I am running out of 32cal rimfire ammo and can not find any in my travels. Thanks.
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I am running out of 32cal rimfire ammo and can not find any in my travels. Thanks.
I don't think it's been made is quite a while. Maybe Old western scrounger or sombody that deals in antique ammo.
might check Fiocchi, got some 9mm RF of theirs awhile back.
I have a Marlin Model 1892 lever-action rifle in .32 Rimfire or .32 Long Colt centerfire. Swapping the firing pin converts it from one to the other.
Both cartridges are long discontinued, though Winchester occasionally makes a batch of .32 Short Colt centerfire cartridges that work in this rifle.
I haven't found anyone in 20 years or more that makes .32 rimfire ammo. The last batch of .32 rimfire ammo I saw was in the 1980s, imported from Brazil by Navy Arms.
Dixie Gun Works offers a machined brass .32 case that takes a .22 rimfire blank as its primer. You load it with a Hornady .310 lead ball over black powder. This would get you by.
http://www.dixiegunworks.com/product...oducts_id=8154
I'm not sure if these cases would take a conventional heeled .32 bullet. If they do, you can purchase .32 heeled bullets from
A reloader's experience with the Dixie .32 case may be found here:
http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-ant...2-rimfire.html
or here
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-rimfire-brass
Or make your own .32 rimfire cases, to take an industrial construction blank as a primer, as detailed by this Canadian:
http://32rimfire.blogspot.ca/
A complete setup to reload your own .32 rimfire ammo is at:
http://www.hc-collection.com/
More info on reloading .32 rimfire with a kit from France:
http://www.totse2.com/showthread.php...t-Rimfire-quot
Cast lead heeled bullets for the .32 Short and Long Colt are sold by
http://gadcustomcartridges.com/
The same bullet is used in factory rimfire cartridges.
Readily available .32 Rimfire? Not for decades, but the above will give you some options to make your gun speak again.
The last .32 rimfire guns were probably the Stevens single-shot rifles made in the late 1930s. Many of the revolvers and rifles made for this caliber, going back to the 1860s, were of weak design and metallurgy. I have seen some revolvers with paper-thin metal between the chambers.
For this reason, I'd urge you to use ONLY black powder. Smokeless powder may damage some of these old guns.
My Marlin 92 easily takes factory .32 rimfire cartridges, but even its design is not very strong. The end of the lever holds the bolt tight against the rear of the cartridge -- and that's the ONLY thing that locks up the action.
I've often thought that with today's plastics, there would be a ready market for rimfire cartridges of .25 caliber and larger, using plastic cases. A heeled, lead bullet would work well, if the case mouth were quite a bit smaller than the bullet's heel, and the heel were held in the case with friction, or perhaps a dab of adhesive similar to rubber cement.
It would get a bunch of old guns shooting again, but the liability of offering ammo for guns made well over 100 years ago would probably nix this endeavor.
In World War II, the Russians reprimed rimfire cartridges. They boiled the cases in water to remove the ash, dried the cases, then made a paste of the white tips from strike-anywhere matches. This paste was applied with a tiny stick into the unstruck section of the rim and allowed to dry thoroughly. Once the priming compound was dry, the case was reloaded.
The only problem was that you had to ensure your cartridge stuck a reprimed area, and not the crushed rim previously struck by the firing pin.
I've never tried this, only read of it, and never met anyone who tried it. Today's strike-anywhere matches may have an entirely different compound not so sensitive to impact, I don't know. Who knows what was in that little white tip of Russian matches 70 years ago?
At least you have some options, if not loaded ammo.
Looks like you have some pondering to do.