...the .22 special:
A few years ago I took advantage of the opportunity to purchase a few hundred rounds of a recent reproduction of a very old .22 caliber cartridge that I had never previously heard of, and is now almost obsolete. This round is called the .22 SPECIAL. The formal name for this round is the Winchester Rim Fire {WRF}. Remington also made it.
Today, this cartridge is not very well known. Back around 1890-1905 a few firearms manufacturers produced handguns and rifles for this round, {Colt, Winchester, and Stevens, etc.}, Winchester and Remington produced the cartridge. It was, at that time, the answer to the need for a harder hitting small-bore projectile that was not available from the well known .22 Long Rifle cartridge. After about five decades, this round lost its appeal when today's more powerful and better known .22 Magnum Rim Fire {MRF} was introduced in 1959. The old WRF can be fired in a newer MRF gun, but not other way around.
If you have one of these old firearms whose unaltered chamber is designed to fire the old .22 Special {WRF}, you can still fire the other available present-day cartridges {short, long, and long rifle}, but if you do fire these other three rounds in that old firearm, the majority of the cases will split, just the same as if you fired them in a modern chamber designed to fire the MRF. Accuracy may slightly suffer, but this creates no danger to neither the person firing nor to the firearm, provided the firearm is in good condition.
Other obsolete .22 rounds also existed in those early days, such as the {not very popular} .22 xtra-long-rifle, but these cartridges didn't survive the change-over from black powder to smokeless powder which occurred in the mid 1880's.

Just thought I'd pass this on to you for your information and enjoyment. {My pictures are also included}.
-Don

Attached Images

	1}- .22 special.JPG (177.3 KB, 342 views)
	2}- .22 bullet types.jpg (85.1 KB, 400 views)

Thanks. I gotta admit it is a new one on me.

My favorite squirrel load for taking the bushytails out of the tall trees in the river bottomlands of KY: .22WRF from an old J.C. Higgins (Marlin) .22 magnum rifle. Shoots flat and knocks them out dead from 100 ft nut trees.

The .22 WRF chamber (same as .22 mag diameter) is larger than the .22 RF chamber, and the old manuals said NOT to fire .22 RF in a .22 WRF chamber, although everybody seems to try it at least once.... The undersized .22 RF is too inaccurate for squirrels anyway in a .22 WRF.

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Science plus Art

I remember the ".22 Special" (WRF). Mostly in Winchester Pump Action Rifles.

The Remington version was the .22 Remington Special, the Winchester version was the .22 Winchester Rimfire. Remington rifles were marked for the Special, as far as I know, all others were marked .22 WRF. The two were interchangeable, but the Remington had a round nose, and the WRF had a flat point. In addition to the increased power of the two cartridges, the were inside lubricated, whereas the .22 LR years ago had an outside, soft lubricant that was not only messy, it picked up grit and pocket lint.

Don,

Thanks for your info on the WRF, as yours is the most info that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I have been petting firearms for over 60 years and never read as much about this cartridge as I have today.

terry

The Winchester 22 WRF was designed for their model 1903 semi-auto rifle. They did not want the shooter to be able to use the then common black powder 22 ammo that would quickly gum up the action. Remington did the same thing for their rifles but the two rounds are not interchangeable. Both became obsolete when smokeless powder 22's became common.

I'm familiar with the .22WRF, they used to pop up fairly often a few decades ago.

I'm going to go on record as saying you should only fire ammunition that the gun is designed for. If the cases are splitting this is not safe. Or at the very least it's not a good idea.

As noted, the Remington version of the same WRF cartridge was called the ".22 Remington Special," not the .22 Special. It was popular among butchers of the day as the .22 WRF/Rem Special was a more effective livestock killer than the .22 LR.

This is incorrect.

You are right. The Winchester Model 1903 rifle was designed to fire the 22 Winchester Automatic cartridge and this cartridge was never chambered for any other firearm. When Winchester upgraded this rifle they converted the chambering over to the much more conventional 22LR.
Additionally Remington had a similar round to the Winchester Auto and the two are NOT interchangeable.
A run of 22 Winchester Automatic cartridges was made several years ago but I haven't seen any around for quite some time.
Jim

I buy .22 WRF when I find it cheap enough, and shoot it in my S&W 650. Two years ago I found a couple of boxes for $5.00 each.



I gave a box of these to a neighbor's kids about a year ago. The kid's grandpa had passed and their grandmother gave them a Remington 12 and a High Standard Sentinel MK something revolver. 5:00 p.m. on a Sunday is no time to go shopping for hard to find ammo in north GA.

The old 22 WRF is actually fairly easy to locate. Each year some ammo manufacturers make up a limited run. Since nobody knows what they are I get to buy all I want. Why would I want them??? With 22 magnum ammo so hard to find the past 3 years, this is what I shoot in my 22 magnum guns. An added plus (to me) is that they are much milder turning the 22 mag into a regular 22. This creates a situation where I can quietly shoot my magnums in the back yard without bothering anybody.

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Dr. B

So, does the WRF have any "bullet jump" when used in the Magnum chamber?
(the WRF looks shorter than the Mag)

IIRC, bullet jump can adversely effect accuracy??

Hmmmmmm,,,,,,

Lot of bad information in this thread! The .22 WRF, the 22 Automatic and the .22 Remington special are not the same cartridge, and are not interchangeable. The .22 WRF was designed to get more power out of .22 rifles with black powder than could be had with .22 LR black powder rounds. It was chambered in the Winchester 1885 single shot, 1890 pump and probably others, as well as some Colt DA revolvers. The two automatic rounds were designed for use in automatic rifles only as a replacement for the BP loaded .22 LR rounds that gummed up the actions with BP residue. I believe that they were originally loaded with semi-smokeless powder, and later with smokeless, and were no more powerful than .22 LR. The High Velocity .22 LR made all of them obsolete.

