Quest for perfection loading the .221 Remington Fireball

Guns Magazine, May, 2003 by Charles Petty

For some months now, I have been on a noble quest to see just how good it can get with my neat little Cooper rifle. I told you about this little dandy in the April issue and hinted at the accuracy, but with a bare smattering of factory ammo today it is very much the province of the handloader.

The .221 Fireball is a cartridge that almost didn't make it. Originally developed by Remington for use in their XP-100 handgun, it's basically a shrunken .222 Remington. You could also say it is a greatly reduced .223. I've always thought Remington did it that way because they thought the .223 would be too much for the short barrel of the XP-110.

I well recall when gunsmith Bob Day punched one out to .223, and the awesome muzzle flash and noise it generated. Today we think nothing of that sort of thing, but more than 20 years ago it was different.

The .221 As A Rifle Cartridge

Remington soon began to chamber the XP-100 for other cartridges but eventually they discontinued the gun altogether. And, a while later, the ammo disappeared from the catalog. Still, the little cartridge had acquired a small cadre of loyal fans who used it in custom rifles or T/C Contenders.

Here's an example from the Nosler Reloading Guide, "If you haven't tried the .221 Fireball cartridge in a rifle, you owe it to yourself to do so at your earliest opportunity." Those words are from Gail Root, Nosler's ballistics genius who knows about such things. And their manual contains a great variety of data.

Brass has always been available, and Remington brought back the .221 for their "Classic" rifle of the year 2002, so ammo is available too, but handloading is the only way to really realize the potential of this very efficient little cartridge. From a 24-inch barrel the Remington factory-loaded 50grain V-max bullet delivers 2,963 fps and groups that average around .6 inch. Cooper's Varmint Extreme loads with a 42-grain Calhoon custom bullet give 2,967 fps and .52-inch average groups.

For me, any handloading project begins with a look at the loading manuals. Most of the time there are far more recipes than are practical to try, so I generally begin with bullets that represent the common weights for the cartridge and four or five powders. I narrow the field of both powders and bullets based on experience if I have it, and on the clues usually found in the manuals.

In the case of the .221, I started with the 40-grain Nosier Ballistic Tip, 50-grain Speer TNT and 52-grain Hornady A-max. Powders, to start, were: Accurate 1680, Vihtavuori N-130, Norma N-200, Accurate 2015-BR, Alliant Reloder 7, IMR 4198 and, at the last minute based on a hint from Ron Reiber at Hodgdon, their new Lil'Gun. Loads were put up in in Remington brass with Federal 205M primers, and all bullets were seated to touch the rifling as determined by a Stoney Point gauge.

Promising Beginning

The earliest loading was done with standard dies, but when the accuracy potential looked so good I ordered a set of Redding's Competition bushing neck sizing dies. A .247-inch bushing was found to give adequate neck tension without working the brass too much.

The micrometer adjustment of the sizing die allowed me to size only about half of the neck's length, which seemed to help a little more. Seating is also done with Redding's competition dies and allows adjustment of seating depth in .001-inch increments. Trials with various seating depths led me to conclude that seating to just touch the rifling was, indeed, best for this combination.

The procedure was to go from published starting to maximum loads--usually in one grain increments--and to shoot one five shot group with each. The exception to that was Lil'Gun, for which there was no data at all. Reiber suggested that data for H-110 would be a safe place to start.

In the first round of testing a total of 27 different 5 shot groups averaged .430 inch! To be sure there were some lemons among them, but quite a few cherries too. And so began a bout of obsessive-compulsive behavior that is not all that rare among accuracy nuts--but an uncommon affliction to the average shooter--who should consider himself lucky.

Narrowing It Down

One of the first changes was to substitute the 40-grain Hornady V-max and it shot so well that it became the standard in that weight. Powders were cut down to Accurate 1680, N130, Reloder 7 and Lil'Gun. Another round of tests led me to concentrate on the 40-grain Hornady with AA-1680 and Lil'Gun, because accuracy results with these components were significantly more consistent.

I have always been happy to take the load that shot best and let the velocity fall where it may, but in this business velocity measurements are mandatory. Most of the loads I tried topped out at speeds similar to the factory ammo, to a high of around 3,150 fps.

You'll find Fireball loading data in the handgun section of the manuals, so at first glance velocity readings may appear to be out of whack. Check the barrel lengths. SAAMI's standard test barrel is 10.5-inches long, and Nosler's data is shown from a 14-inch barrel so we are automatically going to get about 200 fps more just because of the Cooper's 24-inch barrel.