reloading .22LR

[Boris]

I know, I know "no one reloads" .22LR, it's a cheap bulk ammo ....

1. I saw a case of some high match grade .22LR ammo for asking price of $75 for a 100 at the last Marlborough show. I overheard $50 for a box of match grade, several times. No way you can claim that it's cheap. $75/100 that's centerfire prices, easy.

2. "No one does it" - I went on major googling spree and found a few threads here and there, different places, different times, most are very old about people asking the same thing and some instances people actually doing it - sifting through a bulk box and picking some by weight or literally taking bullets of and re-seating them. Not too many details though.

3. "Find the best ammo for your gun" - I tried, and I'm not too happy with consistency. Looking here http://www.steelchickens.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1983&start=0 this guy sites 2 grain variation of powder charge for CCI ammo. I'm not sure how that translates into ballistics, but with CCI reputation I can imagine that variation being much greater for worse brands

for plinking, shooting short distances or off-hand, I don't see using a decent brand of brick ammo being a big deal. But for say benchrest competition, shooting 100 yards, using an expensive gun, needing 10 good rounds, I just don't see why someone would not reload or in some way guarantees the load of his ammo.

... so I feel like some people may do it (reload .22LR) but would not admit it, it's almost like a taboo. Do you know of your "friends" who do that? What are some issues? I'm skittish handling "primed" rimfire shells, I don't know how much pressure they would allow, where unlike the centerfire brass, that has clear safe zones. The biggest issue is to have the round go off from some accidental deformation. What else am I missing?

 

[drgrant]

How many brands have you actually tried? There's a lot of stuff out there. Wolf .22 match ammo gets a lot of praise, as supposedly it's made by some german company who made a lot of match ammo.

Additionally, even some of the hi brow match ammo is expensive, but no way in hell should you be paying $75 for 100 rounds. $50 for a 500 round brick is probably more like it.

-Mike

 

[55_grain]

I can't imagine that there's a 2 grain variance in powder in .22's. There isn't even 2 grains of powder in a .22LR.

I've measured 1940's 8mm mauser ammo and found something like a 0.3g extreme spread. The nearest centerfire, .25ACP doesn't even go up to 2 grains. It maxes out at 1.8gr per the loads here http://data.hodgdon.com/cartridge_load.asp

 

[IPSC_DRL]

You can't truly RE-LOAD it due to it being rim-fire and there is no practical way to re-form and re-prime the case.

My club's bullseye team purchased a pallet of what they considered to be good match ammo. I was able to buy a case @ $30 per brick of 500.

 

[Dan S]

This is a joke, isn't it???
You can not "reload" rimfire ammo! The priming compound is inserted wet into the cases, then the cases are spun to distribute the priming compound into the rim. The powder wouldn't be a canister grade powder either. Canister grade means it's available to the public.

 

[DukeInFlorida]

The biggest issue with some people's guns feeding .22 LR ammo is that they never properly clean and lube their guns, especially rifles.

Some people have the mistaken notion that .22 LR ammo is clean, and because some o the bullets have a waxy material on them, the bore never needs cleaning.

I have seen some VERY nasty .22's, both semi autos and bolt actions. Decades of shooting, and never cleaning.

You take a gun which is THAT dirty and nasty, and it's gonna barf on any ammo you try. The only real issue you should ever really have is with .22 LR ammo that merely goes foof instead of bang. That's what crap ammo does.

If you have tried every brand, and can't get your gun to work, you have a dirty gun, a poorly lubed gun, or some other mechanical issue having nothing to do with the ammo.

Just my opinion.

As far as accuracy of .22 LR ammo, get some good match grade ammo, and shoot it in a clean and properly working gun, and it will be pretty good. But never as good as a high powder center fire gun/ammo. Then again, .22 LR wasn't made for that.

 

[EddieCoyle]

Even state of the art ammo factories have a hard time reliably priming rimfire cases.

If you tried to do it yourself and managed not to blow yourself up, I doubt you'd get 50% to fire on the first strike.

 

[Boris]

no, this is not a joke, and no I'm not trolling.

ok, let me make sure I got the terminology right by "RELOADING" - I don't mean centerfire-like reloading the spent brass, but taking unfired .22s, pull the bullets and either replacing powder or re-measuring it.

I have tried at least 10 different brands/lines, firing groups of each consecutively, scoring results, i.e. trying to account for barrel heating, "settling", starting from really well cleaned bore, lubed everything.

