Yep, we have yet another new cartridge on the market. This time it’s a rimfire round from Winchester. The 21 Sharp is a new take on the .22 LR. It does away with the heeled bullet design, which allows for a wider variety of projectile styles and materials. Winchester is claiming superior accuracy to .22 LR, and more efficient lead free projectiles.
The 21 Sharp Rimfire Cartridge
The new 21 Sharp uses a casing pretty much like the .22 LR. The rounds are not interchangeable though. You do need a dedicated 21 Sharp firearm to use it. The cartridge is an evolution in rimfire technology and performance. Winchester’s engineers built the 21 Sharp for enhanced accuracy with both lead and lead-free projectiles.
Other ammo manufacturers have tried using lead free projectiles with the .22 LR but haven’t been able to match the accuracy that they can get with lead .22 LR rounds. With that in mind, Winchester built the 21 Sharp rimfire to perform with lead-free projectiles from the start, rather than trying to make it work later.
The new designs let Winchester offer a wider variety of bullets, too. The 21 Sharp comes in full metal jacket (FMJ), copper matrix and plated-lead options. Jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullets will be coming later and Winchester promises extreme expansion and energy transfer with those.
21 Sharp Ammunition Offerings
Game & Target 25-grain, Copper Matrix – Winchester designed, lead-free, rimfire bullet produces sub 1.5 MOA groups at 50 yards, designed to outperform all lead-free .22 LR offerings available today.
Game & Target 37-grain, Black Copper Plated – This bullet is the most comparable to a standard .22 LR offering with improved accuracy and offers an economical round for plinking applications.
Game & Target 42-grain, FMJ – Winchester designed this high- performance full metal jacket (FMJ) bullet for those high-volume range sessions with less frequent cleanings and more time for shooting.
Super X 34-grain, JHP – The jacketed hollow point (JHP) bullet outperforms its rival, the .22 LR, in terms of accuracy, expansion and impact energy on small game.
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The concept looks good, and the specs look impressive, but will yet another new rimfire round take off? Time will tell whether the 21 Sharp offers enough over the 137-year-old .22 LR round to make a dent in the rimfire market. Savage has already announced rifles chambered for it, so if you’re curious you can try it out right now.
For more information, check out Winchester’s website at Winchester.com
appears lead is on it’s way out.
why not shorten .22mag
then 1rifle to shoot both?
sclean chamber to rid of carbon.
see no need change from .22lr excepting lead ban.
Looking at the way it’s made I’d have little surprise if that’s what they did. It’d give them a huge start in the marketplace. Why they made the 22 mag bullet diameter a thousandth larger I’ll never know. I’d have stuck with .223 so that convertibles worked well.
What I’m hoping with something like this is you can rebarrel (or even better) rechamber a 22lr so that it’ll work. I think that the latter is a really tall order though honestly.
Basically, Winchester stuffs a .21 caliber bullet into a standard .22LR case, which removes the necessity for using a heeled bullet. Technically, you should be able to shoot a 21 Sharp in a 22LR gun because the cases are the same, but the smaller diameter bullet is just a smidge smaller than the bore diameter of the 22LR and it wouldn’t even engage the lands of the rifling. It would just rattle down the pipe and tumble through the air. I wouldn’t recommend it though, in case something got plugged up.
https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Public-Introduction-21-Sharp-2023-06-14.pdf
https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ANSI-SAAMI-Z299.1-Rimfire-2018-Approved-2018-06-13.pdf
The second link takes you to the Rimfire specs book, and you have to scroll down to the 22LR page.
Things the world didn’t need: Yet another tiny, fast rimfire cartridge.
Is this a .22 Winchester Special, usable in .22WMR arms?
Winchester has a long history of proprietary 22 calibers. See the one of the nicest 22s ever, the M1903 in 22 Winchester Automatic. It almost never works out.
That said, I want one. In a 1903 copy.
Price per round is where this will live or die. If it’s not cheaper than 22 mag or 17 HMR it’s not going anywhere.
.17$/round on Midway vs .12$ for CCI 22 LR…
Winchester’s marketing is like the Christmas market. Something new every year or so, and something abandoned to die equally as often. As a shooter, trying to keep an adequate stock of .17 WSM is like trying to run uphill on a sheet of ice. So now we have a new technology round and caliber. Y’all go out and get going with it…………whenever I see it in stock, weapons AND ammo both, in all the sporting goods stores, for three continuous years — then I’ll think about it. I have to agree with Mister Furious and XZX.
Defines solution in search of a problem. Or just more demtard/DEI anti-lead nonsense.
When I start to hear antimony supplies/mines drying up I would start to worry.
It should be easy to swap a 21 Sharp barrel onto a 10-22.
So it’s more accurate by a small measure and that is what matters to some people.
Most peiple look at the economics of the gun and ammo more.
The .17 HMR has several advantages while matching .22mag in price. It was also embraced by other key manufacturers.
i give this a 10 percent chance of success.
They will sell these to everyone who “needs” the newest thing on the market. But it’s not going to make a dent in the .22LR market. It might be a competitor against 22 magnum or 17 rimfire if the performance is better and the price is the same (or vice versa).
Of course Winchester could just stop making other calibers and leave this silly .21 as the only white box on the shelf
CCI Velocitors with a 40 grain copper plated HP claims velocity of 1435 fps.which is faster than either the 32 or 35 grain .21s. 32 grain stingers are 1640 fps. 36 grain Minimags run slower, only 1260 fps. So what exactly is so dang impressive with 150 fps. I don’t see enough of a benefit to warrant the investment.
There is also the factor that your rifle’s barrel will have an immense impact on accuracy. My Savage does really well with 1050 fps, ok with Minimags, but downright awful with Velocitors. I assume its twist rate is incompatible with the velocity of the round.
And then there are the competitions with targets ranging from 15 to 300 yards for .22LR, so its not as if the ancient little round doesn’t have the right get up and go.
Nope
I don’t mind the non-lead materials- IF THEY WORK AS WELL AS THE LEAD .22LR or Shorts. Why they didnt try it in .22 LR first is beyond me. WE SHALL SEE.
They did try it in .22 LR first, many times, many many times, with little or no success.
The article made that abundantly clear.
The problem is that .22 LR is a healed bullet, and lead-free projectiles don’t work well in a healed bullet.
I have more than enough old fashioned .22lr and wmr to last the rest of my remaining years on this rock and zero interest in a new caliber fad, rimfire or otherwise. Ditto copper boolits.
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