17 HMR upper

[Bill Alexander]

Happy Christmas.

We have a 22WMR. Testing showed the bolt to be a little heavy but it is easy to flute the sides and bring the weight down. I only ran Hornady ammunition and need to run a few thousand to verify everything is good but working from the 17 HMR the design is well proven.

What was a pleasant surprise was that the recoil arrangement did not require alteration. In effect it should be possible to run the 17 and the 22 off the same lower.

Barrels are from E.R. Shaw and I run a 12 twist with a standard chamber. Less than an 1" at 100 yards and good for cans at 200 with a 1-4x22 Bushnell.

Bill Alexander

[BaileyMoto]

Awesome!

[kennp]

Happy Christmas.

We have a 22WMR. Testing showed the bolt to be a little heavy but it is easy to flute the sides and bring the weight down. I only ran Hornady ammunition and need to run a few thousand to verify everything is good but working from the 17 HMR the design is well proven.

What was a pleasant surprise was that the recoil arrangement did not require alteration. In effect it should be possible to run the 17 and the 22 off the same lower.

Barrels are from E.R. Shaw and I run a 12 twist with a standard chamber. Less than an 1" at 100 yards and good for cans at 200 with a 1-4x22 Bushnell.

Bill Alexander

Interesting twist rate for a .22 WMR, should do really well with the longer 50grn .22 WMR bullets. Fairly fast a twist rate for the shorter 30grners. Much better than 1-16 that is too slow & out of date for modern .22WMR ammunition.
Good to hear that no modification was needed to the recoil arrangement you already have.
As far as removing material from the bolt to lighten it, perhaps you could cut the vertical grove required for the ejection port dust cover to work.
I'm really glad you are already getting sub 1 MOA !

[Bill Alexander]

The ejection port cover latch groove is deliberately omited. In creating the 17 HMR the balance is extremely critical. If the bolt was designed to reliably operate and unlatch the cover it would be too lightly sprung when the cover is not latched and case head failures could occur.

As the feature was not used we used the space for the extractor spring. The extractor in this is much heavier than the typical 22 LR, being pivoted round a cross pin rather than latched in place.

I would have liked to have a functioning port cover but proved at odds to the rest of the set up.

Bill Alexander

[kennp]

Hi Bill,

I've started up a new thread : .22 WMR AR's

You may want to contribute to it in view of now having a .22 WMR in the works & this thread is about your 17 HMR upper.

Hope you Christmas testing has gone really well,

Happy new year!

[wilkie_3]

Anymore news on this? I really want one of these but would like to hear some feedback from someone who has ordered one?

[kennp]

Orders are being taken by Alexander Arms so it cant be far off now.

[Bill Alexander]

The first customers (not writers!) will recieve guns this month and I am sending out units to our Beta test guys at the same time. We are donating a unit for the NRA fundraiser at the end of this month.

The last few months of getting this running have been excrutiating, between finding the little glitches in production and testing for problems in build quality guns it has been busy.

As part of this project we have extended the indoor test fixture to allow every unit to be fired as it is manufactured.

Bill Alexander

[kennp]

The first customers (not writers!) will recieve guns this month and I am sending out units to our Beta test guys at the same time. We are donating a unit for the NRA fundraiser at the end of this month.

The last few months of getting this running have been excrutiating, between finding the little glitches in production and testing for problems in build quality guns it has been busy.

As part of this project we have extended the indoor test fixture to allow every unit to be fired as it is manufactured.

Bill Alexander

Some of you lucky people must have had your new guns by now so come on, show them off & give us the reviews please.

[kennp]

Some of you lucky people must have had your new guns by now so come on, show them off & give us the reviews please.

The 1st 'customer' picture & short review is in the industry section on another 'AR' site on the Alexander Arms .17 HMR upper.