Look' s like Ruger is comming out with a brand new Rimfire Cartridge and gun shortly called the 204 Ruger. This is a .22 Magnum necked down to 20 caliber and sporting a 32gr Hornady V-Max bullet which is suppose to scream out at 4,225fps!! I wonder if this new Rimfire will take some of the wind out of the little .17 Hummer' s sails!!
Click onto the link below for more on the this story and other new toys!!
I' m going to do some guessing here....The article I just read said it was based on the .22 Remington Magnum. I believe it' s mis typed and is really the .222 Rem Mag whick is like the .223 case, and not a rimfire.
I necked down the .223 case to take the very same .204 bullets from Hornady' s first production run and was able to achieve 4,000' /sec....and accuracy was excellent.
If I' m right on this guess, I' d further like to guess that the .204 Ruger isn' t going to compete with the .17 HMR....but it could kill the .17 Remington and offer a bite out of the .223 sales.
It don' t make sense to use the (almost) obsolete .222 Rem Mag case for this new round instead of the overwhelmingly abundant brass supply for the .223 Rem.
Again a lot of guessing here...BTW you' ll have the same problems with cleaning components for the new 5MM round as was had with the .17 rounds.
I did hear that in 2004 Ruger will be making a 40th Anniversary model 10-22. It' s hard to believe the 10-22 is 40 years old already.My understanding is all made in 2004 will be the 40th anniversary model.Haven' t heard anything mentioned about a 204 Ruger.
Ruger Redhawk
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Should be able to get Cleaning supplies thru J. Dewey
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Wow...that makes my little wildcat almost legitimate. I' ll just get a new chamber reamer and open the chamber the roughly .03 longer to the .222 Rem Mag specs.
Thinking about it, the .204 Ruger will not fit in a .223 chamber and the .223 case won' t fit in the .204 chamber, and that seems to make sense...
BTW barrels are available from Douglas, Shilen (where I got mine) and Pac-Nor as well as many others. Dougles actually chambered and made barrels for the diameter bullet 40 years ago.
At least Hornady and Berger make .204 bullets.
Mine has been a very fine varmint gun for those 300 yard prairie pups, and the small bullets share the .17 cals aversion to ricochets.
Sounds like another product loking for a reason to exist[>:]
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Briman, I said the same thing about the little .17HMR....and it' s taken the shooters by rage....who would have guessed....I' ll let time tell on this one too...but I sure like mine.
I got the 17HMR for my contender, 14" bbl puts 5 in an inch at 200, I was impressed with that but not the price of the ammo so I got a 17K hornet so i can handload ( hate throwing away brass)
As soon as some specs are out on the ammo will probably see about getting one made, maybe in carbine length, just to say I shot one.
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RE: Brand new 204 Ruger Rimfire
Vapodog, I agree with you on the fact that the new Ruger .204 round will have no effect on the sales of the .17 HMR because we are talking two completely different types of cartridges here. But like you stated, it could and probably will cut into sales of other centerfire varmint calibers. Sounds like a very interesting new addition to the world of varmint hunting.