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Quinian
Posts: 707 Senior Member
.22lr bulk accuracy
Quinian
Posts: 707 Senior Member
I saw a video on youtube once that I can't seem to find where a guy had himself a little tool he was using to measure his .22lr rounds by dropping them in this little gizmo and sliding it until it stopped on a number. His claim was if you grouped them in "2s" "3s" or what ever other number came up on the scale the GROUP would improve as those rounds were most like each other on how they had been loaded. He did note that while your grouping will be good if you go from say a group 1's to a group of 6's your POI will change but you should have a tight group within the 6's just off center.
So two questions: 1 Is there any truth to this? and 2. What in the world was that tool he used? nm it's a "rim thickness ga."
AHA! Found the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqM-SHZlZjM
So two questions: 1 Is there any truth to this? and 2. What in the world was that tool he used? nm it's a "rim thickness ga."
AHA! Found the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqM-SHZlZjM
Replies
Check out Paco Kelly's accurizer for even more accurizing stuff.
Seems like the best method is to weigh and sort them then sort by rim thickness then test to see which YOUR rifle prefers. Then you might break out Paco's device and see what that will do as well. Oh do that with several different brands and lot #s then buy whichever brand and lot # your rifle likes in LARGE quantity. As I recall in one article the guy talked about being there when the ammo guys unloaded so one could be sure to get boxes from the middle of the crate that had not been bumped in any fashion. BUT all that is if money dont matter and you are after that one VERY SMALL hole ten shot group.
For people like me it seems that I might buy the bulk ammo that seems to run reasonable in my rifle then weigh and sort then rim thickness them then break out Paco's little device. Or I could just shoot them....
The RCBS Casemaster device on the left was my first case concentricity gauge which was eventually replaced by the NECO concentricity gauge. This one was adapted to sorting bulk 22 ammo. My gunsmith cut off the chamber end of a "take-off" Ruger 10-22 barrel that I replaced with a Shilen stainless steel match bull barrel. I use this chamber by inserting a 22 round and sliding it in under the plunger on the dial indicator. It has parallel flats milled on the right & left side so that its orientation remains consistent. The extractor cutout can be seen facing the camera and I also used it as an indicator to insure identical spacing.
It has a round of Federal Lightning in it and the reading is clearly .035" Once you get going, you can sort the ammo into batches pretty quickly. The newer Hornady rim thickness device is much simpler and is quite easy to use. It also comes with another "chamber" device for 22 mag. & 17 HMR. It can be seen in front of the ammo box partially hidden by the caliper. The instructions show the pieces installed on the caliper the opposite way that I have them pictured. It doesn't really matter! This particular round is .0385" and it's rim is considerably thicker than the one under the dial caliper. (three and a half thousandths thicker)
The black cord behind the "casemaster" is an interesting "safety feature" for the Hornady device. It's a lanyard that you are supposed to tie around the caliper and then wrap around your neck!!! Yep, lawyers again. I fully realize that if I took the pictured Starrett caliper and dropped it on the floor of my workshop, it could fire the round. But I do my sorting sitting at a table and never use the cord. Please don't flame me.
When I tried this technique on Eley, Lapua, RWS or other premium ammo, the consistency was amazing and rendered my efforts as a waste of time. But with generic bulk it paid dividends. Eley Tenex would be virtually the same, whereas Eley club would probably produce three batches of rim thickness. Federal Lightning would yield five or six batches.
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http://www.gun-tests.com/pdfs/1-2-rimsortingdevices.pdf
It doesn't say where to purchase one. according to this site its 44 dollars. I would like to know where I can purchase one of the Jones rim thickness gauges at. Can you steer me in the right direction? Thanks.
http://www.neiljones.com/html/rimfire_gauge.html
― Douglas Adams
True. Bulk rimfire ammo is what it is, and it's just fine for blowing lots of rounds downrange at a golf ball, beverage can, or other impromptu target of opportunity.
