17HMR - Past Meets Present

17HMR vs the world. 

Here we get into the meat of the subject when discussing 17HMR. How does it actually compare to the other popular rimfire offerings? Real world testing tells the tale better than anything, but some numbers can help too. Generating data on rimfires can be pretty daunting. The variables of bullet offerings are almost unlimited and the different rifle configurations even more vast. Complicating things even more is the lack of solid published ballistic coefficients. As if that didn't make things hard enough, even when ballistic coefficients are available and most variables known, there's the fact that most ballistic solvers are not very reliable when you get into computing firing solutions for low BC subsonic projectiles. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, simply because ballistic coefficients and accurate firing solutions are most important when considering distant shots... and rimfires are not suppose to be making distant shots. Then lets not forget that rimfire ammo is notoriously inaccurate and unreliable. A situation that can not be remedied, as we can not handload for rimfires. At least not in any practical sense. As a result, you just don't see much money or time in R&D being spent on determining flight paths for rimfire cartridge. Despite that, us rimfire enthusiasts have been able to manage. So, while I will provide some data here... it is not to be considered the holy grail of rimfire trajectory comparisons. It is simply a good faith effort to demonstrate where these rimfire cartridges sit in relation to one another. Real world testing of all available ammo types for each cartridge is simply not in the scope of this article. 

Changing bullets, BC's, and launch velocities can change the data on these cartridges wildly. Knowing that, I'm going to select some "average" BC's for our calculations which are widely accepted. On the 22lr we will use a BC of .150, representing Lapua Center-X type ammo.  The 22WMR (22mag) has infinite bullet offerings, so we'll use a BC of .110 representing a typical 40-45gr offering. Then for the .17HMR we'll use .125 as that is typically accepted for the 17gr to 20gr offerings.  All calculations are done with atmospheric conditions set to 70 degrees F, 27.5 inHg station pressure, and 50% humidity. Wind is set at 9:00 10mph. It should be noted that given the fact the 22LR is totally outmatched here, the zero is set to 40yds at its trajectory apex, while both the 22mag and 17HMR are zeroed at 100yds. 

Left to right: Savage A17 17gr, CCI TNT Green 16gr JHP, CCI TNT 17gr JHP, CCI Gamepoint 20gr JSP, CCI Vmax 17gr, Remington Accutip-V 17gr, Hornady Vmax 17gr, Winchester Varmint HV 17gr.

So which one should you use?

With all the different types of ammo available, choosing which one to use can cause some confusion for shooters. Essentially you'll want to determine your intended goal or application first. Are you planning to shoot for score on paper, shoot raccoon sized animals, or going after starlings and gophers? In my experience, one type of ammo can do all of the above but certain types will produce different effects. For instance, you can shoot starlings and gophers with a 20gr soft point, but it typically will not produce the spectacular explosive effects of the 17gr polymer tipped projectiles. Conversely, the 17gr poly tipped bullets tend to not anchor a big South Dakota badger as effectively as the 17gr jacketed hollow points or 20gr soft points. So you'll want to give some thought to your intended target when deciding on which ammo to use. 

Accuracy and precision lead my choices. I'll save you a lot of trouble right now and simply say that the CCI TNT 17gr JHP and CCI 20gr Gamepoint has produced the best accuracy I've seen in any of my 17HMR rifles I've owned. Despite this fact, there is another important aspect of rimfire ammo selection which centerfire shooters or casual rimfire shooters may not be aware of. That aspect is lot number testing. Each rimfire rifle will shoot best with certain types and lot numbers of ammo. Just because you go and buy a brick of CCI TNT 17gr and it shoots wonderful, doesn't mean the next one from a different lot number will. The golden rule is this: If you find a lot number of ammo that shoots exceptionally well, you buy all they have in stock. Several online ammo sources will send you small quantities of certain lot numbers to try. You can test in your own rifles and then buy out the remaining lot number that shoots best... or at least buy all you can afford. 

