.22 Nosler

The first I ever heard of the .22 Nosler was a very informative article by Aaron Carter in the July 2017 issue of American Rifleman. I suggest you review that article for greater detail because I have no intention of paraphrasing it. I will hit on a few areas where Mr. Carter and I are in disagreement, however. According to Carter’s article, Nosler wanted to introduce anew round that would magazine feed in the Mouse Gun with a higher velocity than the old .223 Remington.

Supposedly, Nosler wanted the velocity of the new round to equal that of the .22-250, around not commonly used in Stoner-platform firearms. In order to achieve such a tall order, Nosler designed anew case that has the same length as the .223 Remington but is fatter, allowing it to hold more powder. This fatter case of the Nosler won’t feed properly in regular AR-15 magazines so 6.8 mm SPC magazines must be substituted. I’ve had no feeding issues with the 6.8 magazines but they are pricey.

Since the 6.8 mags are also in use with the .224 Valkyrie (watch for an article soon) they are in high demand and can be hard to find. The new .22 Nosler cases have a rebated rim, meaning the rim diameter is smaller than the diameter of the case body just above the rim. Using this approach, a "regular" AR-15 bolt is used with no modification to the bolt face.

I used a similar approach when I selected the 6.5-284 cartridge to build long range AR-10 match rifles for the Army Reserve Shooting Team about two decades prior to invention of the .22 Nosler. The 6.5-284 also has a rebated rim that will fit an unmodified bolt face of an AR-10. I wrote about this earlier work with the larger Stoner chassis on pages 10-11 in "New AR-15 Products" (June 2018.) If you don’t have a copy, send me an email to for the particulars.

Ever since shooters, gunsmiths, and reloaders got 90 grain bullets figured out for use in the .223 Remington, I seldom get shooters asking for a better long-range alternative in the Mouse Gun.

I do frequently get comments from competitors to the affect of, "I wish you smart guys would come up with a more wind resistant round that would magazine feed for 300 yard rapid fire strings." So, a year or two before the .22 Nosler came on the scene I had already been studying the specifications of hot 6mms and .22 centerfire alternatives that would work in the Mouse Gun. I was also looking at more windresistant .224 bullets that would work in the .223 Remington and standard AR-15 magazines.

I wanted around that would work with regular AR-15 bolts and that had factory brass available. Most of my customers do handload but not all of them have the skills or the desire to make cases for wildcats so factory brass was a very favorable characteristic. I found enough desirable characteristics in the .22 Nosler to decide to include it in my 2018 line up.

It was my hope that the greater powder capacity of the Nosler would speed my 77 grain magazine-length bullets up enough to satisfy my customers’ desire for greater 300 yard rapid fire wind resistance. Extra speed for the long- 22 Nosler was covered in the July 2017 issue of American Rifleman. seated 90s popular for 600 to 1,000 yard slow fire matches would be an added bonus. Chambers Obviously one of my first tasks was to design a reamer to meet my needs.

My whole philosophy regarding the .22 Nosler project can be summed up with my Rule One: Don’t reinvent a bunch of wheels which we have already spent sweat and treasure developing for the .223 Remington! At the end of the day, we are just burning a little more powder (about 3 grains but work up carefully) to speed up the bullet about 150 feet per second.

A lot of shooters and gunsmiths, including myself, have decided that in the .223 Remington the Wylde chamber is about the best compromise for shooting a combination of magazine-length 77s for 200 and 300 yard events and then switching to 90 grain boat tails seated longer

than magazine length for slow-fire matches from 600 to 1,000 yards. So, I simply loaded a 77 grain Sierra Match King to magazine length in a .22 Nosler case and packed it up and sent it out to Dave Kiff at Pacific Tool And Gauge (Pacific Tool- AndGauge.com, I told him how much I wanted that bullet to jump before encountering the lands to match the jump of a 77 grain magazine-length round in a .223 Remington Wylde chamber. I did make a change in the leade angle from the normal 1 degree 15 minute Wylde angle.

Sierra came out with anew 95 grain Match King .224 VLD bullet January 2018. I had been experimenting with the new bullet in my .223 Rem. Wylde chambers with their more gradual 1 degree 15 min. leade angles and groups were horrible! Horrible! See my series, "Building The 90 Grain AR-15" (April-June 2014) for details. Other shooters that I’ve talked to who have tried the new heavy bullet reported fat groups with lots of fliers when fired in ARs with .223 Remington Wylde chambers.

I had never encountered problems with the Wylde chamber with any other bullet in decades of testing. Something I had read in the Sierra literature gave me the idea that angles in the new 95 grain bullet were designed to match a slightly steeper 1 degree 30 minute leade angle. So, in an effort to try to get that bullet to shoot better groups I decided to try that leade angle in my .22 Nosler chamber.

