Had a great Experience - .22 Hornet

[beagle]

Had a great experience today. I just got a set of .22 Hornet 310 dies from Kywoodwrkr complete with the beautiful steel Ideal plum colored handles like they use to make when quality was important. They had been exposed to smoke damage in a fire but cleaned up nicely.

After cleaning, I couldn't resist rustling up some Hornet brass....you know, to adjust the dies.

All worked perfectly as I had remembered from 1958 when I started loading with a 310 tool for the .30/06.

Only glitch is that the seating screw was for a spire point and I wanted to load the round nose 225438. I remembered a set I had for the .222 Rem and lo and behold, it had a 438 top punch and needed a spire point. (I love it when a plan comes together).

I dug up a loaded round and adjusted the seating die and now I have 50 rounds of Hornet brass. Resized, expanded and primed. Ready to load.

Brings back pleasant old memories. Thanks, Dave./beagle

[2Tite]

I'm glad you posted this................I'm going to dig out the 310 my brother and I used in 1966 for our 30-30's. I have 3 grandsons and 1 of them is just starting to shoot the 22 some. He'll enjoy loading some 30-30's I know. Thanks for the nudge.

[canyon-ghost]

22 Hornet was the first caliber that I started reloading with. I haven't been at it for very long, maybe 10 years. In Hunter's Pistol, it's really good. The gas checked round nose and 438 top punch are my favorite set. It's a wonderful caliber in TC Contender and shoots excellent at 100 meter silhouette. A lot of guys have been using 4.7 grains of Unique, I still use 7.5 grains of IMR 4227, although it leaves unburnt powder in the 10" barrel.
I've tried it with moly lube and alox, both work better than a real hard lube. With very little recoil, shooting it from a Contender is great, just takes hearing protection.