Ammo opinion sought

[rollmyown]

Anyone here using bulk Winchester xpert HV or Remington subsonic (38 gn HP) Both are USA made I think. I know accuracy will vary from rifle to rifle. All opinions re consistency and reliability appreciated (or any other comments).

[uscra112]

Well, I've been playing about with various "bulk" ammo, coming from the viewpoint of a statistical process control engineer, (a field I was immersed in for 15 years before I retired).

There are various parameters you can measure, including overall weight, rim thickness, bullet diameter, case diameter, bullet runout, and so forth. Weight is one of the quickest to evaluate.

If you weigh 100 rounds of match ammo, (Wolf Match, Eley) you'll find the total variation to be less than 0.1 grains for the whole lot. (My scale only resolves to 0.1 grain)

If you weigh 100 rounds of almost any Remington ammo, the range of variation will be 1.5 grains, and sometimes 2.0 if you don't exclude 3 or 4 real extreme deviants. The Subsonic H.P., (I have 2 bricks, purchased a couple of years apart), is no exception. Ammo that varies that much will never be very accurate in any gun.

What's even more interesting about Remington stuff is that the weights do not chart out to a "normal distribution" (bell curve) as you might expect. Instead you'll get 25 or 30 at a weight that is at the high end of the range, (say, 51.0 )grains +/- 0.1), another 25 or 30 at the lower end, (50.1 grains /- 0.1), and the rest sprinkled in between or beyond the two groups. This has distinct implications to a process engineer. The short version is that process control at Remington seems to be well-nigh nonexistent. Even when shooting selected groups that fall within narrow weight limits, groups ain't very good. And how many shooters want to spend the time and spirit to sort that stuff, when there's much better to be had for the same money?

I have not done anything with Winchester HV, but my weight evaluation of Winchester T-22, allegedly a "target" ammo, wasn't much better than the Remington. Nor did it shoot well in any of my guns. Ditto Federal 711, also allegedly a "target" ammo.

So far the best of the "bulk" ammo, as judged by weight consistency, is CCI Blazer, (as made by CCI themselves, not by Federal - look for a letter as the first character in the lot number), followed by Federal H.V. (36 grain copperplate bullet). This shows up in my guns, and likely will in yours. CCI Standard Velocity is pretty good in some lots, but not so good in others. None of those are subsonic. There is alleged to be an Aguila subsonic 40 grain round, but I haven't found any as yet, except for the 60 grain SSS stuff, which I have no rifle for.

[nicholst55]

I've always read that one of the best ways to achieve the optimum accuracy out of bulk rimfire ammo is to sort by rim thickness (headspace). There are a couple of tools available to measure this. Another trick that is reputed to increase accuracy is to use a tool like Paco Kelly's Accurizer (http://www.gunblast.com/Paco2.htm), that swages the bullets to a uniform diameter.

I have used a rim thickness gauge, but I have no personal experience with Paco Kelly's tool. Jeff Quinn seemed to like it, though. ;)

[uscra112]

There's a lot to be said in favor of "bumping" the bullet. I'm doing it with a tool made to work in a hand press, which is much more consistent that the Paco Kelly tool, which uses a hammer. Easy for me, I've got a lathe and a toolbox full of reamers. There's a store-boughten version, under the name of Waltz, but it's about $150. So far I'm only bumping up to .2252 (+/-.0001) diameter, but this dramatically improves sorted lots of Remington Thunderbolt in my bone-stock 10/22, which of course has a very loose chamber. Indeed I've got that thing down from 5 MOA to almost 2 MOA by sorting and bumping Thunderbolt. It did similarly dramatic things for Remington Cyclone H.P. ammo. I'm going to keep at this. A new die to bump to .2240 is planned for ammo to go in my single-shot target rifles, which have a more rational chamber than the Ruger. What with all the brands of ammo, and all the variations in treatment, it will keep me busy all summer.

The jury's still out as to whether this is financially worthwhile. Sorting ammo causes you to segregate 20% or so of it as unusable, except for making noise. That increases the price of the rounds you DO use proportionally. And the Waltz tool, if you buy one, would buy you three whole bricks of Wolf Match, which is pretty good stuff. Still and all I find it interesting, and I'll get much better use out of the several bricks of Remington that I bought when I didn't know any better.

Phil

[Ickisrulz]

My experience with Remington and Winchester 22LR is that I get a lot of duds; more than other brands.

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Remington .22 ammo as a whole seems to have a very bad reputation.

Check on Rimfire Central and see what they say.

Personally, I am NOT likely to buy a lot or any more of Remington Rimfire ammo, unless the first word in the name happens to be Eley.

Last summer I was out with a friend shooting and broke open a NEW box of Remington .22s and they were so bad, had so many duds, I gave the entire bulk pak to my friend.

Nice guy, right.

I went back to the CCI Blazers and no problem, Plus that gun gives or has no issues with any of the other brands I've tried.

This issue has been going on so long, I am surprised that Remingtion has not done something to cure the problem.

Keep em coming!

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[Uncle R.]

