Playing With The SGB Again

by JimT, Texas, Monday, March 24, 2025, 14:51 (10 days ago)

I was in Academy Sports today and found .22 Long Rifle ammo for 6 1/2 cents a round ... so you know I had to buy some. They are "Monarch" brand ... a name for Brazilian-made ammo for distribution by Academy. The ammunition is produced by Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (Brazilian Cartridge Company), Avenida Industrial No 3330, Santo Andre, Estado de Sâo Paulo, Brazil and carries the CBC headstamp. I have seen that headstamp on 9mm ammo but never on .22 rimfire, not that I have been looking for it.

The cartridges have a 40 grain lead bullet and are typical of the cheaper American-made ammo that is put out by Federal, CCI etc. Buying it reminded me of when I was a teenager and Dad was always buying the cheapest .22's he could find. It was the best way he could keep me shooting and not break his wallet.

He made a tool to "flat-nose" the lead roundnose .22 ammo. I remember him trying different lengths until he found the length that would function through bolt actions and semi-auto handguns and rifles. Testing them on everything we could we discovered that on cottontails and squirrels the flat-nose .22's killed as good or better than a hollowpoint, and on small game like squirrels they did not destroy as much meat as a HP. And they were accurate!

Some years later ... in the 1980's ... Paco Kelly and Ed Wosika began making and marketing the tool to flat-nose the cheaper .22 ammo. Ed named it the Small Game Bullet - SGB - and for quite some time they made and sold them, giving my Dad a percentage. Dad never asked for it. He was just happy the idea worked. After a year or two Ed re-designed the tool making it easier to use.

Some time around 25 years ago I think it was, Ed visited with RCBS and CCI about producing the SGB Tool commercially. They looked at it and finally decided that since Paco and Ed had been selling it already, it wasn't worth investing in the tooling and said, "No thanks." About 1 year later CCI came out with flat-nose .22 Long Rifles named "The Small Game Bullet." Yep. Now my Dad never got upset about it. He never even commented on it other than something like "Oh well." And CCI did not owe Dad anything but it would have been a nice gesture to send him a case of ammo.

I still have one of the original SGB Tools. The Second Variation is larger around and easier to hold, the sides being knurled. But I dug the old one out this afternoon and modified a box of the Brazilian .22's.

The only place I know of that is making a tool to flat-nose .22's these days is Gary Reeder Custom Guns. His tool is a lot nicer than the originals, being able to do 3 or 4 cartridges at one time.

This photo is from his website showing what the flat nose can do.

I shot a lot of game years ago with the SGB bullet. The largest critters I shot with it were Javelina. They would come in our yard at night and fight with the dog and root up the wife's flowers and fight among themselves over the peaches that fell from our trees. About 2AM one morning I grabbed my .22 rifle and ran out the door and fired amongst them. One fell over. The next day I cleaned it and found the bullet under the hide on the off side. The load was a Standard Velocity Remington .22 Long Rifle. This is the ammo and the actual bullet.

I shot other Javelina at distance to 25 yards with the SGB bullet and never had to shoot one twice.

Now I have 50 rounds finished and one of these days I will shoot them for accuracy and them maybe do a test where I shoot them against commercial hollowpoints and recover the bullets for comparison. That might be fun.

--
Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.