The Short And Long History Of The .22 Rimfire
In 1845, Frenchman Louis-Nicolas Flobert invented a metallic rimfire cartridge called the 6 mm Flobert. Quite obviously a sportsman, Flobert desired a low-energy, minimal-noise “parlor gun” for shooting indoors, and he got it with his sub-800-f.p.s. cartridge that was primer-powered and featured an 18-grain bullet. It became known stateside as the .22 BB Cap. You can probably guess most of the .22 rimfire’s evolutionary story from here: Per usual, Americans gobbled up bigger, faster and better .22 cartridges as soon as they were made available.
In 1857, the .22 Rimfire was introduced by Smith & Wesson for use in the firm’s first revolver. It was longer than the .22 BB Cap, contained 4 grains of blackpowder—rather than simply relying on the primer for propellant—and was topped with a 29-grain projectile. The .22 Short—as the .22 Rimfire came to be known post facto after other, taller versions were developed—still enjoys some popularity today. Clearly, though, ammunition pioneers of the time weren’t content to quit tinkering. Whether American shooters were satisfied is another question. As is so often the case with evolving technology, it’s very possible that people were satisfied with the .22 Rimfire—until a better version was invented that made them change their view of it to the point of renaming it.
That’s exactly what happened when, in 1871, the .22 Long came around. It fired a 40-grain bullet pushed by 5 grains of blackpowder for a slight increase in range and energy, mainly for hunting small game. Spurred by the same motivators, the .22 Long Rifle, made by the J. Stevens Arms and Tool Co., appeared in 1887. Although the now-ubiquitous .22 LR has survived the test of time by somehow landing in a sweet spot of cost vs. power vs. recoil and noise vs. availability vs. need that have combined to grant it the title of “World’s Most Popular Cartridge,” it is far from perfect from an engineering standpoint.
Glossing over the fact that the cartridge’s rimfire priming system is inherently unreliable and tedious to manufacture compared to centerfires, and that its very thin case material must be rigid enough to contain high pressures but malleable enough for consistent extraction, perhaps the most glaring flaw in the .22 LR design is that the bearing surface of its bullet and the outside of its case are the same diameter. This presents problems not only due to the lubricants and crimping procedures necessary for production, but also because the rear of the bullets need to be “heeled,” or necked down to a smaller diameter than the front of the bullet, if they are to be properly seated in the case.
Heeled bullets are terrible ballistically, limiting the cartridge’s options for more modern bullet designs and reducing case capacity. In sum, heeled bullets are inferior to modern designs, and if the cartridge was developed a few years later, it’s very likely that it would have either been made with a case slightly larger in diameter than the bullet or loaded with a bullet slightly smaller in diameter that would eliminate the need for a heel. Nonetheless, it was designed with a heel, nearly 2.5 billion .22 Long Rifle rounds are now produced each year for happy customers all over the world and here we are.
A New Take
Hunters and shooters are a skeptical bunch. We like new stuff after it catches on, but we also frequently ask, “Why do we need that?” especially when a “new-and-improved” product is seemingly trying to replace one of the most popular in sporting goods history. So don’t shoot the messenger when I report that the Winchester Ammunition division of Olin Corp. set out to improve the .22 Long Rifle while also hedging for a future that it cannot know, much less control.
The resulting cartridge is called the .21 Sharp, and while it offers some real advantages over the .22 LR, after speaking with Winchester’s development and marketing team, I assure you they aren’t naive. They don’t believe .21 Sharp will replace or threaten the .22 LR’s well-established dominance in the market—on a level playing field. But, as NRA members are all too aware, politics often ensure that the playing field isn’t always level, just as economic conditions are forever changing. But before I explain what I mean, first let me tell you about the new cartridge itself.
According to the engineering designs Winchester filed with SAAMI, the .21 Sharp utilizes the exact same case as the .22 Long Rifle, which is to say it’s 0.226" in diameter and 0.613" in length, with a maximum overall cartridge length of 1.00". It’s designed to operate at an identical average maximum pressure of 24,000 p.s.i., too. The difference between the two lies in the bullet. The .21 Sharp utilizes a 0.2105"-diameter projectile, with initial designs ranging from 25 to 42 grains, going anywhere from an advertised 1,750 f.p.s. to 1,330 f.p.s. from a 24" barrel, respectively. These company-published numbers suggest that .21 Sharp is slightly faster, and therefore has slightly more energy, than standard .22 LR loads of similar weight. But .22 Stinger and other high-velocity loads, including Winchester’s own Hyper Speed product, have been available for years and sell briskly, so it’s unlikely that .21 Sharp’s main purpose is to simply be a faster .22.
