Revolver Extraction Difficulty by ammo brand

This post concerns difficult extraction of fired brass from my Smith and Wesson K-22 Masterpiece (made in 1947):

I did not remember difficulty in ejecting fired brass when I used it years ago, but in year 2015 I was experiencing very difficult extraction -- striking the ejector rod was leaving bruises on the heel of my hand.

I fired a couple of thousand rounds of three brands of ammo, based on what was readily available, and I found reason to praise the Remington "Golden Bullets".

Here are the types of ammo I used over several weeks:

Test ammo #1: Federal Champion .22 LR Rimfire, cardboard boxes of 50 rounds, solid plain lead, 1240 FPS, from Bass Pro Shop. ( Hard to extract )

Test ammo #2: Winchester Super-X .22 LR Rimfire 40 grain 1300 FPS, 100 round plastic tray/boxes sliding lid, from Bass Pro Shop. ( Hard to extract )

Test ammo #3: Remington Golden Bullet 22 Long Rifle 36 Grain Plated Lead Hollow Point, 1280 FPS, box of 525 rounds bulk from Dick's Sporting Goods. ( extracts Like-a-Dream )

I did not have cause to complain about the ballistic performance of any of the three brands, but extraction was very difficult with the Federal Champion. Since it was my first brand, I assumed the problem was cleaning failure on my part, but when I went back to the range with a impeccably cleaned revolver, the Federal still was difficult to extract.

OK, next trip was using Winchester Super-X boxes of 100, again with an impeccably cleaned revolver. Still, very difficult extraction of fired brass.

At this point, I was beginning to assume the problem lay with my revolver, since problems occurred with multiple boxes of two different brands of ammo.....

Bass Pro Shop was limiting my purchases to 150 rounds/day, and a friend told me that Dick's in Wheaton had no limit, so I went down to Wheaton. There I bought two boxes of 525 rounds Remington Golden Bullet. Took 'em to the range and I was delighted to find this brass extracted without a fight from my K-22. Both the wife and I came to one conclusion: back to Dick's Sporting Goods and buy more of the Remington !

Well, we have fired several thousand rounds of the Remington Golden Bullet ammo. I have experienced about 0.3 percent failure-to-fire ( which generally fires after rotated re-insertion ). For my purposes, this stuff is great: we are firing at 25 feet, accuracy of ammo not a problem, and the ability to perform one-hand extraction is a pleasure.

I am wondering if any of you rimfire revolver users have stories to share about ammo that is difficult or easy to extract?

I am thinking there might be a brass case wall thickness difference that is making the Remington easy to extract?

Different rim fire will have variations in case shape
I see it all the time but mostly in rim shape
Either your cylinders are tight to the tolerance or you still don't have them clean enough.
Another possibility is there are burrs Along the rim of one or several cylinders.
Save some empties and the. Insert them one at a time to look at each cylinder is a suggestion.
I have a Ruger single six and I can't recall the brand but I do see slight differences in extraction from one brand.
Another suggestion is use a bore brush yo the cylinders in case there is some stubborn build up

sgt23preston said:

Most of the members of this Forum are young &

Click to expand...

That wouldn't be me

I have a Model 63 and have never had extraction problems and recently shot a 617 with that Federal ammo, and no problems their either.

Since you have problems with 2 different, major, brands of ammo, we can conclude it's not the ammo unless the SAAMI specs for 22lr changed since 1947. I'm guessing the later never happened.

Some things get smaller with age, but cylinders aren't one of them. So it's either lead or carbon. Lewis Lead Remover does not make a 22lr adapter, and the lead out cloths take off blueing.

Clandestine recommended Wipe Out No Lead. I have not found that locally. There are some youtube tests of lead removing products. Wrapping a Chore Boy around a bronze brush is another option. Apparently there are some fake products that are more of a bronze wash on steel wool, so a magnet is recommended.

1) Try running an empty .22 Stinger case through there to remove the "crud" ring.
2) Look for small burr's in the cylinder caused by dry firing. Brass can get hung up on these.