Since testing and availability are important, I buy my 17HMR ammo at SoDak Sports in Aberdeen, South Dakota. If you're in the the market for anything shooting related, they are worth checking out. They carry a wide range of most things outdoors! Great selection of rifles, shotguns, binoculars, handguns, ammo, and accessories. They have a good variety of 17HMR ammo and they keep an excellent quantity on hand. So if you find something your 17HMR likes, they will likely have plenty of it in stock for you to come back and buy! The staff are always professional and helpful. They also recently purchased Leader outdoors store in Mitchell, SD. 

17HMR Rifles

Just about every major rifle manufacturer produces a 17HMR. I've owned Marlin, Sako, Savage, CZ, Ruger, and NEF 17HMR rifles. Most of you know me well enough to be aware that I own some very high end centerfire rifles as well as 22lr rifles. I expect solid components in a rifle built to exacting tolerances that operates without any mechanical issues and shoots extremely well. None, and I repeat, NONE of the previously mentioned rifles would deliver on all of those requirements out of the box. Even with significant modifications, most could not ever demonstrate they belonged among my other rifles. The savage and marlin actions were some of the worst I had experienced. Prone to failure to fire, failure to eject, and failure to feed. Everything felt small and cheap, because it was. $300-$500 for those rifles. The CZ was a bit of a step up, but not much, requiring a pile of aftermarket parts to even start feeling right. Yet I could never get happy with the safety location or bolt operation. The Ruger was quite nice, but never did shoot very well. The NEF was a break action single shot. I got tired of that quickly. Other than the Ruger, they all seemed to shoot fairly well, but nothing was super impressive. They could produce a nice group or two, but could not do it very consistently. I do not fault the Marlin, Savage, or NEF rifles for not being able to satisfy me. They are simply cheap guns and I just do not have cheap gun tastes. The CZ, Sako, and Ruger on the other hand demand a significantly higher price, being between $800 and $1400. While not full custom rifle prices, I still felt a bit let down in their out-of-the-box performance. 

The closest I came to 17HMR happiness was a Sako Quad with aftermarket trigger guard, rail, and bolt handle/knob. The factory trigger guard and bolt handle on the Sako Quad is plastic. Sako should literally be embarrassed to ship those $1200 rifles in that condition. The factory barrel was replaced with a Lilja drop in. I had it cut at 20" and threaded 1/2x28. I also had them bed the stock and give all the metal a black Cerakote job while it was there. That Sako Quad is the one pictured above. By all accounts, it's all the 17HMR that most people would ever need. The base rifle was $1200. Another $200 in aftermarket trigger guard, bolt handle, and scope rail. Lilja barrel was $400, and another wad of hundred dollar bills to the smith for the cut/thread, bed job, and Cerakote. After all was said and done I had turned that $1200 Sako Quad into an over $2500 Sako Quad. I added a gemtech suppressor, set of Nightforce rings, and a Nightforce 2.5-10x42 scope too. Just as it's pictured above is how it has stayed since and how it sits now. 

The safety on the Sako Quad is in the right place and operates just like a Rem 700 or clone centerfire. The stock is adult size with good length of pull and ergo's. It is made of a nice cut of european walnut too, so it looks quite good with lots of character. It feels mostly like a normal centerfire rifle. Sako Quads ship from the factory with an excellent adjustable trigger. They can be set to break crisply at 1.5 to 2lbs without issue. The action is lightweight and is definitely the weak link in the rifle. It is just too light and too tin can feeling as compared to a centerfire. The Lilja drop-in barrel certainly increased the rifles accuracy as compared to the original factory barrel. I've dispatched a massive number of starlings and gophers with this setup. Simple, but effective repeater that offers a good experience for the dollar. However, if you're like me and are fond of custom rifles, you're likely to find this rifle lacking. You'll come away with the bolt manipulation feeling hollow like a cheap tin pot. Fragile... in a word. Though by this standard, you're likely to find most rifles lacking. 

