22 PDK Info, Advice?

[cowboyarcher]

You are right, it is SSA, I misspoke. Just looked at the 2 and saw my error!

 

[FroggyOne2]

You are right, it is SSA, I misspoke. Just looked at the 2 and saw my error!

This makes two of us on here with the same affliction!

 

[jscandale]

The reason that I won't use SSA brass for anything is for the following reasons;
When I first started to play with the .22 PDK in 07, I got some brass (about 400 pieces) from Roy that he had made up. Did not know it was SSA at the time. After about 6 months and approximately 700 rounds of the .22 PDK, I got a call from Roy who is a pretty nice guy. He asked if I wanted any more brass. He told me that SSA had cut him off cold turkey and he had no more .22 head stamped brass, but would sell me some .20 brass instead.

Rather than buy the less than desirable PDK brass, I got 1000 pieces of SSA 6.8 SPC brass at a much lower cost than Roy's brass. I primed all 1000 cases with CCI BR4 primers and had a very hard time doing it since not of the primers would not properly seat in the case without slight protrusion. They were also very hard going in the case to the point that I was fearful of a detonation. I shot about 200. All but about 20 or 30 split very badly in multiple spots, not to mention the constant problem of not going into battery due to the primer protrusion.

I called SSA and they sent me a Fedex call tag to send them all back. After about 4 months and MANY calls to see what was going on, it became very obvious that I had given the run around. John at SSA even sent me some straight walled left over project scraps to see if I wanted to form them. I told hime flat our, no! I had to end up disputing the charge with my credit card company and won the dispute after a few letters, but still lost the 1000 BR4 primers in the junk cases.

This was salt in the wound since the .22 PDK just never performed. I just could not get that thing to shoot a group at 300 yds no matter what I did. I ended up rechambering the bbl and selling it as used. Never looked back and still have the reamer in the drawer collecting dust.

When I started to develop the .240 Tomahawk, I ended up using the left over PDK brass from the scrapped project. It was pretty junky as well. Shot it about twice and had to throw it away due to the same splitting problem. It was pretty obvious that the brass was not properly annealed and did not meet SAAMI spec on the primer pockets. With the Tomahawk, I used the Hornady 6.8 brass which proved to be just excellent.

After that fiasco, I swore never to use SSA brass again. I know that Nosler recently bought them to get into the brass manufacturing arena, which was a smart move on their part, but they are going to have a ton of work ahead of them to get it right before tarnishing their name with such an inferior product. Good luck to Nosler.

JS

 

[cowboyarcher]

Finally got mine all built up and am fairly happy with the results!

I am able to run 77 gr Nosler CC bullets at 3000 FPS with 2 different powders (2460 and CFE223) and it shoots right around MOA. If I drop back to about 2800 FPS and run Varget, these bullets drop well below MOA. All that is from a 20" WOA barrel in an AR15.

While 3000 FPS is pretty respectable, I think I may try some of the many 68-69gr Match bullets in an effort to find something a little less sensitive to the jump to the lands form an AR mag. I ran some 75 and 80 Amax seated deep and they were horrible!

Any recommendations on high BC bullets in the 68-77 gr range that should perform well jumping to the lands?

 

[flatlander]

John,
I gotta agree with you - my experience with the 22PDK in a Krieger AR bbl was a disaster - financially as well as practically. I spent over $1200 on parts, gunsmithing, brass, dies, etc., and wound up removing the Krieger and setting it aside, along with the SSA brass from Roy. Sorry to find out that I'm not the only one who failed in my efforts to get the thing to shoot. Perhaps I should send the Krieger PDK bbl to you and have it converted to a 220 Thunderbolt? I put about 200rds through it trying to find a good combination.

On the other side of the coin, several other guys out here learned about the PDK line from me, and had both 22 & 6mm versions built. They all had much better results than I, even though they're using the SSA brass that was done for Roy.

I also put together a nice 18" 6.8 SPC AR carbine with mid length gas system with a good Wilson bbl. Long as I stuck with SSA brass, accuracy was very mediocre - but switch to the Hornady stuff, and things tightened up quite a bit. Like you, I'm hoping Nosler will be able to address the QC side of things before they start producing brass for sale out of the SSA site.

 

[Panzer22]

I have a .220 Thunderbolt done by John, Keieger 1-7.7, 20 inch. With 77 Lapuas mag length it has consistently shot below 1/2 MOA around 3050 fps. With H4895, i shot a .120ish 3 shot group, got acared shot two more at a different point. nearly the same hole. the 5 shot group would have stayed below .25.... scary accurate. works with anything a 223 or 6BR works with powder wise. Real easy to load for, I don't recall anything shooting bad, just trying to nit-pick what was the best, which was hard to do.
With 77's You can easily get to 3200 as well. The lapua 77 has a real Litz tested BC of .412 or so. They work. They jump fine.

I would say send him the barrel, see what happens. Brass is easy to make, just size down and load. It's good brass too. You can run 90 VLD's single load as well if you have enough twist, which isn't 1-6.5 btw. Around 2950 or so.