I realize that there are different levels of "anality" when it comes to reloading. I'm not a reloading expert, heck, I never really done it before, but I seen some people doing fairly simple, basic reloading while others going all the way of measuring each case with micrometer, doing spherocity measurements, slugging their barrels to get exact dimensions. I don't know how common that is, but it seems that there are people in centerfire reloading doing everything conceivable to make each cartridge as perfect as possible.

from the link I gave in the original post, it's not the powder charge, that's just measuring rounds by weight, I'm sorry for the confusion I created. Here is what that guy listed:
CCI Standard H07N21
grains count
49.5 2
49.6 6
49.7 6
49.8 4
49.9 4
50.0 14
50.1 13
50.2 19
50.3 17
50.4 31
50.5 43
50.6 72
50.7 97
50.8 38
50.9 18
51.0 29
51.1 28
51.2 43
51.3 13
51.4 2
51.5 1
Total rounds
500
Average
50.656
Extreme spread
2.00

 

[Bendad97]

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[cockpitbob]

Sorting by weight, rim thickness and overall length can't take more time than rolling your own. Hang around the rimfire benchrest guys and do what they do: find ammo your gun likes, buy a bunch from that same lot number and sort it.

 

[TBalls]

Based on that data, you've got multiple components contributing to any variation in total weight. As the bullet is likely making up about 80% of the total, and the powder charge is nominal, it's not unreasonable to assume most of the variance to be with the bullet. With that in mind, I guess I'm unclear about how much impact re-charging/re-seating bullets of inconsistent weight will have.

Seem you'd be better off just paying for "match" ammo in the first place.

 

[EddieCoyle]

I've heard of people doing what you're suggesting using .22 mag. Also, before there was a .17 HMR, I knew of at least one person that was wildcatting his own using custom dies to neck down .22 WMR to .17, and loading them with .172" bullets.

I can anticipate two problems trying to make more accurate .22LR by doing this.

First is the priming situation. While reloading centerfire, I've seen remarkable changes in accuracy occur by simply changing brands (not type) of primers. In .22LR, I'm going to guess that the consistency of the primer has an even more pronounced effect on the velocity of the round. Getting .22LR cases consistently primed is a big challenge for manufacturers. I suspect (but don't know) that one of the things that makes .22 "match" ammo more accurate is the way it is primed. If you start with cheap .22LR for your reloading experiment, you're likely to be doomed from the start because of inconsistency in the primer charge.

Second, here's a graph that I've posted before as a semi-joke, but it's important in this context:

How are you going to get good bullets? Pull a bunch then cherry-pick by weight and or condition? Buy good ones? Can you even buy bullets suitable for a .22LR? They're .223" diameter like a .22 Hornet, but can you use a real jacketed bullet for .22LR?

You're going to need to get dies and shell holders for it too.

The bottom line is that it's unlikely that you're going to do any better than factory, and you're likely going to spend more than you would if you simply bought 'match' grade .22LR.

 

[Boris]

There is no f-ing magic and guns can not "like" ammo, they can just shoot various averages/distributions. I'm just trying to get away from the "magic" and toward quantitative, experience substantiated data.

Theoretically a gun, perfectly stable, shooting exactly the same ammo, under the same conditions should put bullets into the same hole. So what are the biggest factors that contribute to precision? Barrel condition/shape, it's bedding. Ammo? Did anyone slugged their .22 rifle and measured average dia/spherocity of the ammo they are shooting?

 

[Boris]

I've heard of people doing what you're suggesting using .22 mag. Also, before there was a .17 HMR, I knew of at least one person that was wildcatting his own using custom dies to neck down .22 WMR to .17, and loading them with .172" bullets.

I can anticipate two problems trying to make more accurate .22LR by doing this.

First is the priming situation. While reloading centerfire, I've seen remarkable changes in accuracy occur by simply changing brands (not type) of primers. In .22LR, I'm going to guess that the consistency of the primer has an even more pronounced effect on the velocity of the round. Getting .22LR cases consistently primed is a big challenge for manufacturers. I suspect (but don't know) that one of the things that makes .22 "match" ammo more accurate is the way it is primed. If you start with cheap .22LR for your reloading experiment, you're likely to be doomed from the start because of inconsistency in the primer charge.

Second, here's a graph that I've posted before as a semi-joke, but it's important in this context:

How are you going to get good bullets? Pull a bunch then cherry-pick by weight and or condition? Buy good ones? Can you even buy bullets suitable for a .22LR? They're .223" diameter like a .22 Hornet, but can you use a real jacketed bullet for .22LR?

You're going to need to get dies and shell holders for it too.

The bottom line is that it's unlikely that you're going to do any better than factory, and you're likely going to spend more than you would if you simply bought 'match' grade .22LR.

thanks, that's exactly what I want to talk about!

