I use a Hollands uniformer or a Sinclair uniformer and have never found it to be overly bothersome. Maximum overall cartridge length for the magazines of most rifles in .22 Hornet is usually around 1.800 inches, and that's what I seat the Hornady 40-grain V-MAX and Nosler 40-grain Ballistic Tip to. Joseph Von Benedikt is with Jorge Spat to learn all about it. The added velocity will help to make up some of the loss of ballistic coefficient, as well. When we talk about lots of shells, I mean pockets full that come off a progressive reloading press. As an asidetake a little extra care to make sure the bullet is started straight in the case during the seating operation. Its a little thing, but I have found a good chamfer is also very important, particularly when seating flat based bullets that are often so accurate in this case. Some rifles of foreign make still have the older twist rate, and those built by Anschutz are good examples. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service. As for powders, W748 and H110 for many years have been the ones to beat in the .22 Hornet. The case walls of the .22 Hornet are thin, and a good chamfer allows the bullet to start into the case easily during bullet seating and not collapse case wallsa complaint that is often heard by new Hornet owners. With care during the loading process and mindfulness of the cartridges capabilities and limits in the field, it is one of the most enjoyable cartridges I have ever used, and truly one of the unsung little gems of the sporting world. Ive had very good luck with both bullets from an accuracy perspective, and expect you will too. Copyright 2023 National Rifle Association, Women On Target Instructional Shooting Clinics, Volunteer At The Great American Outdoor Show, Marion P. Hammer Women Of Distinction Award, Women's Wildlife Management / Conservation Scholarship, National Youth Shooting Sports Cooperative Program, The .38 Smith & Wesson: History And Performance, 7.62 NATO And .308 Win. Also, Hornet cases will grow as you use them, and often grow at different rates. It started when Winchester spawned a small-game, black-powder cartridge in 1885 called the .22 Winchester Center Fire. Not only does the improved version give us more velocity, at times 200 fps more, it usually just begs to shoot. But no combination I have found is better suited for easing along eastern hedgerows and picking off varmints without greatly disturbing my neighbors. It was designed for use on small to medium size game, such as coyote, fox, bobcat and woodchuck, and has become one of the most popular rimfire cartridges in North America. Reloading. I measured the overall cartridge lengths for the other bullets I included in this report, and they are: Speer 33-grain TNT, 1.690 inches; Hornady 35-grain VX, 1.750 inches; Sierra 40-grain Hornet, 1.735 inches; Speer 40-grain SP, 1.740 inches; Sierra 45-grain Hornet, 1.740 inches; and Nosler 45-grain Ballistic Tip, 1.750 inches. Who knew wild turkey's were so stupid!? Going lighter does not always mean getting shorter. Sure, the hotshot .22-cal. I'd be interested in seeing what sort of groups you get with your Nosler Ballistic tips. The .22 Hornet is highly accurate with low recoil and minimal muzzle flash . RCBS shell holders are hardened for years of use. Restricting speeds in the neighborhood of 2900 fps for 33- and 35-grain bullets, 2800 fps for 40-grain bullets, and 2700 fps for 45-grain bullets will usually result in acceptable case life. Rifle is a CZUSA 527 FS (full stock) with a single set trigger and a Bushness 4x12 scope. Remington offers 45-grain softnose and hollowpoint bullets at 2690 fps. At the other end of the spectrum are the light bullets designed to stand up to extreme speed from a .22-250 Remington or .220 Swift. Shooter's Reference Load Data for .22 Hornet .22 Hornet - Published Manufacturer Loading Data Shellholders: Hornady #3 Lee #20 Lyman #4 RCBS #12 Recipe Type: Rifle Pistol Bullet Weight: ALL 30 gr 33 gr 35 gr 40 gr 45 gr 50 gr 52 gr 53 gr 55 gr Powder: ALL Accurate 1680 Accurate 2015 Accurate 5744 Accurate No. of muzzle velocity. The neck of the case is held square and the bullet is dropped in from the top and then seated with the brass centering pilot and a small mallet. When browning designed the A-Bolt in .22 Hornet, they did a lot of things right. If the ghosts of prairie dogs taken by the little rifle through the years