I have my grandfather's K-22 Masterpiece. I to have had problems with various types of ammo over the years. I had some PMC that I had to use a cleaning rod and knock then out one at a time. I think the ammo manufacturers are trying to make the brass cases thinner making the case expand more.

Walt

I realize this is an ammo sensitive matter. However, with some cases which drag and the ejector inside the cylinder were bound up with varnish and carbon, you experience the difficult extra extraction complaint.

I agree with others, it may be the chambers are not as clean as thought to be, and there may be minute pitting where the brass intrudes to cause the extraction issues.

At this point, I would unscrew the ejector rod, remove the ejector and super clean inside the ejector bore of the cylinder, the ejector and the ejector rod. All this while the cylinder chambers soak in a good CLP. Clean out the chambers, lube, reassemble, then brush the chambers again with CLP and leave wet for a couple days. Then clean as normal and shoot again.

I like to use a brush mounted in a cordless drill to clean the chamber's. It has worked on mine.

Thanks for all the assistance !

I really appreciate, and have been reading all comments with interest. Some suggestions provided good keywords for further Google searches which have provided me added input.

I THOUGHT I had been cleaning the cylinder chambers effectively, but someone suggested that I try inserting a fired stinger casing to ream out the 'crud ring'. I wanted to try this, but the closest thing I had was fired .22 LR brass.

Turns out, even after what I thought was an effective cylinder cleaning, that fired .22 LR brass meets resistance just before full insertion, and higher force levels are required to fully seat the brass. The problem does indeed seem to be a buildup, or "crud ring". More in some chambers, less in others.

I'm heading back to the cleaning bench

So?
Update?

Update on the difficult extraction issue

Thanks again to all who have been contributing on this issue. I’m back from the range after a really thorough scrubbing of the chambers in the cylinder to see if that completely eliminated the difficult extraction issue.

Fired a few hundred rounds and only suffered difficult-to-extract brass on two cylinders, all the rest ran fine.

I grabbed a few cases representative of properly extracting brass and ran the micrometer on them. I found the fired brass is enlarged a little at the case mouth, and the enlargement increases along the length to even more enlargement at the base just above the rim. Here are the measurements for unfired brass and fired brass from my S&W 6" K-22:

unfired brass: 0.224 full length of case
fired brass: 0.225 mouth, 0.229 base next to rim

(Yeah, I know it would have been more useful to have measured the hard-to-extract brass, but I forgot to set that aside )

——
As a sanity check on my measurements ( I’m using an old mechanical micrometer ) here are specs for 0.22 LR from Cartridges of the World, 14th ed., page 628:

Bullet diameter: .223"
Neck diameter: .224"
Base diameter: .225"
——

Guess I’ll have to be more disciplined and take a little container to keep the really hard to extract brass and give that a dimensional check.

In the meantime, thanks so much for the inputs - it’s nice to be able to draw on the experience of other shooters.

Well, in what seems like a never-ending tale, I have a few more tidbits to pass along. Basically Good News, here's what I did:

The last time I cleaned the S&W K-22, I removed the cylinder and crane, placed it in a small jar, and filled the jar with Hoppe's #9. Every hour or so I would come in and run a brass brush through the chambers. This went on for 24 hours, then I finally swabbed it dry and inspected. I used an inspection microscope to look into the chambers: there is still a small ring of varying extent in several chambers, but it seems the severity is reduced.
After reassembly I took it to the range.

Today at the range, the extraction issue was greatly resolved. I fired 12 rounds of Winchester Super-X from 1963; these cases extracted with no problem. Then I went on to fire a hundred rounds or so of modern Remington Golden Bullet. All the Remington Golden Bullet brass extracted pretty easily as well.

Glad to hear it all worked out for you. That is a very nice revolver and I'm sure you're glad it's running smoothly. As I read this thread I went to rimfirecentral to look for advice and it seems it has all been covered here.

Thanks for the update and titling your thread so it's searchable when someone has a similar problem next month or 5 years from now.