I knew that the 0.600 ballistic coefficient of the new 95 grain bullet coupled with the increased velocity of the .22 Nosler would result in some very potent wind resistance if the bullet could be coaxed to shoot a decent group. Pacific has the blueprint for this reamer filed under my name and the number 46156. Or, if you request, I can email you a copy 56mm and 7.62mm casings that the AR-15 and AR-10 were designed for.

Far left is the .22 Nosler and on far right is the 6.5-284 that have rebated rims so they also fit stock AR bolts. of the details as a spreadsheet (Excel.xls format) file. Remember the chamber described above is a The front of the Sun Devil comes squared right from the factory. compromise. It will shoot magazine-length 77s well and will also shoot longer-than-magazine-length 90s or 95s well but it won’t shoot either bullet optimally.

It would be a good chamber for folks wanting to shoot Match Rifles in Across The Course High Power competition. If your customer wants to shoot nothing but magazine-length ammo, I would seriously shorten the free bore so those bullets don’t jump as far. On the other hand, if a person is going to shoot 100% ammo with long and heavy 90 and 95 grain bullets seated longer than magazine length and never shoot any magazine-length ammo, a longer free bore would be best.

Just remember as you design a reamer, if all other things are held equal, the longer the starting freebore the earlier the barrel will shoot out. Barrels The next decision that all of us will have to make is the choice of barrel. Again, I invoked Rule One. I began with land height. Every bullet I have ever shot in the .223 Remington produced tighter groups in barrels with tall 0.218" lands as opposed to industry standard more shallow 0.219" lands.

So, I chose the tall 0.218" land which also results in higher round counts before shooting out. The downside of the tall land is increased pressure. It is easy to compensate for that by cutting the groove just 0.0005" deeper to 0.2245". There is no downside to the deeper groove. In fact, 90s seem to shoot tighter groups with the slightly deeper groove.

To combat barrel heating, I choose a 26" 5R single point cut rifled gain twist Bartlein barrel that has a beginning twist just in front of the chamber of 1:14" which increases progressively to 1:6.5" at the muzzle. While I used a 26" barrel in my first .22 Nosler, there has been a steady movement to longer 30" and even 32" barrels in the Mouse Gun. F-Class shooters seem to like the longer barrels

because their guns are supported either on sand bags or on a bipod. If you are going to use such long and heavy barrels, I strongly suggest using a heavy wall receiver like the quality Sun Devil to better support your barrel. You will also want to adjust your beginning twist rate at the back of the barrel. For the 30", use a beginning twist of 1:21" in front of a 1.940" chamber. For the 32" barrel, begin at 1:23". Both should still end at 1:6.5" at the muzzle.

This is probably a good point to fulfill one of the promises I made at the beginning of the article. Mr. Carter experienced groups beginning to open up at about round 4 or 5 and that was in 53 degree ambient temperatures. Wow! I am not being critical of my fellow gun writer and realize he was just shooting what he had been given. I fired full tenround groups in a machine rest in temperatures over 80 degrees and watched every round impact downrange. I observed nothing unusual.

So, what were the differences between rifles? Mr. Carter’s rifle had a stainless barrel that was button rifled. Button rifling induces a lot of stress in the barrel and if that is not properly and completely stress relieved later in the manufacturing process there is a good chance that the barrel will "walk" as it warms up.

Bullet impacts will start to move in relation to the point of aim outside the rest of the group and often continue to move further outside as the barrel warms up further while additional shots are fired. My observations having machine rest tested many hundreds of barrels is that "walkers" are more common with stainless barrels and the severity is also greater as compared to chrome moly steel barrels. Barrels rifled by the button method far more commonly walk than those rifled using the single point cut method.

Barrels that "walk" can sometimes be corrected by cryogenic treatments. Cryo is not a sure fix and it is expensive so smart hombres choose a barrel that is less likely to turn out to be a "walker." The best combination is a cut rifled chrome moly barrel. As any barrel is fired, it heats up. The barrel is made of some kind of steel but it is housed in an aluminum receiver which will react differently to heating. On top of that, most receivers are not square on the front.

When the barrel extension is slid into the receiver, the raised flange on the barrel extension will be stopped by the high spots on the front of the receiver. These high spots offer pivot points when the barrel is fired and can influence its harmonic whip. The fit of most barrel extensions to the receivers they live in is normally quite sloppy and allow up and down and left to right movement. I correct these problems by using quality Sun Devil upper receivers.