I know, this is probably (a bit) crazy and perhaps even impractical, but hey at least it's about guns and not Trump or Fukushima ; ) I'm an engineer, so I got to know why. The point about primers is a good one.

Actually, some ammo is copper plated, which is a nice way to produce even coat of very precise thickness.

 

[EddieCoyle]

3. "Find the best ammo for your gun" - I tried, and I'm not too happy with consistency. Looking here http://www.steelchickens.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1983&start=0 this guy sites 2 grain variation of powder charge for CCI ammo.

That's not the powder charge, that's the total weight of the round. You can't fit 50 grains of powder into a .22LR case. The powder charge is around 1 grain.

 

[meth0d]

What kind of rifle are you shooting?

 

[Boris]

What kind of rifle are you shooting?

10/22 all stock, but the issue is not about the rifle or getting some cheap, easy way to make it shoot better than an anschutz, it's about control and quantifying issues. Another NES member on another thread mentioned that 10/22 stock barrel will shoot .7" at 25'. An applied question would be, how much of that .7" is due to ammo, and what is the theoretical limit to group precision if ammo was 100% identical in every way.

I read a while back, some threads (not here) about slugging milsurp rifles, SKS in particular and reloading them with bullets slightly smaller or larger in diameter. There were some interesting opinions on how precise the reloads were, either way even though doing so is not a good idea. I am wandering if slight variation in .22 bullet thickness may account for "rifles liking" them, i.e. shooting them more precisely.

 

[meth0d]

What are the main differences between standard .22LR and the "match" ammo? I'd start there if I was looking to accurize the ammo to find out what they're doing different and try to replicate it. But for the reasons already mentioned, I don't think the DIY at home guy is going to do anything to really improve consistency or accuracy over existing ammo that the manufacturers are putting out.

Beyond that, I think you'd have to work on the rifle, or go to another caliber instead of a cheap practice plinking round like the .22LR.

 

[EddieCoyle]

An applied question would be, how much of that .7" is due to ammo, and what is the theoretical limit to group precision if ammo was 100% identical in every way.

First, find and read the posts by Marcus5Aurelius on fire lapping a 10/22.

It could be the rifle, it could be the ammo, it could be the interaction between the rifle and ammo, and it could be the shooter.

What constitutes a 'group'? How many shots were in that .7" group? 3? 10? Is that an average, is it the best, or is it the one the one that someone remembers when they're bragging about it later. I have an AR that, if I shoot enough groups at 200 yards during a range session, will shoot at least one where 5 shots are grouped in 3/4 of an inch. Am I 'consistently' shooting 3/8 MOA groups?

What does the group look like? Is it 4 shots grouped tightly together with one flier? If so, that's likely to be the ammo or the shooter.

Here's one explanation as to why some rifles 'like' some ammo. First, two facts:

1. It's impossible to make ammo so that every round is identical and shoots to the same exact velocity.
2. All rifle barrels flex when you fire a round through them.

Because of number 1, rounds will spend different amounts of time in the barrel.

Because of number 2, the barrel is constantly moving while a bullet is traveling through it. If you were to put a stylus on the end of a barrel and trace its movement, it would draw an ellipse. For the sake of argument, picture in your mind an ellipse standing straight up, that is twice as tall as it is wide. Let's say that's what your barrel 'traced' when the bullet was fired.

Let's say that you picked a round that was very good, and had a velocity of 1150 fps plus or minus 10 fps. Let's say that when the velocity was exactly 1150fps, the round exited the barrel when the stylus was exactly halfway down the right side of the ellipse. This is at 90 degrees of the sinusoidal motion of the barrel. This is also where the barrel is moving the fastest during its flex period (when the sine of the angle is changing the quickest). Any variation in velocity is going to have the largest possible effect on accuracy.

Let's say you pick a different round that has a velocity of 1310fps plus or minus 12 fps, but instead of exiting the barrel when it's halfway down the ellipse, a round fired at 1310 fps exits when the barrel is moving through the very bottom of its elliptical motion, where sine=0. The variation in velocity (although greater than the previous example) is going to have much less of an effect on the accuracy of the round.

This is why handloaders load a series of powder charges (which cause different velocities) in an attempt to find the velocity that their rifle 'likes' the best.

Keep in mind that bullet weight, bullet shape, and powder burn rate can all affect not only the velocity but also the manner in which a barrel flexes under load. Also, different barrel twist rates will stabilize different length bullets.

