It all started Saturday. Those **** Palmetto Armory emails that pester the heck out of you. Here comes one with a .224 valkyrie complete upper for $350 shipped. Blemished of course but you can't ever find a blemish on any of their stuff. I swore I wouldn't add another caliber to keep up with but that buy it now thing kept haunting me. I jumped on it like a crack addict on a crack rock.
Then I ordered dies from Brownell's. Magazines from somewhere else. 500 rounds of brass from Starline.
The brass from Starline shows up Wednesday. The brown truck shows up with the PSA upper today. Magazines should be here tomorrow. But the dang dies won't show until Tuesday. What to do, what to do. I need to shoot this thing. I wasn't gonna drive 80 or so miles to get some ammo.
Then it dawns on me. I forgot to order a shell holder. But since I wouldn't be resizing the brass something close enough would do. I hand prime my rifle ammo usually with a Lee hand primer. The #19 used for 40/10mm was a snug fit but I was able to make it work.
Then I wanted to straighten the necks and make sure they were round. I found a neck die for a 22/284. Being a short fat case it worked great. I ran the expander down through the neck.
I charged the cases with 25 grains of rl15. The bullets were Nosler 77 grain Custom Competition HPBT. Now it's time to seat the bullets. I picked up a .22 br seater die and decided to give it a try. It got the bullets started but the seater stem wouldn't go down far enough. I still wanted them seated about .250 deeper.
So I got on my lathe and whipped out a "seater die." It worked! Now it was time to see how this baby would shoot.
I had a Bushmaster ar that I hadn't shot in a long time. I pulled the upper off of it. It had a Burris 3x9 scope so I took that off and mounted it on the new upper.
Then it was off to shoot. It took a few rounds to get it sighted close to where I wanted it. I had forgotten how horrible to trigger is on that gun.
I fired three shots and checked with the spotting scope. All touching. So I shot another and it was touching. I started to quit but fired one more. It went a little left but still was touching. I'm pretty pleased with my cheap upper!
I used a 10 round .223 magazine and was able to get 5 rounds in it before they started going haywire. The upper never missed a lick.
Sometimes you just get lucky!
Then I ordered dies from Brownell's. Magazines from somewhere else. 500 rounds of brass from Starline.
The brass from Starline shows up Wednesday. The brown truck shows up with the PSA upper today. Magazines should be here tomorrow. But the dang dies won't show until Tuesday. What to do, what to do. I need to shoot this thing. I wasn't gonna drive 80 or so miles to get some ammo.
Then it dawns on me. I forgot to order a shell holder. But since I wouldn't be resizing the brass something close enough would do. I hand prime my rifle ammo usually with a Lee hand primer. The #19 used for 40/10mm was a snug fit but I was able to make it work.
Then I wanted to straighten the necks and make sure they were round. I found a neck die for a 22/284. Being a short fat case it worked great. I ran the expander down through the neck.
I charged the cases with 25 grains of rl15. The bullets were Nosler 77 grain Custom Competition HPBT. Now it's time to seat the bullets. I picked up a .22 br seater die and decided to give it a try. It got the bullets started but the seater stem wouldn't go down far enough. I still wanted them seated about .250 deeper.
So I got on my lathe and whipped out a "seater die." It worked! Now it was time to see how this baby would shoot.
I had a Bushmaster ar that I hadn't shot in a long time. I pulled the upper off of it. It had a Burris 3x9 scope so I took that off and mounted it on the new upper.
Then it was off to shoot. It took a few rounds to get it sighted close to where I wanted it. I had forgotten how horrible to trigger is on that gun.
I fired three shots and checked with the spotting scope. All touching. So I shot another and it was touching. I started to quit but fired one more. It went a little left but still was touching. I'm pretty pleased with my cheap upper!
I used a 10 round .223 magazine and was able to get 5 rounds in it before they started going haywire. The upper never missed a lick.
Sometimes you just get lucky!
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