22T (Tall) home-made checks with NOE 225 45Gr. WFN

Over here, 22 Gas Checks are getting crazy expensive, some dealers want £37.30 ($57.96) a 1000 now.

Thats not realistic at all, so buying some kind of home gas-check maker seemed the right thing to do.

I opted for Pat Marlin’s kit, as I read that they stay on the boolit really well, even if the tools can be slower to use than other toolmaker’s products. I also wanted to try the new, taller (22T) tool he makes that offers a different take on a 22 gas-check.

Please note, this 22T tool I have here is NOT a Plain-Based die, these are for regular, gas-check-shanked boolits.

I got some copper strip samples at 007″ and 012″, and I annealed them.

Here’s how they look as-pressed. Note how they have that useful ridge of ‘teeth’ wrinkles to bite into the boolit…

The 012 Annealed copper really seems to work well.

Here’s how the 007″ ones go, they push-fit on by fingers nice, and here shown crimped in a Lyman 4500 lube-sizer (224) – push-down sizing

Here’s the thicker 012″ material. These need pushing on square first with a tool I use, and here ready to be pushed down into the 224 Lyman sizer. -it’s very hard to set these square in the sizer die mouth, as there’s not much of a taper on the standard Lyman die and the sat boolits tend to lean over from 90 degrees to some degree.  I have ordered a custom 225 die with a better mouth-taper and I’ll report back on that in due course.

As hoped, the checks do indeed have a super-strong grip on the boolit. Very hard to remove indeed. Being 22T (Tall) they go way higher up on the boolit than the shorter, normal checks.

One problem, the 224 H&I sizer-die I have, may be too tight. When I push-down boolits made of softer alloys, they go in skew, and I get a badly bent, uneven size, eg this one is bent and has sized badly

I can, and do work around this by using pre-sized, then oven-hardened boolits (BHN30) before I fit the custom checks. These are so strong they don’t deform at all. But again, a wider 225 die with a wider, better taper on the die mouth should fix this good.

Some testing has been done, I cast for my pal’s 22-Hornet with a new Ruger barrel – he reports they are working fantastic and that was with less-than-ideal 004″ beer-can checks.

Things to try next?  I have my paws on a 225 Lee push-thru sizer that I hope to pre-size all boolits first. Also have the custom sizer die on order, as mentioned.

Will do some range reports once the loads are sorted, still early days yet and the weather over here means we don’t get much good range time just now.

Hope you are all having a great Christmas