These arrive from the factory squared on the front and they have heavy walls just behind the barrel nut threads where nearly 2/3 of the barrel extension lives. I also match custom BAT Machine match barrel extensions to my receivers for a tight press fit, eliminating the slop that you will find in factory guns.

The combination of using chrome moly barrels that were rifled using the single point cut method and then properly mounting in a quality Sun Devil receiver has virtually eliminated "walkers" in rifles I have built in any caliber. Two last pointers on barrel heating. Use a well-ventilated handguard. I like handguards from either JP Enterprises or Geissele Automatics. Regardless of caliber, never leave around in the chamber with the bolt closed and allow it to "cook".

A lot of shooters keep alog of each shot recording the location, score, and any sight changes. Don’t put the next round in the chamber and don’t close the bolt on it until after you are done with any record keeping and making sight changes based on the last shot. Wait until you are all done with the administrative chores and you are ready to fire the next shot before pushing the round up into the chamber and closing the bolt.

If, for some reason, you are delayed in firing around, consider pulling it out of the chamber and placing it last in your ammo queue. Select another cool round, chamber it, and fire as normal. Keep unfired ammo covered or shaded so it isn’t heating up. I covered the topic of "cooking ammo" in greater detail in "Encyclopedic Error" (June 2017.) If you are unable to obtain a copy, email me at

Load Info Moving on to loads, if you Google ".22 Nosler load data" you will end up on a Nosler website which lists bunches of loads. I looked at the 77 grain bullet data and found Reloder 15, which is a powder commonly used in the .223 Remington. Just as I would recommend to you, I began low and worked up while watching for signs of pressure. I found 27.5 grains chronographed at 3029 fps to be the most precise. Nosler lists 28.5 grains as maximum.

I tried 28.0 and found that to be pretty hot and less accurate than the halfgrain lighter load. Coincidentally, Nosler lists the charge weight that gave them the tightest groups for each powder during their testing. For Reloder 15 pushing 77 grain Hones to perform this are available from Brownells. Use the 0.243 hone for the .22 Nosler. 22 Nosler rims can be dressed down with a file.

Warning, if you take too much of the rim off the primer can seat above the case head, leading to slam fires! bullets they found 27.5 grains to be the best, just as I did. I don’t know if Nosler and I would agree on any other powders as each gun has its own likes and dislikes. I briefly tried the Nosler 85 grain RDF (Reduced Drag Factor) bullet seated to magazine length and using the amount of powder recommended by Nosler.

In my tests I got the same fat groups that I experienced when I shot this bullet in the Wylde chambers of the .223 Remington. It appears to me that the 85 grain bullet will not shoot its best when it is jumped long distances. No surprise! I knew that the next bullet would be more of a challenge. Nosler does not make a 95 grain Very Low Drag bullet in 0.224" diameter and don’t list load recommendations for them.

I noticed that with 77 grain bullets my final .22 Nosler charge weight was within about three grains more than in .223 Remington firearms. So, just as I would recommend to you, I worked up gradually to a charge of 27.0 grains of Vihtavuori N150 in the Nosler yielding 2,814 fps.

I got nice sub-minute ten-shot machine rest groups both by jamming the Sierra bullet (seating it longer than chamber length) or jumping it (seating it shorter than chamber length.) The next bullet I wanted to try was the increasingly-popular Sierra 90 grain Match King, which is a true boat tail. Since it is a boat tail I didn’t experiment with jamming it the way I did with its heavier cousin, the 95 which is a VLD (according to Sierra.) Again, I got nice, tight, sub-minute ten-shot groups in the machine rest.

Charge weight ended up at 26.9 grains of VV N150 powder. Velocity was 2,837 fps., very similar to the 95. Brass If you recall part of my reason for trying the .22 Nosler was the fact that factory brass was available. That ended up being a mixed bag. Like many of you, I had heard a lot of bad-mouthing regarding the .22 Nosler brass. Claims of rips in the rims, brass flowing back into the ejector, failure to hold primers, etc. There are two general theories regarding these issues. One blames the rebated rim.

The idea is that because the rim is smaller than the body of the casing too much pressure is exerted on the case head. A couple of decades before the invention of the .22 Nosler I had tried another cartridge with a rebated rim in the AR-10 with the 6.5-284. I chose that cartridge in part for one of the same reasons I settled on the .22 Nosler: The case head would fit an unmodified AR-10 bolt face. That brass was made by Lapua and I had none of the problems reported above.

The other theory says that the Nosler brass is way too soft. I saw a lot of evidence of that. Obviously, a lot of this is related to how hot the owner is trying to run his ammo. Of the three loads I listed above, the one for the 95s were the hottest and gave the greatest problems. Torn rims were very common. In "Straight Bullets" (December 2018) I discussed this specifically. "Better Ammunition" (April 2016) and "Precision AR-15 Ammunition" (August 2016) also gave hints concerning ammunition.

