You might have seen the numerous postings on the Internet message boards with subject lines like, "Where's all the .223 ammo?"

It's simple to make your own jacketed component bullets for the .223 Rem. using quality .22 Rimfire jackets.

And as I write this, a quick scan of ammunition supplier websites shows the most popular loads of .223 Rem. as "out of stock." There are also message-board postings about high ammo prices and speculation as to the cause. So exactly where did all the ammo go, and what can you do to get by until supplies catch up with demand?

I recently spoke with a friend from a major ammunition manufacturer, who said that demand by the military is the main cause of the commercial shortage. He pointed out that during the Clinton Administration, many of the government arsenals were shut down. The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant remains the largest ammunition producer, and though it turns out 4 million rounds a day, it simply can't keep up; so commercial manufacturers are augmenting the military supply by producing FMJ ammo and bullets by the millions.

As for the cost of ammo, he noted that in 2004, copper cost 90 cents a pound. It is now in the $4.30 range. Lead also has increased 70 cents a pound.

Though component .22-caliber bullets haven't taken a supply hit yet, shooters should know that they can make accurate jacketed bullets using .22 Rimfire cases.

This isn't the first time our sport has faced ammunition shortages, though it is for this generation. My wife's grandfather told me a story from his youth of how he and his friends came up with a creative solution during a drought on 12-gauge ammo. They found a way to make readily available 16-gauge shells work in their 12-gauge guns.

Our creative solution to the .223 shortage is obviously going to involve handloading. You'd be wise to start picking up all the empty .223 cartridge cases you can find because those are rumored to be in short supply soon. Production of component bullets for .223 hasn't taken a supply hit yet, but in talking over this subject with Editor-in-Chief Mike Nischalke, we agreed that timing is right for Shooting Times readers to rediscover swaging .22-caliber jacketed bullets using .22 Rimfire cases for the jackets.

I say "rediscover" because I can find the .22 case-to-jacket technology as far back as World War II when Fred T. Huntington and Grosvernor L. Wotkyns offered a Rock Chuck Bullet Swage for ironing out the rims on fired rimfire cartridges to make .22 jackets. Back then, shooters had the choice of rimfire cases made from a greater variety of metals, including copper, brass, and steel.

The first step in forming jacketed bullets from .22 Rimfire cases is to use a die and punch to draw the heads off the rimfire cases to form the brass jacket cups.

Writings from the period indicate that extremely accurate bullets were possible, and that copper cases were preferred. Brass was claimed to foul bores, but that may have been attributable to the mercuric primers in use at the time making brass cases brittle. Steel cases were hard on the tools, could rust inside or out, and reportedly made inaccurate bullets. Regardless of case material, occasional fliers were attributed primarily to artifacts of the firing-pin indent remaining in the base of the formed jackets.

The only copper-cased .22 Rimfire ammunition I've seen recently was what I'd consider antique. The folks at Corbin Bullet Swaging Systems recommended against using steel cases in the tools they sent for this article as steel has a different degree of spring back after swaging. Their dies are sized for brass spring back. That left brass-cased .22 Rimfire cases as my only option for making jackets.

Current reports from those who actively swage their own bullets indicate that the best accuracy can be achieved when starting with high-quality cases--the speculation being that the high-quality cases are more uniform, resulting in more balanced bullets. Taking heed of that experience, I chose to start with Lapua Master L .22 Long Rifle ammunition. This is high-quality ammunition, and the "circle-X" headstamp is light and concentric to the case rim, which would help reduce the possibility of flyers from base irregularities noted decades ago. I fired the Lapua ammunition from my Ruger Single-Six because its chambers are recessed to fully support the case heads, and the round firing-pin strike is hard enough to be 100-percent reliable yet small and light enough to not make a huge bite into the rim.