The new Winchester 21 Sharp incorporates a jacketed bullet into a rimfire round.
This report covers:
- Old Man River
- What’s good about the 21 Sharp?
- .14 caliber pellets
- Real ammo
- What is possible
- Summary
Today we look at a new rimfire cartridge Winchester has just launched—the 21 Sharp. It incorporates a jacketed bullet into a rimfire case.
Old Man River
Because I’m a dinosaur I’ll start the discussion as Old Man River. When I was a kid in the 1950s three rimfire cartridges thwarted me—the .22 Winchester Automatic (small world, no?) the .22 Remington Automatic and the .22 Winchester Rim Fire (.22 WRF).
The .22 Winchester Automatic was created for the 1903 Winchester Semiautomatic Rifle. It was sized differently than the .22 Long Rifle cartridge AND would not chamber or work in any other rifle—not even in the Remington model 16 rifle that was chambered for the .22 Remington Automatic cartridge and nothing else!
Guys, I’m not making this up! Both companies actually made a .22 rimfire cartridge that would only work in a single model rifle and, though they were dimensionally similar, neither cartridge worked in their competitor’s rifle!
Oh they gave lots of reasons for doing this—like safety from chambering them in firearms made for black powder cartridges, but both companies also sold millions of .22 Long Rifle cartridges they had filled with smokeless powder, and they would chamber in all firearms made for that cartridge—black powder or not.
The .22 WRF shot a bullet that was 5 grains heavier than a long rifle bullet. It was also a thousandth of an inch wider so a .22 WRF rifle could not be re-chambered to .22 Long Rifle with any success. That thousandth of an inch made a huge difference when it came to accuracy.
Lest we forget, there was the 5MM Remington Magnum Rimfire of 1969. Remington stopped making it in the 1970s but Aguila still produces it. A box of 50 is selling for $65 on Gun Broker. Hey—let’s buy ten!
This cartridge was/is slightly more powerful than the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, but who cares?
Then there are my favorite two rimfires—the .17 Mach 2 (.17 HM2) and the .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (.17 HMR). The HM2 is the only rimfire cartridge that ever blew up on me during a test! I got a piece of the case lodged in my trigger-finger. It turns out that blow-ups were common with these cartridges. My late friend Otho Henderson had two blow-ups from .17 HM2s in two different rifles.
What’s good about the 21 Sharp?
The dinosaur will be quiet now. Why does the 21 Sharp exist? Here’s what Winchester has to say, “Ammo manufacturers have tried with little success to incorporate lead free projectiles into use in the venerable 22 Long Rifle (LR) cartridge. While those products are available, none have ever met the accuracy and on-target performance that a lead projectile can provide due to the original 22 LR design. The new 21 Sharp rimfire cartridge from Winchester was purposefully designed by Winchester to provide top performance with lead-free projectiles rather than accommodating them later.”
I can’t tell you a price for this cartridge yet. An online search turns up lots of toner cartridges for Sharp printers, but I haven’t yet found a source that sells the firearm cartridges. That doesn’t matter though because today’s report isn’t really about this new cartridge or the others I have mentioned. It’s about buying what’s new just because it’s new.
.14 caliber pellets
Several years ago there was a push for a new caliber lead pellet—the .14 caliber. If someone had started making them the gun manufacturers would have had to climb onboard and make airguns in that caliber. No doubt it sounds easy to those who don’t have to do it.
Just for starters, if the pellet is as small or even smaller than the air transfer port in a spring-piston airgun, what are the chances pellets could fall backwards into the compression chamber or get sucked in when the gun is cocked?
Real ammo
So the .14-caliber pellet was never produced but ten years ago people started going crazy over airgun slugs. If you joined the party recently you may not know that we had solid pellets or slugs some time ago. They weren’t very well engineered when they first came to market, but that has changed dramatically. Today the slugs extend the range at which an air rifle is accurate, but in 2010 all they did was shoot substandard at all distances.
What is possible
I always look for things others in the world of airguns have overlooked. In my opinion the Sheridan 190B pistol that Crosman made for Pneu Dart and the 178B rifle from the same company are affordable big bore airguns that I think would be received well in the marketplace. Nothing about them is new except for the use. If used as it comes the 190 is a big bore air pistol that costs less that $300. A lot less! The rifle version sells for just over $400.
Ian McKee has shown us that the pistol works as a big bore pistol and a variety of ammunition might be used. No—it’s not for hunting deer but believe it or not I know of big bore air rifles that have never taken big game—yes, I do! Maybe all some shooters want with a big bore airgun is to shoot it. And a lower-powered one would be much safer to shoot.
Summary
My point today is that something doesn’t have to be brand new to be exciting to airgunners. It could just be a new way to use something that’s been around. Instead of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars and betting the company on a new design an airgun manufacturer can take an existing idea and rework it to do something else. Thus spake the arrow-shooter, excuse me—arrow shooter(s)!