truth be told that covers about 90% of all the shots I will take in a normal coyote season.   Not a bad compromise to be able to stay in the game !

That is a fine shooting Ruger and I would say above average for an older rifle. Many early Ruger rifles simply would not shoot well.      One of the few in my life I had to give up on was an early Ruger Model 77 in 7mm-08.     A Ruger rep once told me that for their early rifles they were jobbing out their barrels at $16.00 each. After some time it was becoming obvious that they had to address the problem or risk loosing market share.        That is when they made the wise investment to have their own hammer forging system the first to ever be used in the continental USA.    Now Ruger makes quality hammer forged barrels for other rifle companies that were facing the same issue and having to compete with custom builders using quality cut rifled barrels and consumers were becoming well aware of what an accurate rifle could do.
All the big companies had the same problem in that buying their rifles was a crap shoot because some of each production run would be good as well as bad.    A quality barrel is the heart of an accurate rifle and starting out with one greatly improves the chance of getting a good rifle.     In my opinion the two best types of barrels are #1 hammer forged, and #2 cut rifled and stress relieved in that order.    The beauty of a hammered barrel is that the hammering process is also the stress relief process.    Such barrels are very consistent and will not walk groups as the barrel heats unless there is some inclusion flaw in the barrel steel.   A barrel with a stress load will walk shots. 
Ruger made the right move at the right time in their investment in the hammer forge.

i am told that the is a douglas, which i sorta believe. my oldest son has a 7x57 in 20" douglas featherweight barrel(i really should not have gave it to him) and it shoots equal to better than the 270.

So now having been in possession for two weeks and with a bit over 300 shots fired I think I am getting a handle on this rifle. It has been absolutely predictable in load development in that starting low it strings vertically and small increases in powder charge reduce the vertical spread until the point is reached where the vertical stops and you are there within a couple tenths of its most accurate load with that powder, bullet, and also very importantly primer combination.
This rifle is kind of looking like its not going to be a great shooter but still a good and consistent shooter with its best combinations running about 1.5 MOA. and that is for cast or jacketed bullets. The first load I worked out with the MX-3 bullet and 13gn WC-680 is amazingly consistent and at 2500 fps muzzle velocity is no slouch in speed.
Now having worked with most all the different cast bullet designs I wanted to try in it my curiosity has turned to jacketed bullets. I haven't tried all the cast bullet designs we have available because I was aiming at our designs with wider meplate and avoiding round nose and tiny meplate designs.
Interestingly the one design I thought would and hoped would do well did not. I really pressed the issue too but our 55gn CBE design that has worked so well in our hornet rifles and our 221 FB is a no go in this rifle. The experience just reiterates the fact that you can not tell the rifle what it will shoot well you can only listen to it tell you what it will shoot well, I have been humbled !
So looking to jacketed bullets to try in this rifle I find very few on hand that will be suitable. No problem says I we will just invent one! Not having done any bullet swaging in at least half a dozen years I had to go through the motions to re-acquaint myself with available tools and their function .
Something I soon realized is that when I sold off a surplus set for .224" bullets I let go of some punches I should have kept for this set the punches that are for producing a flat base bullet. I can still make boat tail bullets and that works out great for heavier designs that are not lacking in bearing surface but it has shown to be a problem when trying to design a light weight bullet with already short bearing surface.
The 218 Bee is at its best with bullets between 40 and 50 gn so the problem I faced was to adjust the tools to get the lightest possible bullet weight using 22 RF cases for jackets. Trying to get a light weight but being restricted to boat tail bases was a challenge because the BT base reduced the allowable bearing surface to what I feel is the very minimum for enough support in the barrel  to prevent the bullet from tipping in the barrel.
Another issue to going too low in bullet weight is that if the core is too far from the bullet tip it causes the metal at the tip to fold over and not form evenly. Too light a core and you get a high percentage of rejects. So facing those challenges what we have ended up with is a kind of impressive efficient looking bullet of 47.5gn weight with apparently enough of everything it needs to shoot well'
     Just to try and prove the design I have now tried it in our 22 Hornet with 1/16" twist and it does well. Then of course the Bee with what I believe is a 1/14" as well as our 221 FB that I know has a 1/14" twist and it also shoots well.
Then even though I doubted it would shoot well in our 223 with 1/9" twist I had to try just for curiosity sake. What I learned from that was that yes it will shoot well but is limited to a couple hundred fps from max if it has a chance to do so. Those 22 RF jackets are very thin and the way I anneal them very soft so the big case 22 cartridges are out for these but exactly for the same reason they are perfect for the small case 22's because the thin soft jackets make for explosive bullet action even in the small case 22's.
Our new load for the 218 Bee is with the swaged 47.5gn HP-BT bullet and 13.3gn of WC 680. This load is producing just over 2600 fps velocity so should have explosive effect when used to exterminate small vermin.
This project came at about the right time because every year we see a drop in sales when its too hot in many places to go shooting.    If things run as normal in a couple more weeks business will pick up again and I wont have nearly as much time for load testing.        Its all good though because I have compiled enough load data for this rifle in this short time that I wont come up short if not given another opportunity for load development for some time.
Now what I have to do while the tools are all adjusted for this bullet is go into production mode and run off a bazillion of them in case I cant get back to it for awhile like the last time, 6 years.
I will ask Tina to post a picture of the new 47.5gn HT-HP bullet for your viewing pleasure.

These tools are half a century old but when operated by capable experienced hands can still produce a quality product. I first started swaging with Corbin equipment when in my late 20's and am now in my late 60's so been at it awhile.
Over these many years I have developed two designs that I believe are unique to me. One of those is a dual core 100gn 6mm bullet that uses a fully swaged .224" bullet in its nose half as well as a conventional lead core bottom half. The two are swaged together to make a long heavy 6mm bullet but using only two 22 RF long rifle jackets for the process. A single 22 RF jacket is only good for about a 70gn bullet by itself. I use a pure lead core in the nose half and a harder alloyed core for the base half . With the base of the top jacket separating the two cores it acts something like a Nosler partition bullet.
The other design is for an incendiary bullet that has an appropriate ( large or small) size rifle primer swaged into the nose of the bullet setting on top of the core. The primer is seated bottom forward in the jacket after seating the core and before the point form process.

I have had a fondness for the 22 hornet from my childhood. I had heard many stories about it from folks that used it during the depression era to supply food for many tables. It was the ideal poaching cartridge that contributed to the reduction of rural deer populations up until WW2.
   After that and for quite some time populations in the east were low but with good management the deer came back . When I was barely old enough to start deer hunting not yet of legal age most deer tags went unfilled at least where I was from in NY state.
   At that time most kids my age only knew about a couple cartridges first hand and for me those were the 30-30, the 30-06, and the 22 LR.
We had heard the legendary stories about the 22 Hornet but no one had ever really seen one.      It was in remembrance of those stories that when first given a chance to have one as an adult I was elated to try and felt much like one would feel on actually meeting your favorite celebrity.    I don't think I have ever been without one since.             Also I may well have the dubious distinction of being the only person at least possibly in the Americas to have ever taken not one but two Yak with a 22 Hornet.
Another cartridge we as kids considered with starry eyed wonder was the 22-250. Someday I may relate the story of as a kid working on putting up hay for a dairy farm I met Harvey Donaldson on a woodchuck hunt shooting a pre factory 22-250 and proving that he knew well how to use it.

please do!!!!!!!!!!