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Rimfire Drum Magazines

capital7

Cast Iron
Joined
May 20, 2016
Location
Barrie
Hello everyone,

I've posted here a few times with great response from many of you, and hope you have more valuable insight in this topic.

I am a CAD designer in Canada, so magazines are restricted to 5 rounds for rifles, and 10 for pistols, except for the case of rimfire rifles with magazines that can not be used in pistols in which there is no limit, (and after the Ruger situation we lost the 10/22 drums....) this is where the drum magazine comes in.

I would like to design a drum magazine or helical magazine (like the Russian Bizon SMG) for a rimfire rifle (Possibly designing a rifle for it as well off of a tried and tested design, but I digress)

I understand the difficulty of using a rimmed cartridge in this configuration, but surely there must be ways around this and my hopes are that I can rack your brains on the most effective and reliable system of doing this.

Thank you in advance,
Pictures, personal preferences and suggestions are always welcome!
 
I would also like to add hat I will not be doing ANY manufacturing of these until I have a good design and an okay from the government.
 
What is the "Ruger" situation you refer to and why are 10/22 drums/ sticks an issue? Seems like they should meet the criteria you described. Sorry for my ignorance, I don't keep up much with what goes on with this sorta stuff north of the border, too much to worry about here!
 
Sorry, I should have been clearer with that, the issue was the introduction of the Ruger Charger. the 10/22 pistol. since the magazines fit it, then the capacity of the magazines is limited to 10, regardless of what rifle you are using them with.
 
Ah, I'm pretty familiar with the 10/22 rifle, great shooters. I had not realized they came out with a pistol based on it. I see the problem, that sucks! Thanks for clearing things up though.
 
huh, no way! those 10/22 drums are awesome... never bought one but they were still being sold fairly recently I believe.

sounds like a lot of work to design... good luck with it! I don't really dabble much with gunsmithing type design much anymore... Have a little project coming up with a henry lever action (manual actions are capacity-unrestricted ;))
 
huh, no way! those 10/22 drums are awesome... never bought one but they were still being sold fairly recently I believe.

sounds like a lot of work to design... good luck with it! I don't really dabble much with gunsmithing type design much anymore... Have a little project coming up with a henry lever action (manual actions are capacity-unrestricted ;))

Even in centerfire cartiges?

My understanding was that that is only true for shotguns? Didn't know rifles were okay too, would that also apply to bolt actions?
 
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Just looking at this helical it seems like having a rim wouldn't be a problem as the base of the cases aren't lined up. But I've never seen one in person.

Patent US4947572 - Large capacity ammunition magazine - Google Patents

Have fun with it.
Steve

The calico .22 (looks like the one in the patent drawing) uses this, although I've heard lots of problems with jamming, I'm hoping that someone has used these style mags and could help me understand the feeding problems
 
If you just want extended capacity, try something like the PS90 mag. You could line up a shit load of cartridges that way.

The problem with that is getting the .22 cartridges to feed properly into the rifle, the rimmed cartridges would catch on each other and turning them in the magazine seems like a major issue, are there any PS90s chambered in .22LR?
 
The problem with that is getting the .22 cartridges to feed properly into the rifle, the rimmed cartridges would catch on each other and turning them in the magazine seems like a major issue, are there any PS90s chambered in .22LR?

You looking for problems or solutions? I thought you were a designer.

If you're just looking to carbon-copy something already out there, you aren't a designer.

:)
 
I'm looking for a solution to the issue of the rims on .22LR, but in order to find that solution I need to find the problems :p if that makes sense.

I don't want to copy an existing idea, that defeats the point of being a designer :P

I was hoping that the PS90 had a .22 variant to look at how they get past the issue of the rims.
would they angle the cartridges so that the rims were always in front of the cartridge behind it?
Maybe a slot system such as the RG&G gattling plans? (Where the rims slide in the slot so that they can't get hung up on eachother)

Kel-tec seems to have figured out the double stack magazines in .22 with a divider in the read of the mag to separate the rims while the heads of the cartridges overlap each other, now that works for angled mags, which may work for a helical, but a drum magazine seems to be a bit tougher.

EDIT: Once I start designing the drum magazine I'll post some pictures up on here, hopefully I can get some feedback of what works and what doesnt.
 
I've seen, held, and felt a PS90 style mag that fed 12ga rounds.

Also, nothing says the cartridges have to be perpendicular to the feed vector.

Were the 12ga rims overlapping?

and yes, that was what I meant by angling the cartridges to that the rim to feed is always in front of the next one in the magazine, like the typical .22 pistol magazines. the Ruger 10/22 magazine uses this in a drum style (They call it rotary) but I would prefer something with more capacity for the size, even the 50 round drums are fairly large, they could be made much smaller if multiple revolutions were made, such as the AK drums or Suomi drums
 
Classic design for rimmed cartridges is a Pan.

Like Lewis, DP28, or American 180, all of which are extremely reliable feeding...

Broadwell on the Gatling, worked well also...

Go beltfed, still can use a drum (PKM style)
 
Classic design for rimmed cartridges is a Pan.

Like Lewis, DP28, or American 180, all of which are extremely reliable feeding...

Broadwell on the Gatling, worked well also...

Go beltfed, still can use a drum (PKM style)

I was thinking about belt fed, but since I'm not exactly a gunsmith, I would prefer a simple detachable magazine, (As opposed to removing the cartridges from the belt backwards, then into the chamber) although I will keep that in mind if I cant get a good magazine design.

What do you mean by Broadwell?

And I do like the idea of a pan system, but I want to keep the weight on the bottom of the firearm, and if I'm correct, the pan also utilizes gravity (From the top loading design I saw on google, this may be completely wrong, please correct me if that's the case)
 








 
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