could somehow rise up from their graves and bark in concert, the earth would surely tremble. I even shot a Lyman 225415 (now discontinued), 50-grain, flat-point cast bullet with a gas check for some time. The .38 Smith & Wesson Special, designed in 1898, rocked the handgun realm with its ballistic performance making it a cartridge for the history books. Subscribe to OL+ for our best feature stories and photography. There was an immediate improvement in its shooting! Even though this was darned good accuracy in those days, he was not totally satisfied with the DuPont 1204 powder he was loading in the cartridge. Ackley necked the Hornet down to .17 caliber in the 1950s, creating a .17 Hornet. For around a century, shooters have enjoyed loading and shooting the .22 Hornet. Only new/clean Hornet brass available and affordable The RCBS 2000 Progressive press offers high speed and accuracy. Reply. JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. Many rifles have a detatchable magazine to aid in the quick reloading of a rifle, such as an M16. Before there were scopes or red dots there were iron sights. After which I did some reasearch online and found a website where they were listing velocity and accuracy for different load combinations and the nosler was the most accurate of the loads tested. To comply with the new e-Privacy directive, we need to ask for your consent to set the cookies. Custom Mossberg 500 at the Range and Live Turkey!. Try to keep your lots the same. Here we can return to good, basic handloading practices. Handloads include the (left to right) Hornady 35-grain V-MAX, Sierra 40-grain, Nosler 40-grain Ballistic Tip and 45-grain Solid Base, Winchester 46-grain hollowpoint and Speer 46-grain flatnose. Home; 22 Hornet . 22 K-Hornet RCBS shell holders are built for Single Stage and Turrets Presses. Read Our Story. Come join the discussion about optics, modifications, gunsmithing, styles, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more! Generally, modern shooters can disregard the undersized bullets and use the conventional .224 inch. The Hornet, like so much in life, is all about perspective. Few rifles will feed the ammunition. From ammo to zombie gear, Midsouth Shooters has all of the newest and hottest products on the market to keep you shooting all year long. Smart. $10.40 shipping. It had a 23-inch barrel. I weigh every tenth charge when I am producing varmint ammunition to ensure that they are not straying from the intended number. All are spherical and flow easily through the powder measurean advantage both for speed of loading large volumes of ammunition and consistency of charge from shot to shot. An aperture sight attached to its receiver was made by Lyman. This also leaves the case shoulder, tapered as it may be, in a position to touch the front of the chamber. We will be happy to answer any of your questions and ensure that you have the right supplies and equipment for a day at the range or in the field. Realizing a lead bullet would not handle the velocities they sought, some made 45-grain lead-core bullets with jackets formed from fired .22 Short cases. Through the decades I have shot more Speer 40-grain Spirepoints in the .22 Hornet than all other bullets combined. I have reloaded (and therefore shot) several bullet types of varying weights over the passing years through my Anschutz .22Hornet rifle. To that end, in addition to neck sizing, I like the floating-chamber benchrest seating dies. When the .222 Remington was introduced in 1950 it stole the show from the .22 Hornet among varmint shooters, but history has proven it to lack the staying power of the mild-mannered little Hornet. After the tool: .001 or less runout at the tip. VihtaVuori N110, Alliant Power-Pro 300-MP, and Accurate 1680 are also popular choices. The barrels of rifles in .22 Hornet now being built by Ruger, Anschutz, and Savage have 1:14 twists. The 45 grain . PPU Hornet Brass By Joe T. on Apr 24, 2023 . There is also a very interesting Hornet powder on the market. This isn't your grandpa's muzzleloading system. He made a suggestion that had not occurred to me or anyone else that I knew of: Try Small Pistol primers. Low and behold, at times they will cut groups in half! This is one of the reasons I generally prefer spherical propellantsthey flow easily and uniformly through a powder measure. On the other hand, if you like to put some effort into fine-tuned handloads and see real results, the Hornet is for you. $57.99. 