may have learned something today

[brotherdarrell]

Last week I started working with the 225107 in my .222 rem. Curious as to how fast I could push this little bullet and maintain some degree of accuracy I loaded h4895 @ 19, 20, 21 and 22 grs and WSR primers, no dacron. Groups were shot at 100 yds. and 5 shots

19 grs gave a round group about 2", 20 grs had 4 under 3/4" with the first shot out about 3/4". 21 grs was strung horizontal about 6" wide and 1/2" high with 22 grs. 4 1/2" wide by about 1" high.

My initial thought was that the 20 grs was the max load with the alloy I was using. The chrono said fps was avg. at 2450. I was mostly pleased with the results and started making plans to shoot more of this load to see if it would hold up over the long run.

The next day I was deep in the archives looking for something or the other and managed to come across a post by BAbore in regards to horizontal groups where he stated .......


" You will find that most powders will exhibit vertical stringing when they not burning well. As you go up the ladder they will tighten to almost round , then my spread horizontal. This may repeat several time before a final roundish group, then they blow apart on you." (quoted from post by BAbore)

I thought this was similar to what I got with the 225107 so I figured "what the heck". I went back this morning with 22.5 grs and 23 grs, the 23 gr load being slightly compressed. The first shot with the 22.5 was the first shot of the morning (temp was mid 40's) and it flew way out almost 3" with the next four under an inch high by less than half an inch wide. Not letting the barrel cool off I shot the 23 gr. load and got a group just under 2" high by about 1" wide.

More shooting will tell if it will hold up but it was interesting to see for myself what BAbore described, at least it appears that way.

Darrell

Ignore the shot half in the black just to the right of the orange bull.

[Patricklaw]

I've been playing with a 22 cal mold as well with less success than you. I'll be watching to see if I can learn something. That one line stands out as sort of ominous, "then they blow apart on you". I hope he meant the groups. Good shooting!

[runfiverun]

yeah he meant the groups.


if you have some Imr-4895 you can give that a go too, I have noticed it to be just a bit better in the 22 cal rifles with cast.
try weight sorting some boolits out [same weight] and shoot them as a group versus the not sorted...

[brotherdarrell]

yeah he meant the groups.


if you have some Imr-4895 you can give that a go too, I have noticed it to be just a bit better in the 22 cal rifles with cast.
try weight sorting some boolits out [same weight] and shoot them as a group versus the not sorted...

Don't have any imr4895 and haven't seen any in over a year. I just got the h version at the first of Sept. I have Varget and 3031 on one side and both aa and imr 4064 on the other. The biggest issue is lube. Once it drops below the mid 40's I have to get the barrel warm and keep it there or I get fliers. This is with both tac and a slightly modified satans lube.

Boolits are sorted into weights of .1 gr.

Darrell

[runfiverun]

atf is a big help in the cold weather.
1 tsp to a stick of lube is bout right.

[geargnasher]

Do not underestimate the importance of what you discovered, Brotherdarrel, it's called barrel harmonics and such patterns on the target is what those who know what to look for use to fine-tune a load. Of course you have to be doing a lot of other things right to get groups predictable enough to see it, which you are. If all of your load workup groups print 3" random patterns, the harmonics are irrelevant.

Gear

[35 shooter]

brotherdarrell in regards to your first shots from a cold bbl.
you might try something that's worked for me. I use atf oil to swab the bore when i leave the range each time...just one wet patch back and forth in the chamber, then flip the same patch over and run it straight through the bore and out the end one time.
Just before shooting or hunting again, i run one dry patch through the chamber back and forth then straight through the bore and out the end.
I'm shooting a 35 cal. rifle and with Ben's Red and Simple lube this keeps the first shots from a cold bbl. in the group or very very close. With Ben's Red my first shot will be in the group and with Simple lube the first shot will be centered and 1 to 1 1/2" high which works just fine as long as i know it's coming.
If i run more than one patch through the bore all bets are off. One patch straight through the bore works for me.
Don't know if this will work in a smaller bore but it does in my "Ol Contrary" 35 whelen.
I know each rifles different, but it might be worth trying.

BTW good shooting...keep it up.

[brotherdarrell]

Well, I have never claimed to have the quickest brain in the world but reading the post by BAbore the day after seeing my targets even I couldn't miss it. This is the first time I have really pushed the .222 much past 2500 fps and I wasn't sure that my mystery alloy would handle it very well. It is one thing to read about this stuff, and I have, but it is another to experience it. The education goes on.

I will try a little atf in my tac and see how it works.

Thanks again.