Because the .21 Sharp’s non-heeled bullet is smaller than the case, it can be more easily made utilizing modern bullet designs, such as boattails, spitzer points, jacketed hollow points, lead-free monolithics and others that are ballistically and terminally superior to the .22’s heeled design. But the ballistic advantage is slight, and even if there were an advantage on paper, does it really matter at the ranges at which these rounds will be used?
Regarding terminal ballistics, or the bullet’s performance as it strikes a target, modern bullet designs such as copper-plated hollow points, monolithics and others can display much better qualities such as controlled expansion, weight retention and penetration. But again, the reality is that few, if any, hunters and shooters need perfect bullet performance when plinking cans or hunting squirrels. So I’m doubting whether ballistic superiority is the sole reason why Winchester is gambling on the new rimfire. If, however, a better bullet is a byproduct of the .21 Sharp, then swell—but only if it’s not going to cost much more when sitting side-by-side with .22 LR on store shelves.
The thing is, if both cartridges were manufactured from scratch on equipment that had to be designed, assembled and operated, .21 Sharp rounds would likely cost less, because modern cartridges are more efficiently produced with our modern manufacturing techniques than are the old-school .22 LRs on ancient machines using antiquated mass-manufacturing techniques. I’ve been to the CCI factory in Lewiston, Idaho, and let me tell you—there’s a reason why there’s only a handful of .22 rimfire producers in the world. It’s a complicated business, and the only way they can make money on such a low-profit-margin product is to crank out tens of millions of rounds.
But in the few rimfire factories that exist, .22 LR production has been optimized and the machines have long been paid for, so I believe any notion that .21 Sharp rounds could be cheaper than .22 LRs in the foreseeable future is a pipe dream. Were those machines or companies to go kaput in the future, however, Winchester would have a better and more economical alternative for which factories can be retooled. So, I think it’s safe to conclude that while cost is monumentally important when considering an alternative to the .22 Long Rifle, it was not Winchester’s sole driver for this project in the short term, but rather, for the long term. This is likely the company’s primary reason for developing the .21 Sharp. But there’s also another viable play.
Just imagine if you walked into a major sporting goods store in California, Illinois, New York, Maryland or, perhaps one day, Kentucky, and you didn’t see any .22 LR? What if the only rimfire ammo that was for sale was the all-copper .21 Sharp Copper Matrix load, because lead ammunition has been banned there? What if all-copper .22 LRs are either unavailable because they’re too difficult to produce or they’re laughably expensive? The first thing I’d likely do would be to bemoan the state’s policies that I believe are based on environmental emotionalism. But the second thing I’d do is to buy the lead-free .21 Sharp ammo. I love rimfires, rimfire shooting, plinking with my son and hunting small game—and I’m not ready to give it up just because some jet-setting politician banned lead bullets.
And that’s another reason why I believe Winchester developed the new cartridge—as a hedge for the future. Certainly, it’s not the company’s only motive, as proven by the fact that it will offer the .21 Sharp in four initial loadings, only one of which uses an all-copper projectile. Although Winchester execs wouldn’t mention it, I do think the fact that the new non-heeled design is better suited to modern manufacturing techniques and the production of lead-free bullets are significant factors.
The next hurdle associated with introducing a new cartridge is garnering enough interest in it for firearm manufacturers to chamber guns for it. As of this writing, Winchester and Savage are planning rifle introductions chambered in the new .21 Sharp, and you can bet others will get in gear if it starts to gain traction. But it is here, in gun availability, where Winchester’s engineers were savvy when they decided the new cartridge’s dimensions: Most platforms designed to chamber .22 LR could be chambered instead for .21 Sharp by way of a simple barrel change.
Shooting The .21 Sharp
I gleaned real-world experience with the .21 Sharp both in Nebraska during “The World’s Windiest Prairie Dog Shoot,” and later on my home range. Here’s what I can tell you: In Nebraska, I used the 34-grain copper-jacketed hollow-point load to reduce the number of prairie dogs in a farmer’s field. Of course, accuracy is also a product of the rifle, scope and shooter’s ability as much as the cartridge once the basics of twist rate and bullet weight are figured out, but the .21 Sharp-chambered Winchester Xpert rifles we used demonstrated accuracy on par with any decent, mass-produced .22 LR rifle. Subsequent tests on a controlled, 50-yard range with little wind produced 10-shot groups averaging 1.0" with the 34-grain JHP load and 1.12" with the 25-grain Copper Matrix. This is decent accuracy, but it’s nothing several of the stock .22s in my safe can’t do.