Some of these deformities can be dressed down by simply pulling it over a

flat file though one has to be careful in performing this fix. If you get carried away you can end up taking enough brass off to the point where the primer will be sitting above the case head and slam fires can result. Make sure you are using a primer pocket cleaner each time before trying to insert anew primer. The problem with not dealing with torn rims is that when the bolt locks up any high spots on the rim will cause the whole cartridge to cock at an angle inside the generous dimensions of the chamber.

The bullet will never enter the back of the barrel on center with the bore and it will be deformed. Mr. Carter recommended full length sizing and even the use of a small base die. My contention is that full length sizing only permits the cartridge to cock even further in the chamber and make accuracy issues even worse. Instead, I relied on neck sizing with a shoulder bump and I never touched the side walls of my fired brass. Note, this was for single-fed long range shooting and not rapid-fire ammo.

This approach will better center bullets on the bore of any cartridge, including the .22 Nosler. When I was setting up my die I ran it down until the bottom of the die hit the top of the shell holder and backed off just a little. That resulted in only 0.0015" of shoulder bump. This is really on the light side of most recommendations which often call for 0.003" of bump but I decided to try it. As case rims got increasingly boogered up, this adjustment proved to be too light.

Early on, the cartridge shoulder would slam up against the shoulder of the chamber under the pressure of the buffer spring. This would allow the cartridge shoulder to be bumped back further. I was essentially using the gun to perform part of the sizing operation by allowing the bolt to lock up. After more firing the cartridge rims got so bad that the bolt would no longer lock up, requiring that I dress down the top of the shell holder.

That allowed the die to be screwed down more, resulting in increased shoulder bump. I ended up with just over 0.004" of bump which was very welcome regarding function. Please note that this shoulder bump issue could just as easily have happened had I been using a full length sizing die as both types of dies adjust shoulder bump by screwing up (for less bump) or down (for more bump). I also had issues with primer retention.

Starting with my first reloading, I could easily feel much less resistance to seating replacement primers as compared to the resistance I felt when the brass was brand new. By the fifth loading the combination of primers that wouldn’t even stay in their pockets plus the torn rim issues caused me to throw the brass right in the trash. I mentioned above that others have reported issues with the Nosler brass and the ejector.

I fired about 200 total rounds with barrel break in and load development work and had about a half dozen instances where the soft brass flowed back into the cavity in the bolt face where the ejector lives. The bolt would end up locked back with the fired casing still sticking on the face. Usually I could just use my index finger to sweep the casing out. Once it was stuck so bad that I had to go in with a screw driver, however. This always happened when I was running hot ammo.

I discuss the prevention of bent rims in "Straight Bullets" (December 2018.) To further help, I suggest gunsmiths polish all chambers to make extraction easier. Learn how to polish chambers in "AR-15 Chamber Selection, Part Three" (September 2014.) I also suggest that brass needs to be tumbled each time it is fired to keep it slick and easier to extract. Finally, locate the gas port two inches forward of normal.

This increases dwell time so the bolt stays locked up longer, allowing more of the gas pressure to subside and making extraction easier. Don’t get carried away with powder charges. I could see big differences in the rim conditions of brass that had been fired with moderate charges as opposed to those where higher powder charges were loaded. Unfortunately, how much powder we use is not entirely our call. The gun itself has the majority vote in this.

The gun knows how much powder it wants and if we insist on cutting that down I usually see groups open up. The same thing happens when we go over the amount of powder the gun wants. So, if we have to cut powder charges below what the gun wants to get longer brass life, the cost may well be fatter groups. In conclusion, the .22 Nosler achieved my goals.

Speeding up the 77 grain magazine-length bullets results in that bullet equaling the wind resistance of an 80 grain bullet seated longer than magazine length in the .223 Remington. The 95 grain Sierra VLD in the .22 Nosler pretty much equals long range ammo loaded for the current flavor of the month, the 6.5 Creedmoor. Note that the 6.5 Creedmoor requires the larger frame of the AR-10. The .22 Nosler achieves this ballistic excellence in the Mouse Gun, which I think my customers will view favorably.

The unfortunate cost of this performance is short brass life. I used all of the tips listed above as each gun will react differently. I found a video or a picture of a guy on the Internet saying he was getting ten firings out of his Nosler brass and he showed a picture to prove it. So, my advice is to follow the tips I listed above and watch both your rims and your groups. When the rims get too funky groups will open up and fliers will increase, calling for that brass to be discarded.

Think of it as just the cost of doing business. Do you want high scores or long brass life? If you can’t get both, which will you choose? AG