Darrell

[geargnasher]

If you use TAC lube, instead prep your bore per .35 Shooter's method with a fully-synthetic, PAO-type two-cycle premix oil, an API TC spec, not TCW3 Marine or an ester-based oil. No need to add ATF to the TAC. When using Felix lube in a clean bore (not something I do often), I prep my bore with a little bit of castor oil and Vaseline smeared on a patch, it helps get it off to a good start seasoning.

Gear

[brotherdarrell]

Will do.

Darrell

[Larry Gibson]

Rifle?

Larry Gibson

[brotherdarrell]

788

Darrell

[1Shirt]

Well in my opinion, any day that you don't learn something is a day wasted. Good post!
1Shirt!

[runfiverun]

Gear PAO vs a POE in the cold?, and you favor the PAO?
I'm not sure on the TAC's ingredients but would still go with the POE a non synthetic one too.
POE'S seemed to just hold up their performance in the cold better for me. [especially with a bees wax based lube]

I hope Pete see's this and can comment, I think he has better data than I do on the oil/wax mixes.

[geargnasher]

Gear PAO vs a POE in the cold?, and you favor the PAO?
I'm not sure on the TAC's ingredients but would still go with the POE a non synthetic one too.
POE'S seemed to just hold up their performance in the cold better for me. [especially with a bees wax based lube]

I hope Pete see's this and can comment, I think he has better data than I do on the oil/wax mixes.

I was essentially just suggesting to prep the bore with an oil similar to the oil part of the lube used. ATF for Ben's Red, Castor/vaseline/mineral oil for Felix, synthetic polyolester (POE) like Maxima K2 for the TnT lubes, and the TCW-spec PolyAlphaOlefin synthetic used in all the TAC/Speed Green-type lubes.

I've done all of the above more than a few times except for Ben's Red, unless you count swabbing out the old seasoning with Ed's Red before trying Ben's, which actually does leave ATF in the bore. Last winter I did some cold, clean tests with TnT using the K2 as a bore prep and it was absolutely first-flyer-free in two different .30-caliber rifles as long as I did a procedure EXACTLY like .35shooter outlined above. Did the same with Felix lube when I was trying to beat the cold-flyer syndrome in cold weather and it worked fine, so did just adding some Vaselne. Never tested the PAO with the green lubes as a bore prep in significantly cold weather, though, but it should be better than nothing and should break up the congealed carnauba residue a bit for the first shot same as castor/vaseline prep did for standard Felix lube with Carnauba.

Gear

[runfiverun]

okay that makes more sense to me now.
I was thinking more along the lines of easy lube modification.

using the ingredient in the lube to prep the bore is a very good idea.
one single pass through with a half damp mop or patch is sufficient for this kind of prep.

[geargnasher]

Stands to reason, and if I didn't use a bore prep that was part of the lube recipe used the first shot or three after cleaning out and prepping the bore were always wild.

Like cleaning really well and leaving a haze of Ed's in the bore made any of several lubes take a while to "settle in" EXCEPT for Ben's Red. Found that one particularly interesting when testing Ben's and I remember doing the cleaning/shooting regimen several times over to verify, since it apparently solved the cold/clean first shot flyer thing altogether if you stick to Ben's Red lube and Ed's Red for a bore solvent. I can only assume it's the ATF residue left by both the cleaner and the lube that is responsible for the consistent shooting.

Gear

[brotherdarrell]

Weather finally allowed me to work on this a little bit more. I loaded 10 rounds each of 22.2 gr, 22.5 gr. and 22.8 gr. I shot a five shot group of each and then repeated after temps went up about 10 degrees. The top row is with temps around 33 - 35 degrees. As can be seen they were all over the place. The bottom row temps were about 42 degrees. Looks much more promising. No velocities on the upper row as the angle of the sun was too low. Those are one inch pasters.


22.2 grs. - 2878 avg/47.84 spread/24.24 sd

22.5 grs. - 2919/45.23/18.33

22.8 grs. - 2805!!!, 2994, 3015, 2976, 2991

The lube was satans(modified). Tac1 was giving out about 45 degrees so it looks like I may have picked up a few degrees but below the 40's it still appears to be a no-go.

A couple notes:

All brass is formed from Speer 5.56/223 brass and trimmed to 1.713" to cover up erosion.

Neck tension is light. I can seat a boolit with thumb pressure. I seat a little long and let chambering do the last little bit.

Alloy? Beats me, but I do know it has copper added with about 1.5% tin. It is water dropped and in the low 20's for hardness.

I can't discout the stock trigger for some of the horizontal though you would think that after 30 years I would be used to it by now.

The results tell me to keep working on it. They also tell me that I wished some of you Extreme Lube guys were working with 22 centerfires.

Oh yeah, before shooting I gave the bore a pass with a patch lightly covered with vasaline and then flipped it and pushed it back through.

Darrell