A friend bought one of the SG hollow point makers and he said it works great....He suggested I use my drill press as he said it was a bit unwieldy to use with a hand-held drill.

He claims that the RN ammo (CCI Standard Vel.) he tried it with is a tough more accurate and worked just fine on a couple of squirrels he killed in his yard.

I figured I'd give it a go as you can set the depth and I'm thinking just touching the nose a bit would leave a nice cup to thump squirrels with. I already have a tool that allows you shave off the tip of a RN for better hunting performance but I just thought I'd try the HP maker.

Meh, if it does not work I can sell it.

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/diy-extreme-hollow-point-maker-kit?a=891185

I see drilling into live rounds as a fool's errand. Can't you just buy HP 22 ammo there? It's the same price as regular ammo here.

Sigh, that did not take long.....These tools and others very much like them have been in use for decades. Never heard tell of any safety issues with them.

Some would say pulling FMJ bullets on mil-surp ammo with a kinetic puller is asking for trouble but it's done all the time. Hell just the act of reloading in general makes some squeamish.

I like the idea of a Wolf Match HP.....Those who dare win.

I would be interested in your thoughts as to why

Forster makes a hollow point jig with a 1/16 and a 1/8 drill bit designed specifically to be used on loaded rounds

Ummm what could possibly go wrong ?
Looks like an accident ready to happen.

Explain how that can happen,and what the accident would be.  It has been done for a lot longer then I am sure most of us have been alive.  nothing inherently dangerous about it at all.

Yeah I'm sure a companies like Midway, Forster, Paco Kelly, or SG would sell such a item in this "sue everybody" world we live in if even one person was known to have been injured by it..

I'm not going to say something bad could not happen if used improperly or altered but that's true with most anything unless you go through life handling nothing but cream-puffs.

Meh, if a person is "skeered" to use a hollow point maker then don't buy it but unless they can prove a record of injury with such a device perhaps it's best those folks tend to their own knitting and let those of us that see the utility of such a tool be.

Gun Blast has done several positive reviews of the Paco Kelly tools but as those basically swag the bullet I'm not sure how they would work in semi-autos. They are  well received on Rimfire Central. Right pricy though.

Of course you have the same "Errrr....what about safety" herp-derp posts with nothing to back them up. They seem largely ignored.

http://gunblast.com/Paco_Scorpn.htm

Waste
Of
Money

Used correctly they are perfectly safe devices.
But if you need a toy just so you can dick with your ammunition....knock yourself out.

Solids work just fine on squirrels.
HP .22 ammunition is VERY easy to find........often cheaper and easier to find than solid point.
It ain't the arrow.....it's the Indian.

I have used the PAco Kelly Tool a lot recently.  It changes Bulk/SV ammo to some very nice performing HP ammo quickly.  I have not shot group with it yet but need to get it and the FV-SR out to range and see what improvments it will do.

MAHA

I have the one sold by EABCo.  It works well, and I still have all my fingers, and no extra hole in my head.
However the EABCo website says they are discontinued for now, as the machinist who was making them retired.  They are very similar to the one pictured.  It is easy to use.  I will have to test some bulk ammo as well to see if it helps accuracy.  I have used them to kill a couple of groundhogs.

As far as safety goes, maybe its not a good idea to be touching the lead filings while drilling out hollow points, and eating potato chips?

One tester on RC reported a solid 15% increase in accuracy with the Paco Kelly tool. If memory serves he used the one that makes the end sorta like a hydro-shock round with a pillar in the middle.



I'm going out on a limb here and say you know exactly squat about RN performance on game.

The idea is to get the bullet to expend all the energy it can IN the animal. RN ammo (especially standard vel.) fails to do that to a degree that suits me.

Even just nipping the end off a RN .22 will give you better performance on game. It simply thumps them harder because the flat profile does it's damage in the animal. A RN passing through and through might mean the squirrel gets back to it's den before it expires.

When I go out into the woods I go to kill me a mess of squirrels. If I can shoot them all in the head that's just great and a RN would certainly do but often it's a shoulder shot. Even more important if it's a shoulder shot on a larger bodied fox squirrel.

Now that I use a can it's even more important that I have sub-sonic ammo that performs with both accuracy/killing power.

Waste of money? Possibly, but it's mine to waste. It's not like you are paying for it you know.

I use a Forster kit for some of my blackout 247 rounds. Works good, and no inherent danger using them. Hollow pointing 22lr with this tool is as safe as loading the ammo into a magazine, don't worry about it. The benefit of adding a larger hollow point, or a hollow point to RN ammunition is complete expansion in small game, as well as reducing ricochet. As we all know 22lr likes to bounce off of the ground or anything else hard unless it has a large hollow point to get it to break apart. OP, I would get it, and try it out.

Since I really feel that commercial hollow-point .22 rounds add zero killing power, I'll continue to use solids.  Plenty for typical small game and probably more accurate too.  If a .177 cal pellet can kill a squirrel stone dead a .22LR of any type is more than adequate.  Just my take on this.

Nice back-peddle there Hoss.

There's no back peddle............can you read fucking English?

My first post:


I swear tech forums are turning into GD

Were you to have specified "solids work fine on squirrels taken with a head shot" then I would have agreed with you 100%. You did not. That's what happens when you leave a statement open to conjecture while at the same time belittling someone else for what they plan to do.

For fucks sake.......
The only thing open to conjecture is why you felt the need to make a smartass remark about my supposed back peddling.
Nor did I "belittle" anyone.....I just stated my opinion of hollow point punches.

I got the hollow-point maker in today and as far as the making of the HPs go I like it.

I used some Eley target RN for the try-out and made 20 HPs.

There is definably technique involved but by the last ten I was doing them in about 30 seconds each round. They seem consistent.

The amount of lead removed is around 1.5 gr. You can see the sliver behind the HPs in the pic. I weighed three different slivers.

Of course the proof is in the shooting and I'll try for that next week.



BTW...I still have my fingers and eyes too though I protected both.  

Damn lotta butthurt to go around in here.

OP - this is pretty cool.  Do you know of any gelatin or similar testing on these?

I don't know of any. You might check Rimfire Central.

Not sure how much better the terminal performance of the home turned hollowpoints are but I do know in any rifle I have tried the CCI STD load is noticeably more accurate than any high velocity load I have laid my hands on . Same for Wolf . If you are trying for game ( small or otherwise )
the first step is hitting that game