I built one of those dial indicator type rim thickness gauges over 15 years ago. It was a pain to go through a brick of 500 rounds of bulk ammunition. And 1500 rounds from three different brands was mind numbing. I shot some of each out of my only .22 rifmire target rifle, was not impressed with the results, and never did that exercise again. Rim thickness is only one part of the equation. Consistency of the priming compound in the rim is another. And equality of the powder charge from one round to the next is another, still. And then there's bullet crimping consistency and bullet weight consistency. :silly: Like the old saying goes, you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but it's a mighty poor silk purse. If you want match ammo accuracy, buy match ammo. It is made to much higher standards than the bulk stuff, and that's why the match grade ammo costs so much more.
― Douglas Adams
I was merely responding to the original poster. Since I actually remember when it was a hot topic, I wanted to share. It was a controversial topic in the 90's as my post indicates I decided to try it. Some folks still swear by it. As this article indicates, ammo has become more consistent and many folks have abandoned the practice.
http://www.gun-tests.com/performance/sept96rimthickness.html
Thanks tennmike, I ordered one and the price has went from 44.00 to 60.00, but what the heck. When it gets here I will sort some .22's and then post the results. I guess the 44.00 was the original 1996 price.
I noticed that they'd 'raised the rent' on those things. FWIW, I'll bet that the ones you sort that have the fattest rims are going to be the most accurate.
― Douglas Adams
Could be tennmike It's going to be interesting to perform this project, and once again I will get back to ya on this...
The limiting factor with bulk rounds sorted in this fashion is that you don't know if your weight variation from round to round is caused by variations in bullet, brass, powder charge, or primer. Two cartridges of the same overall weight may distribute their weight in different places. This can obviously swing the performance of the round, and it's something you've got no control over with bulk ammo.
I sorted up A BUNCH of $8.00-for-100-rounds of Federal's entry level match ammo to improve our smallbore team's performance. It was the ammo we had and it was paid for. The stuff was pretty good to begin with, and the sorting definitely seemed to improve things. The boys managed to pull out a couple of medals with the stuff.
BUT. . .when we did some later experimentation, we found that Eley Tenex ($40 per 100) absolutely SMOKES even my sorted stuff. These Olympic-grade rounds are basically made in a medical clean room, and every component gets checked before the round gets assembled, and the round will get a few more checks after that. In short, they hit all the variables that we can't when we've only got a pre-assembled cartridge to work with. They're even nice enough to sell the rounds that don't make the Tenex cutoff as two lesser grades of ammo, which is still pretty damn good. Their website is kind of funny, actually - they basically say that "availability of these grades can be somewhat limited because they only get made when we screw up a round of Tenex."
What these batching techniques WILL do is allow you to get the most possible accuracy out of the rounds that come to you, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can rock the National Matches with Wal Mart bulk ammo.
Is it worth it? Well, assume that your day job pays you 25 bucks an hour. To keep the math easy, let's say you've got already "decent" ammo at $10 per 100. You will probably have to sort at least 500 rounds to get batches of 100 rounds that are all the same in both rim and weight to shoot your International 3P match with. That's gonna take you maybe 3-5 hours. That 500 rounds cost fifty bucks, and your labor worked out to $75-$125. After going through all that, you have a hundred matched rounds that effectively cost you $125-$175, and it probably still won't group nearly as well as the $40-per-hundred Eley.
Now if you've got stuff the gun already likes, this is a decent way to sift out the chaff, and you can take to the bank that if I were contending for a major international award, I'd have my coach sorting even Eley Tenex by rim and weight while I was out practicing.
Unless your time is worth only minimum wage, or you have a lot of it on your hands, or you are already shooting high grade ammo and are a really, REALLY, REALLY good shot, I've concluded it's probably better to just buy and shoot the good stuff.
I DO like that gauge the guy was using in that vid. Would certainly have saved me some time over the dial-caliper version. If you ARE going to do this, that's certainly a better way.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
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