When only a full custom rifle will do, Nothing else will work. This rifle started its life as a cobbled together Remington 40XR in 22lr. It had a mismatched bolt, dinged up stock, and barrel that wasn't anything special. Perfect candidate for a tear down rebuild project like this. I have owned more than a dozen Remington 40X 22lr rifles, so I knew exactly what I was going to end up with on this build. Big rifle feel is what I was after and that's exactly what this rifle delivers. We went through the action, truing it up, tuning it, timing it, and making all the necessary modifications for it to accept the larger rimfire cartridge. A nice bolt knob to finish the job. They installed my favorite Timney 517 trigger which is in nearly all my other centerfire and custom rimfire rifles. We selected a Lilja 4-groove 9 twist Rem Varmint contour barrel and finished it with 1/2x28 threads at 26". I opted for a nice long barrel on this rifle, as my Sako Quad has a 20" barrel, and I'd had plenty of experience with 16", 18", and 22" 17HMR's. I wanted something new and different to work with. The barreled action was then masterfully bedded into a McMillan A3A stock with Anschutz accessory rail and adjustable recoil pad. 

This 17HMR has no equal. The robust and heavy 40X action exudes strength and rigidity you can feel with every bolt cycle and every impact of the firing pin. It doesn't feel flimsy or sound hollow and fragile like all the other 17HMR's I've fired. No sir, this one here stands so far apart from the pack that it isn't even the same species. A 17HMR shooting experience unlike any other, at least for now. If one of you want one just like this... you can have one. How awesome is that? Go buy you a smacked up rusty Remington 40X 22lr for under a thousand bucks. Send that thing to TS Customs with a check between $2500 and $3500 (depending on what hardware choices you make) and they'll send you back the most impressive 17HMR money can buy. Simple as that. 

Don't ask me why. If you need to ask, you wouldn't understand anyway. That's not me being cynical or cute, that's me being honest. This isn't the kind of thing you justify to someone else. I'm not the kind of person that feels like justifying myself anyway. I've just never felt the need for that kind of outside approval. This is the kind of thing you either understand or you don't. If you understand, well then chances are that you and I could talk about anything and mostly agree. If you don't, I don't think less of you, but I doubt we'd have much to talk about. I simply "needed" this rifle, and thanks to TS Customs and the options in this world... I have it. You may not need one like it, and in that event, all the gun shops are slammed full of little cheap rimfires made just for you, 1000 at a time. 

I left it as a single shot rather than converting it to a repeater. Reason one being, it's easier. Reason two, and the most important reason being: There's something quite special about shooting one shot at a time. Mentally, it does something different than when you're sitting atop a full magazine. I have plenty of repeaters. This rifle serves a different mantra. 

Is the barrel length worth it? I tested the 8 different types of ammo I had on hand in this 17HMR with 26" barrel as well as my Sako Quad with 20" barrel and collected the average velocity. 

The quality control among 17HMR ammo is certainly not very good. It's not uncommon to see FPS extreme spreads of more than 150fps when testing. For this reason, firing a statistically significant number of rounds meant at least 50 to 100 rounds of each type. I felt that was unnecessary, given that the longer barrel shows to provide faster velocities in most ammo tested. If I were to fire more of the ammo which showed slightly slower in the longer barrel, its very likely the results would have been reversed. It's also important to remember that each and every barrel will be different. Some barrels will be slow, and others fast. While it is true the longer barrel on this rifle provides faster velocities than the 20" on the Sako, is the length penalty worth the velocity gained? When you plug a specific bullet and velocity gain into a ballistic solver, you see that there is not much benefit to having a barrel over 20". You might pick up one or two tenths of a mil of wind drift at 200yds. If I did it over again, I'd stay with 20" and save that extra length for the Thunderbeast 22 Takedown suppressor. This 26" barrel is awful long with the TBAC can on the end. I've had 16" 17HMR rifles before, and can tell you first hand that there is definitely a performance penalty when going that short. I've had 4 different 17HMR's which were cut/threaded to 16" and learned the hard way that you often give up quite a bit of performance when compared to 20" barrels. If the majority of your shooting is inside100yds, then barrel length is likely not going to matter. Though I do believe the longer barrels help stretch this cartridge out a bit. 

One thing that I have noticed is that not only do you tend to have a slower velocity from the shorter barrels, the ES/SD is typically higher in the shorter barrels. The ES/SD of this 26" Lilja is the lowest I've seen in any 17HMR I've tested thus far. This rifle was built with a very specific purpose in mind which does not require portability. Maximum ballistic advantage and shootability were the requirements. In that capacity the longer barrel seems only to provide benefits without any drawbacks, if handling is ignored. So for a general purpose 17HMR rifle, I think 20" is the perfect length.