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Tom
1560

Way back in my college days I had a Colt Scout with both a .22RF and .22MRF cylinders. I shot a lot of .22WRF through it as it was cheaper than the .22 Mag loads. Brings back some good memories.

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Keep Shootin' and check 6

Depends on how you define "accuracy."

Bullet jump can adversely affect the accuracy of a benchrest or other rifle capable of one-hole accuracy.....but likely won't be quite as important in a rimfire rifle. Take a look at any 22LR revolver and you'll see that bullet jump of 1/2" or so is the norm.

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Carry.."hope" isn't a strategy

Noit quite. The .22 WRF and the .22 Remington Special are the same and interchangeable. The only difference is the bullet shape. I once had a Winchester 1890 pump rifle (very often found chambered in .22 WRF, as it was fairly popular), and I also had for a short time a Colt Police Positive in .22 WRF/Rem Special. I never shot either much as the ammunition was somewhat more expensive than the .22 Shorts I used almost exclusively at that time. Here is a website regarding the .22 WRF/Rem Special: .22 WRF (.22 Rem. Special)

I have had several 22WRF rifles. I got a bunch of ammo from
a old hardware back in 60s. I shot a lot of it in a Savage 24
22 mg/ 20g. I had a 4x scope on it and it was a deadly squirrel
load. Ammo was Rem in nickel cases. Still have a few boxes left.
I know a guy that had a nice Colt d/a in 22WRF, he had it reamed
to 22 mag. With very little shooting with the mags. resulted in
cracked cylinder.

A hunting and shooting buddy ended up with a Winchester rifle for the .22 WRF but had no ammo. This was about 1970. When Winchester made their first modern run of it in the late 1970's (I think), I saw it in a shooting magazine and told him. He ran out and bought 1,000 rounds of it.

I was over at his house last summer and we were looking at his guns. I asked him about his ammo when he got the old Winchester out of his gun cabinet and asked him it he still had any ammo for it. He laughed and showed me his stash. He said he shot about 100 rounds when he first got it, the rifle shot really poorly, and there is has sat.

I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't use WRF ammo in WMR guns unless, it's a revolver. Apparently, it doesn't have enough umph to cycle a 22 WMR semi-auto and can get stuck in the chamber. It seems to me it'd be fine in a bolt action rifle but, that was another that was mentioned as a no-no.

I thought about buying some for my 22 mag. revolver since it's easier to find and is a good bit cheaper.

I have a Winchester mod 1890 in .22 WRF that I got from a coworker
about 20 yrs ago. I got a partial box of Rem WRF ammo with the 45 gr
FP bullet. It was vintage ammo and marked as WRF and not .22
Special so I'm assuming they offered both types back then. The Win
ammo as in the pic was readily available at gun shows so I stocked
up. CCI has produced a 45 gr HP version and they are not hard to find.
The WRF is the same dia as the .22 Mag but much less powerful. It is
more powerful than the .22 LR however. My chronograph notes show
the vintage Rem ammo at 1356 fps, the retro Win ammo at 1310 fps
and the current CCI at 1229 fps out of my 1890 with it's excellent
bore. Not really surprising to see the CCI ammo being watered down
somewhat. Accuracy from any old .22 rifle is greatly determined by
bore condition and rough pitted bores just aren't going to be accurate
with the soft bullets of .22 ammo.

I stand corrected on confusing the .22 Remington Special with the .22 Remington Automatic. I am old enough that I can remember when good gun shops carried all three of these now obsolete cartridges on their shelves. I didn't know much about guns back then, but I knew enough to avoid any that didn't use ammo that was available in the local hardware or feed store, so I have never owned a gun in any of these calibers.

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Tom
1560

What's really unknown is the 22 MRF --- because it doesn't exist. Maybe you mean the Winchester Magnum Rimfire (WMR).

There was once also another odd .22 rimfire round based on a shortened .22 WRF case called the .22 ILARCO (and sometimes the .22 Short Magnum Rimfire), used in the even odder American-180 SMG. It used a horizontal flat pan magazine holding 177 rounds, similar to that used on the Lewis gun. I think only Winchester ever made the ammo and it was only in very limited distribution.

I though I had straightened this out in my Post #11 but I guess not.

Put as simply as possible:
The 22 WRF, The 22 Winchester Automatic and the 22 Remington Automatic are all different cartridges and are NOT interchangeable.
The ONLY interchangeability here is the 22 WRF can be used as a reduced load in the 22 Magnum but NOT the reverse.
The are also several other long obsolete 22 rim fire cartridges but I won't go into that here.
Jim

It always seemed odd to me that the .22 Win automatic and the .22 Rem automatic cartridges were developed for the same reason (to prevent use of black powder ammunition in semiautomatic rifles), yet are dimensionally different enough to prevent interchangeability. Looks like they could have gotten together to standardize on one cartridge.

Might have been a case of each saying, "Nyah, nyah, mine's better!" Bitter competitors then, over smaller markets.

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Attached Images

S&W mod 48-4 new (27).jpg (30.8 KB, 55 views)

EXACTLY!!!

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Good shooting.

Oh but, it DOES exist.........er well, it used to anyway. I think they were introduced back in the late 50's...........before my time so, I've never actually seen one.........just pictures.

It's still around, But expensive. https://www.cheaperthandirt.com/prod...40420001173.do

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