WELCOME TO OUR NEW WEBSITE!
We hope you like our latest site which allows orders to be placed with us 24/7 Please note this service is an extension to the telephone mail order service we have offered for the past 39 years. So if you have any questions you need to ask you are still welcome to call us on 01226 756332 or e-mail us at enquiries@rimfiremagic.co.uk Our shop opening hours remain unaltered and we are available from 09.30 – 17.30 Thursday to Saturday with voicemail available outside these times and e-mails are checked severl times each day.
We look forward to serving new customers together with our regular customers! Please note that we have many more products to be listed on the new site and expect to be adding more items at regular intervals so please feel free to check back frequently to see our most recent additions!
This is a good moment to remind everyone that we are not just a mail order business, and our shop may be small but still offers a fair assortment of items which may be of interest to all Section One shooters. For example we stock rimfire and centrefire ammunition for sporting and target shooters together with reloading components such as brass cases, primers, expanding and Match projectiles, powders from Vihtavuori, Alliant and Hodgdon. We stock cleaning products and chemicals, reloading equipment from Lee Precision and many more related bits and pieces. We stock many Magpul items and of course many Ruger© 10/22© related factory replacement and aftermarket accessories and parts from Power Custom, Volquartsen Custom and lots more…..
The 8.6 Blackout – First Time in the UK!
A brief insight into a novel cartridge and barrel combination.
When a long time friend and shooting colleague asked if he could have a particular rifle prepared for him Roger jumped at the chance to do something that little bit different from his usual line of work. The request was for a short barrelled rifle chambered in an interesting and relatively new cartridge which was becoming popular in the USA namely the 8.6 Blackout. The project was immediately attractive to Roger as to the best of his knowledge nobody had yet produced such a rifle in the UK possibly as very few UK shooters had even heard of it! This of course piqued his interest and some research was clearly necessary to establish how this could be achieved or even if it would be possible. The timing was excellent as Roger has promised himself to reduce his workload due to his ongoing old age and health problems. What we didn’t know at that time is that this would take over a year from inception to completion.
Basically there was a complete dearth of ammunition or even cases or dies available so these were imported from the USA. The bullets themselves offered only a few options as this cartridge is offered in two formats in the US as either traditional supersonic rounds or (and of considerably more interest to us) as a subsonic cartridge utilising .338” calibre bullets more often associated with the well known .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge. The prospective owner of the new rifle was predominantly interested in using the 300gn Sierra MatchKing projectiles in subsonic mode and his interest was using the rifle for target shooting out to around 300 yards. It should be noted that the main use for this type of cartridge would normally be for what we might rather loosely call “vermin shooting” although in this context rather than the more conventional UK target of foxes etc in the US the 8.6 Blackout is widely used for shooting of rather larger targets such as Cape Buffalo! Furthermore this is often carried out at distances of several hundreds of yards!
It was determined that we could construct our first ammunition samples using 6.5 Creedmoor cases which could be shortened and then necked up to the necessary 8.6MM/.338 size and interestingly we found the Lee were already offering dies for this cartridge. So at first glance it was hoped the ammunition issue wouldn’t be too complicated. However there was one very big complication ….what about the barrel? Luckily a suitable barrel was obtained through Brownells UK from a company named Faxon who had offered the first barrels chambered in 8.6 Blackout. This was fortunate as the chances of obtaining a suitable barrel blank to chamber in the conventional manner would prove impossible at that stage due to the extremely unusual twist rate for the rifling needed to stabilise heavy projectiles at subsonic velocities which is an amazing 1 in 3 ….. yes, that’s not a typo, it really is a one in three rate of twist! Everyone who has looked through a barrel has said the same …. It looks like it’s been threaded internally! This of course explained the difficulty in obtaining suitable bullets for loading ammunition at all velocities as the extremely fast rate of twist in these barrels means there s a real risk of the bullet jacket being stripped from the core as depending on the actual bullet velocity the missile itself may be leaving the muzzle at an amazing 500,000 revolutions per minute ….. now that is FAST!
This is where one of the easiest parts of the project occurred as the barrel Roger obtained was 12” in length although he also acquired a similar barrel at 16” for future velocity tests. Sadly there was very little loading data available and Roger even approached Hornady who at that time had expressed a commercial interest in the cartridge. They weren’t able to offer data as such but were gracious enough to offer useful guidance as to the sort of pressures we would need to use. Now we hit the REAL snag! We could assemble the rifle easily as the barrel used the Ramage system so fitting and headspacing was a doddle BUT what about proof testing? Well, every new project requires a stroke of luck and Roger’s big break came when he spoke with Wayne Cousins at the Birmingham Proof Laboratory to ask (or should that be “beg”) for help. Having gathered together some brass cases, a die set and some bullets we made a trip to Birmingham. Interestingly Roger hadn’t been there for around 35 years but the whole place didn’t appear to have altered much at all although this couldn’t be said for other parts of Birmingham! Cutting a long story short the excellent facilities at the Proof Laboratory under Wayne’s supervision allowed the establishment of suitable proof loads and working loads but it must be acknowledged that this whole enterprise would never have been possible without the guidance and support of The Proof Master and Wayne Cousins.
So that’s where we are at this moment in time with a happy customer testing his new rifle and Roger trying to find the time to carry out some velocity determinations and accuracy testing with some subsonic loads. We hope to show some of this information in due course, hopefully when we see some warmer weather! Meanwhile here ae a couple of photos of the two 8.6 Blackout rifles built so far showing the 12” and 16” versions. Another 12” barrelled action was returned from the Proof House recently so if you are interested in a rifle in this unusual calibre you may also consider searching on YouTube where you will find a lot more information on this rather intriguing rifle and ammunition combination.