I read a while back, some threads (not here) about slugging milsurp rifles, SKS in particular and reloading them with bullets slightly smaller or larger in diameter. There were some interesting opinions on how precise the reloads were, either way even though doing so is not a good idea. I am wandering if slight variation in .22 bullet thickness may account for "rifles liking" them, i.e. shooting them more precisely.

This is because many of those commie rifles were slapped together and the bores have different diameters. All of the 10/22's ever made are likely to have bores with less variation than two SKSs made by the same guy in the same factory in different weeks.

(ETA: My apologies if you're a commie).

 

[Jose]

 

[DukeInFlorida]

I'm with Jose on this one: Tilting at Windmills, Don Quixote and all!
W.O.T. (waste of time)

Crap, that's twice in as many months that I had to agree with Jose. What the hell is going on?

Try firelapping your 10-22, as Marcus posted, and E/C referred to. It will do wonders for an otherwise "stock" barrel. I have run the fire lapping routine on several of my rifles at this point, and all helped immensely.

Repeating: If your .22LR goes bang instead of foof, it's all good. It's as accurate as your rifle is able to shoot it. Match grade is better than the cheapest WallyMart crap.

Another factor: wind............... your lightweight bullets will fly pretty much UN-affected by wind, out to about 50 yards. After that, even a slight gust will cause variations.

 

[EddieCoyle]

I'm with Jose on this one: Tilting at Windmills, Don Quixote and all!
W.O.T. (waste of time).

Maybe it's a waste of time with a .22LR, but I took the question as a general one with respect to rifle accuracy.

Trying different velocities with centerfire rifles is definitely not a waste of time.

 

[Boris]

Maybe it's a waste of time with a .22LR, but I took the question as a general one with respect to rifle accuracy.

Trying different velocities with centerfire rifles is definitely not a waste of time.

Don't get me started on the "waste of time" ...

I agree that in 100 yards a light bullet will get carried away by a bunch of factors, but for 50 yards ... grouping should be very tight, i.e. without wind, air currents are negligible. Again, you raise a really good point on what tight grouping is. The correct way to assess it is to fire enough pre-determined size groups (like 5), calculate group size and with statistically enough rounds you should be able to arrive to a bell curve. Standard deviation will be different for different ammo.

I have to put this discussion on hold until I get a lead sled and can do some shooting taking my "skills" at benchrest out of the equation.

 

[Kevlar]

Again, you raise a really good point on what tight grouping is. The correct way to assess it is to fire enough pre-determined size groups (like 5), calculate group size and with statistically enough rounds you should be able to arrive to a bell curve. Standard deviation will be different for different ammo.

This thread may interest you...http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...g-Accuracy-why-I-have-stopped-shooting-groups

 

[M1911]

Don't get me started on the "waste of time" ...

OK. Go shopping for equipment to reload .22lr and tell us what you find.

In the meantime, I'll be on a snipe hunt.

 

[yanici]

Here's a five shot group shot with plain old Wolf MT .22LR from a Savage BRJ bolt rifle. Target was shot on a windless morning, today, in Driggs ID by john K. The rifle was "accurized" by Savage Gunsmithing, Scott Null. If regular Wolf MT can shoot this good, ain't no point in trying to load your own. Jus' sayin'.

 

[Boris]

This thread may interest you...http://www.northeastshooters.com/vb...g-Accuracy-why-I-have-stopped-shooting-groups

that's an excellent article!

What he is saying though, the distribution will be a perfectly round:

So in this case (if it's perfectly round) you can just look at a cross section and express consistency in standard deviation (which is square root of variance), there is no need to compute MOA.

I'm not sure about that (pattern being perfectly round) What EddieCoyle said, about elliptical osciallations, I'm gravitating toward that.

 

[Boris]

Here's a five shot group shot with plain old Wolf MT .22LR from a Savage BRJ bolt rifle. Target was shot on a windless morning, today, in Driggs ID by john K. The rifle was "accurized" by Savage Gunsmithing, Scott Null. If regular Wolf MT can shoot this good, ain't no point in trying to load your own. Jus' sayin'.

that's pretty awesome, I should get some of that WolfMT ammo.

 

[SheepDog_B]

I'd say the primer makes all the difference.
I have a box of these Aguila's in 20 gr and there is NO powder.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewProduct/default.aspx?productNumber=295321

This reloading talk is absurd.

 

[SheepDog_B]

Getting rimfire to go thru the same hole comes down to the phrase, "Yeah, in theory."
I mounted a scope on a lever action Sat and took it to the range Sunday. Here is my last group once I finished dialing it in, and it was windy as sh*te out. The best you're going to do is one ragged hole Don Quixote.