2023 Outdoor Sportsman Group. Originally it was throwing its shots all over the place. I installed a Rifle Basix RU-R trigger kit, and it has a claimed pull weight adjustment range of from 14 ounces to 2.5 pounds. There is no good or bad about this, only different. We have Hornet dies for sale, from great brands like Forster, Hornady, Lee, Lyman, RCBS, and Redding Reloading Products. This is important for several reasonssafety being one of them as overlong cases can cause high pressure by failing to release the bullet easilybut uniform case length also allows for more consistent grip on the bullet. They include the Anschutz Model 1730, Ballard Model 1885, Browning A-Bolt Micro Hunter, Browning Model 1885 Low Wall, BRNO ZBK 110, Cooper Model 21, CZ Model 527, Ruger 77/22H, Ruger No. The end result was an all-day, everyday, .5-inch rifle that is just about as sleek as a bolt rifle can be. Primer choice in the .22 Hornet is as contentious as politics or religion for many handloaders, and with good reason. Before we leave the subject of cases, be sure not to overlook case brand. Some 19 years later,Remington would chamber the No. I have loaded quite a bit for my other firearms but have never loaded for a hornet so i had to start from scratch. It is sometimes said that classic designs never go out of fashion. After I posted last night i was playing around with the crimp and bullet depth and about the shortest i could get a bullet to seat and look right was 1.90" - 1.95" (according to the book the maximum cartridge length is 1.723"). The case is virtually identical to its parent .22 W.C.F. were used in all the loads. Make sure to watch till the end. Now there are many of the light .224-inch bullets that work well in Hornets. However, when Hornady brought out the .17 Hornet as a factory round a few years ago and companies like Savage, CZ-USA, Ruger and others began chambering it, senior pest and varmint shooters eagerly flocked toward it. . With properly adjusted dies and ball powder, this machine will produce ammunition that will shoot right up to the rifles ability. A bushing-style die is nice to have when searching for the most accurate load by varying case neck tension on a bullet. RCBS shell holders are manufactured to exacting tolerances. $72.99. For decades, the .22 Hornet factory loads spit out 45-grain bullets at 2,400 to 2,500 f.p.s. 7 Rolling Block in .22 W.C.F., as well. Winchester introduced the .22 Hornet in late 1930/early 1931 in two loadings: one with a softnose bullet, the other with a hollowpoint, both at 2500 fps. I wanted to get a load that would be accurate and a good bullet for small game so i decided on the 40 grain nosler ballisic tip. Made from premium-grade, vegetable-tanned leather, the Burdette Custom Holsters Detective SA-35 holster is a custom outside-the-waistband (OWB) model for the Springfield Armory SA-35 semi-automatic pistol. Try as many primers as you can and carefully note the differences. We have serviced indoor, law enforcement (LEO), and . After trying several bullets from 45 to 52 grains, I finally settled on a Sierra 45-grain Varminter bullet in front of 20.0 grains of IMR 4198 and producing 2,888 fps from the 22" barrel of my No. Primer pocket uniformingagain, some people will not want to do this as it takes timeespecially on large batches of cases. All Rights Reserved. Want a Copy of Our Flyer? The .22 Hornet case was eventually beefed-up a bit to strengthen it, and due to the reduction in capacity, some of the early load data is excessive for todays cases. The center pair show the Encores clear preference for full-length sizing, an opposite result to most rifles. Clips are the little strips of metal that aid loading a fixed magazine rifle, and some detatchable ones, by holding cartridges in a straight column to press them into a magazine quickly. We use cookies to make your experience better. The following data was developed in an ANSCHUTZ single shot target rifle. This results in a square primer pocket and allows the primer to have uniform contact and seating depth within the primer pocket every time. The groove diameter of later rifles is 0.224 inch. My Kimber Model 82 Super America built in 1985 has it, while my Anschutz 1730, also built during the 1980s, has a 1:16 twist. In my current Hornets, the A-bolt prefers the WSR and the Contender