Maverick, I think that I might have one of those situations for Lou, as I was looking in his new book, Vol 1, on page 56, under, “Case Mouth Letters”, I haven’t seen anything explaining these marks, on a .22 Long caliber, rim fire cartridge that I have. The, impressed, “H”, head stamp is common, but I haven’t seen the,”W”, case mouth stamp, on a rim fire, before.

In his article, Lou states that these cartridges, from U.M.C. Co, we’re stamped on the case mouth, from as early as 1903-1939, at the same time these bullets were crimped.

Maybe you have, or others.

I have several larger caliber cartridges with the same type of markings on the case mouth, but mostly, the Express cartridge, by WRACo!

Anthony

Maverick

I’m really not sure, as  I’ve sent an email to Lou. With the impressed, “H”, head stamp, and the,”W”, case mouth stamp, I assumed it was, WRACo, mfg.

Anthony

Maverick,

I didn’t get it from a box, as I found it amongst a lot of miscellaneous, collectables from a fairly large collection, that I’ve been recently dismantling, helping out a widow, who’s collector husband passed a while back. He had it labeled a .22 Long caliber cartridge, and I didn’t give it really a second thought.

After further examination, and measuring it, I found out that it’s actually a .22 Winchester Automatic cartridge! Measuring 0.665, and 0.666,case length, indicating the .22 Win. auto cartridge. Designed for, and used in the Winchester model 1903, semi auto rifle, only. The case diameter is slightly different also, as the cartridge differs slightly from the so called, standard, .22 caliber rim fire cartridge.(.22,s,L, L.r., and the wrf)

This is a sealed, and unopened, cartridge box, of the .22 Winchester automatic cartridge, that came from the Adolph Topperwein estate auction, in 1983 in San Antonio, Texas.

Anthony

Maverick,

I do have my Rains book out, and I didn’t find anything in his book about the case mouth stamp. I did find a lot of information on the box of ammo that I showed, as an example to what box this cartridge would come from. His book does also talk about the, “Dot punch code”, that’s visible on the side of the box.

In Lou’s book, on page #101, example #7, has the case mouth,”W”, stamp, with the,”H”, head stamp.

In Lou’s book on page #56, as I referenced earlier, U.M.C., used a machine to apply the stamp, as a, “rim fire crimping machine”, as the stamp was placed at the same time the roll crimp was applied in a, “roll die”, operation, and not struck, as it could distort or damage the soft case mouth, on the shell. I assumed Winchester, used the same type of operation, in their case mouth applications.

Anthony