It’s highly unlikely the 8.6 Blackout will become a mainstream cartridge as it clearly does have its limitations BUT there may well be a limited demand for vermin controllers who for example may have a need for a very quiet rifle for shooting wild boar in sensitive areas. Time will tell but in the meantime we will report back in the future when we have carried out more testing.
CZ 457 SCOPE RAIL
We are pleased to add another scope base to our range offered for the CZ rimfire rifles. This one fits the latest CZ457 modelCZ452/455 SPRING KITS
Without a doubt this little kit has been the most successful product we have ever come up with over the past 37 years! Not too surprising considering the immense popularity of these rifles which in their turn are probably the UK’s top selling rimfire rifle. Over 8,000 of our spring kits have been sold but sadly we will not be offering them in the future. It is too late in our career to invest in a further large quantity of the component parts of the kit especially the small brass tubes which need to be manufactured to very fine tolerances. However all is not lost as we do still have a very small quantity of two of the springs. As we are receiving many enquiries for the kit we felt at least we can still offer these two springs without the brass tubes which were seldom needed in the later Model 455 rifles but were often advisable in the Model 452. So we are now offering the two springs for £10 plus £5 carriage if required. Please call us on 01226 756332 or e-mail us at enquiries@rimfiremagic.co.uk if you wish to order or simply ask a question. We have now added this item on the CZ page of our website so you may also order directly online too!
REACH FOR THE SUMMIT!
Brought to you in association with our colleagues at Volquartsen Firearms we are delighted to bring you news of our latest rimfire rifle …… the Summit .22lr is a straight pull bolt action rimfire rifle with a toggle joint action based on the action used successfully in many of the top rifles used in the discipline of Biathlon shooting, a novel event involving a mixture of skiing and shooting. Probably the most commonly used rifle for this branch of the shooting sports is the Anschutz biathlon rifle which uses a similar side operated straight pull Fortner action. The Summit concept uses a similar style of action but its greatest innovation from our point of view is that Volquartsen’s action is designed around the established Ruger® 10/22® footprint and will accept almost any Ruger® 10/22® barrel, trigger unit and stock. What is there not to like here! We believe this new rifle will in time become as popular with UK shooters as our well established Rimfire Magic semi-auto rifles.
This allows us to offer a range of rifles adaptable to many styles of shooting including a sporting rifle which may be operated quickly and quietly or target grade rifle for use in competition shooting where the use of a semi-automatic rifle may not be desired. With a sound moderator fitted you can have a sporting rifle with an action which may be operated with a finger and thumb or in the case of some practised shooters a single digit may be used to cycle the action. Naturally with a closed action this leads to an accurate rifle which is much quieter than a semi auto rifle.
From a target shooters perspective we can offer a lightweight, accurate rifle suitable for many disciplines conducted at a more leisurely pace or alternatively with the use of a longer traditional heavy steel barrel you have a heavier and more stable platform for NRL22 competition or the latest long range precision rimfire shooting. One of the interesting features of the Summit system is that the headspace may be easily established for your specific ammunition choice if you have a particular favourite ammunition you like to use, particularly in long range shooting. An additional feature is the integral picatinny scope base which is machined into the receiver incorporates a cant of 20MOA allowing the shooter more opportunity to reach out and zero the scope at longer distances.
Naturally we will be happy to quote for any reasonable specification you may require but our “standard” specification as seen in the photo immediately below consists of the Summit action with a Volquartsen TG2000 trigger unit with a trigger pull of around 1.75 lbs and a Volquartsen 16″ carbon fibre barrel with a 1/2 x 20 UNF thread at the muzzle. This is installed in a Magpul X-22 Hunter stock. The stock is available in a choice of black, flat dark earth or olive drab green. However as mentioned before don’t forget the Summit action should accept almost any Ruger® 10/22® barrel, trigger unit and stock. This may possibly make the Summit one of the most versatile bolt action rimfire rifles on the market today! The price for the standard rifle shown immediately below is £1,250 If you wish to see a Summit for yourself why not call in and take a “peak” at one!
In addition to the carbon fibre barrels we also have in stock a number of an alternative top class rimfire barrels from the highly respected company run by Dan Lilja in the USA. These are .920″ diameter heavy plain stainless steel barrels which we have used in the past to build our top of the range Ruger 77/22 and CZ455 rifles. Normally offered at a length of 21″ we also offer these fine barrels in shorter lengths eg. 16″ and 18″ with either a plain target crown or with a threaded muzzle at 1/2 x 20 UNF. All the stocks offered with our Rimfire Magic rifles are of course also suitable for the Summit rifles including Boyds Evolution and At-One stocks, Hogue thumbhole, Magpul X-22. We have also just acquired some more of the excellent (but often difficult to find) MDT ORYX chassis systems as shown in the other Summit photograph above. With the choices of parts available we are confident we can build you a rifle to suit your particular requirements so please don’t hesitate to contact us for any further information or to ask any questions you may have concerning our new range of Summit rifles.
RIMFIRE MAGIC RIFLES
Meanwhile we had a pleasant surprise a few months ago when a caller at the shop showed us a video on YouTube which had only been posted the day before and had already received over 1,000 hits (plus one from us later that day!) We knew nothing whatsoever about this review and we have no connection with the reviewer who in turn it appears was offered the rifle to review by a customer. The rifle itself was produced back in 2017 We thought you may like to see this ….
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