is at its best with the Remington 6.5. Therefore, if you have different case brands, be sure to keep them sorted. It was originally chambered in the company . Accuracy is repeatable; results to 200 yards are deadly on Pennsylvania woodchucks and crows. The average case weights I find are as follows: Remington-Peters 47.4; Frontier 51.8; and Winchester-Western 53.5 grains. The small powder charges used in the .22 Hornet call for relatively mild primers, such as the Winchester WSR, Remington 6 1/2, CCI 400, and Federal 205M. But most hits on varmints from field positionsi.e. More than a few other wildcats were made, but Killborns has kept most of its legs. Since you are loading for a single shot rifle you don't need to worry about the col since that is generally a dimension set because of the magazine length. 2023 Outdoor Sportsman Group. Start at 13.0 grains and work up; it's hard to get 14.0 grains in a case without a drop tube. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. The standard .22 Hornet on the left compared with the .22 K-Hornet on the right. | The RCBS X die eliminates case growth and also rules out the often necessary neck sizing. The most consistently accurate rifle in this caliber I have ever shot is a Winchester Model 54. Mikey Hartman, Lt. Col. The T/C Encore custom shop Hornet is scoped with a Bausch & Lomb (discontinued). Sectioned cases show why the Sako brass is so much heavier and has less internal volume, which can have a drastic effect on pressure and accuracy. JavaScript is disabled. LEE 22 Hornet RELOADING DIES - 2 DIE SET FREE SHIPPING. In the slightly heavier realm, both Speer and Hornady make excellent 45-grain pointed soft points with thin jackets that will expand reliably, shoot fairly flat, and penetrate more deeply for larger varmintssuch as eastern Groundhogs, western Rockchucks, and predators. Search. The Nosler and Hornady are 45 grains, while Sierra has 40- and 45-grain Hornet bullets. Those who need higher velocities should consider choosing a bigger cartridge. How to reload 22 Hornet for beginners. Short-grained extruded powders, such as H-4227, IMR-4227 and VV N-110 are coarser, but can provide exceptional accuracy. Essentially it is all taper. 22 Hornet - What Powder do you use. SAAMI maximum cartridge length for the .22 Hornet is 1.723 inches, and while ammunition loaded to that length should be compatible with the magazines of most rifles, some will accept longer. Upon examination, I found that, as with most factory rifles, the bedding of the action was not done very well at all. The .22 Hornet is a small cartridge where charge variations, neck tension, seating depth, and many other factors are more important because of the very small volume of powder consumed and the need for shot-to-shot consistency. Whereas the barrel used to slip into the receiver and was retained by the same V-block design as on the Ruger 10/22 semiautomatic .22 rimfire rifle, it is now threaded and screwed into the receiver. Handloading the .22 Hornet is a snap, but the thin wall of its case is easily collapsed during bulletseating unless the inside edge of its mouth is lightly beveled with a chamfering tool prior to the first loading. 6.5 Creedmoor vs. 6.5 PRC: Which is Better? Just the reverse is true; a small gentle primer seems to make most Hornets happy. 6.5 Creedmoor vs. 6.5 PRC: Which is Better? First, it leaves us with a case that is held in the center of the chamber by that portion of neck that has been left unsized. It is usually very accurate, quite violent on impact but with enough integrity to plow through plenty of coyote or even the skulls of larger beasts. was no longer loaded, despite the fact that until 1932 no factory rifle had been chambered for the .22 Hornet. Further, this sloping shoulder now becomes a perfectly mated taper to the chambers taper. All groups are 5 shots at 100 yards. However, I am sure there would be some benefit. It was originally chambered in the companys then-new Model 1885 single-shot rifle. My favorite all-around Hornet bullet is the last surviving, old-fashioned Nosler Solid Base. 2400 because of its ability to push a 45-grain bullet along at 2400 fps when it was loaded in the experimental cartridge Whelen was so excited about. Okay, I thought, if it doesnt like the snug treatment, lets see what happens if we full-length size the cases and give the bullets just a little clearance.