As expected, prairie dogs didn’t do triple backflips when shot, nor did I see any red mist as if the .21 Sharp were a .22-250 Rem. I shot a few ’dogs at 150 yards, which is at the limit of this cartridge’s range, but most were in the 75-yard range. Anecdotally, the 34-grain bullet seemed to me to possibly hit slightly harder than standard-velocity .22 bullets, while the 25-grain Copper Matrix did not seem to hit as hard, which, of course, is subjective and difficult to quantify.
Back at home, I fired the 25-grain Copper Matrix round into ballistic gelatin at 25 yards, which helped me learn a few things. The bullet is not a hollow point, but a solid-copper projectile with a pointed tip that’s blunt at the very end; it doesn’t expand at all. But boy, does it penetrate! I eventually only captured one projectile despite placing three gelatin blocks together spanning a distance of 36"! The bullet I recovered weighed 25 grains, indicating 100-percent weight retention. Due to its complete lack of expansion, it wouldn’t be my first choice for most small game, but where pelt damage is a concern, or for headshots, it might be just the ticket.
Next, I fired the 34-grain jacketed hollow points into gel. They penetrated a very consistent average of 10". What was amazing—and truly went a long way toward soothing my skeptical mind of Winchester’s “superior terminal performance” claim—was their uniform expansion. Unlike most cheap .22 bullets that smear, bend and break apart randomly, the 34-grain JHP .21 Sharp bullets mushroomed beautifully and consistently to 0.365", or 175 percent of their original diameter, in a way typical of expensive centerfire rifle bullets. They averaged 35.5 grains upon retrieval, indicating 99-percent weight retention. This would seem to back up my findings on prairie dogs.
Using a LabRadar chronograph, a few of the numbers I witnessed were surprising when compared to Winchester’s initial published data. While the 25-grain load is touted to leave the muzzle at 1,750 f.p.s. to produce 170 ft.-lbs. of energy at the muzzle, I recorded an average of 1,871 f.p.s., which translates to 194 ft.-lbs. This, from a 16" barrel! I was told that the ammo sent to me for testing may not be the final product that hit the shelves in late 2024, so I have to take the data I gleaned with a grain of salt. The 34-grain JHP round, on the other hand, displayed numbers closer to Winchester’s, with a tested muzzle velocity of 1,585 f.p.s. (compared to Winchester’s touted 1,500) for 190 ft.-lbs. of energy. In both loads I tested, I observed no split cases or stuck cases that would indicate overly high pressures. Feeding, extraction and reliability was perfect during my 300-round test session, which would also indicate that pressures were well within the .21 Sharp’s SAAMI specs.
The Way Forward
These days, it’s somewhat strange how hunters and shooters, including myself, often react negatively to the news of a new cartridge. Maybe it’s because we know that, most of the time, what we already have works fine for our needs. Maybe we’re tired of spending money keeping up with the Joneses. Maybe we see it as companies searching for solutions to non-existent problems. Or perhaps we’re simply tired of being bombarded by advertisements. But probably it’s because we’ve been spoiled by a cornucopia of shooting options, so many that it’s tough to keep them straight in our minds at times.
But the fact remains: We—indeed the world at large—owe American gun and ammunition companies a debt of gratitude for inventing new products and pushing the envelope when it might take quite a while to make money back on their investments, if ever. If we reject the new product for whatever reason, so be it, but if it weren’t for this good ol’ fashioned form of capitalism, we’d still be in the dark ages when it comes to firearms and ammunition for hunting, shooting, self-defense and military service.
Only time will tell if the .21 Sharp thrives on its own merits, if anti-gun politicians continue to ban lead bullets or if the factories that churn out .22 LRs can continue doing so even as superior, more cost-effective production methods are available. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the construction and actual terminal performance of the little micro-pills, although, as I mentioned, I’m not sure how much the difference in terminal performance between the new cartridge and the reigning king of rimfires will be the deciding factor for a round meant to be used at rimfire distances.
While I may not buy a new rifle chambered in .21 Sharp at this time when I already have multiple .22 LR-chambered examples, I have little doubt that there will be plenty of people who will. Either way, I’m thankful to Winchester for giving us a new option that we might actually need down the road, even if we don’t realize it now.
That, my countrymen, is the American way.