My favorite long rifle ammo for many years has been CCI mini mags. It's been reliable and very accurate in most of my guns.
<
I bought a few bulk packs of Remington Hi Velocity "golden bullet" stuff some years ago and it was awful. Velocities all over the map - you could hear the differences in report and actually feel the differences in recoil from round to round in my Mk I pistol. Results on target were awful, and there were numerous hangfires and duds. Just terrible stuff.
<
My results with Blazer have ranged from very good to pretty poor depending on the particular batch.
<
There's a lot of really nasty rimfire ammo for sale these days. I've essentially quit even trying anything but mini mags.
<
Uncle R.

[Tristan]

There's a lot to be said in favor of "bumping" the bullet. I'm doing it with a tool made to work in a hand press, which is much more consistent that the Paco Kelly tool, which uses a hammer. Easy for me, I've got a lathe and a toolbox full of reamers. There's a store-boughten version, under the name of Waltz, but it's about $150. So far I'm only bumping up to .2252 (+/-.0001) diameter, but this dramatically improves sorted lots of Remington Thunderbolt in my bone-stock 10/22, which of course has a very loose chamber. Indeed I've got that thing down from 5 MOA to almost 2 MOA by sorting and bumping Thunderbolt. It did similarly dramatic things for Remington Cyclone H.P. ammo. I'm going to keep at this. A new die to bump to .2240 is planned for ammo to go in my single-shot target rifles, which have a more rational chamber than the Ruger. What with all the brands of ammo, and all the variations in treatment, it will keep me busy all summer.

The jury's still out as to whether this is financially worthwhile. Sorting ammo causes you to segregate 20% or so of it as unusable, except for making noise. That increases the price of the rounds you DO use proportionally. And the Waltz tool, if you buy one, would buy you three whole bricks of Wolf Match, which is pretty good stuff. Still and all I find it interesting, and I'll get much better use out of the several bricks of Remington that I bought when I didn't know any better.

Phil


Phil,

Thank you for a most enlightening couple of posts! I can imagine the amount of time you dedicated to determining your results!

Your press mounted tool sounds very interesting. Wish I had access to one.

- Tristan

[uscra112]

Many people like the CCI MiniMags. Here's some evidence why:

I have a partial box of hollow points in my stores.

Of the 80 rounds in the box, no less than 50 fell at 47.5 grains weight +/-0.1 grains, another 26 rounds fell at 47.3 grains +/-0.1 grains and only FOUR measured at 47.2 grains, which is really within the 47.3 group margin of error.

Throwing out the four light ones, we have a total range of just 0.2 or maybe 0.3 grains weight. This is not too awful far from being "match ammo", at least as far as weight variance is concerned.

I normally shoot the MiniMags in a Marlin 39, but I'll take this box to the range and evaluate them as-is and "bumped" in the 10/22. Should be interesting.

Phil

[Saint]

I have tried the Winchester Xpert HV and it would not work in my Winchester 190. It seems to be made of really thick brass and most of the rounds would not go off. I checked them after and they barely had a dent in the rim. I switched to a different type of ammo and then it was fine.

[Jack Stanley]

I've been trying to find some reasonably accurate cheap ammo for a Bolt rifle I recently got . The rifle needed some work to clean up a few issues it had , but for consistant "accuracy" through the rifle work . The ammo that worked best in it was Winchester bulk hollow points , box was the "333" stuff .

Behind that was Winchester Super-X copper washed HV from a stash I bought years ago .

Next was recently bought CCI Blazer ammo , I didn't check the lot number so I don't know who made it .

Right behind that was Federal "Champion" packed in the fifty round boxes .

The Winchester "333" was better in group size by a decent margin , the CCI and Federal were about the same and the groups were nicely rounded . That tells me that even though it has variations at least I can sight to the center of the group and go from there .

I also tried some of the more pricey ammo , CCI mini-mag both hollow point and solids . Also Federal copper washed HV solid , oddly enough the cheaper ammo was more accurate . The rifle was experiencing bedding and trigger problems so perhaps it isn't all the ammo fault .

I placed an order with Graf for more of the Winchester bulk hollow point and I'm still waiting for it . As good as it worked I'm hoping Winchester quality control is still working and this lot number is as good as the last .

On a side note , I took the rifle out yesterday with the barrel freshly cleaned and a box of CCI "Velocitors" to try . First group from thirty-five yards could be covered with a dime . I quickly fired an old box of really cruddy Thunderbolt ammo then fired another five shot group of the Velocitors . Group size was still less than a quarter with a hot dirty barrel .

Jack

[cabezaverde]

So far the best of the "bulk" ammo, as judged by weight consistency, is CCI Blazer, (as made by CCI themselves, not by Federal - look for a letter as the first character in the lot number),

I have an unopened brick of Blazers in my stash, but can't find the lot number anywhere. Any hints?

[flounderman]

when I started shooting smallbore, over 50 years ago, winchester made ez-xs, and experts. I had a 40x, 20 power litschert, and on a still day, you could shoot flies off the target at 100 yards. the expers shot as good as the target ammo. some went bang, some went splut, but they all went in the ten ring. years later, I went back to smallbore and the best affordable, available was eley club. it was a challenge to shoot a ten at 50 feet. I haven't seen what I would call good 22 ammunition for years. you just have to buy a box or brick and try it. some guns will perform different with different ammunition. If you find something your gun likes, buy up some of that lot number. it's all useable, just depends on what you want it to do. I don't know what winchester did 50 years ago to turn out such high quality ammunition and why with all the modern technology, they can't, or wont. incidently, my 40x wouldn't shoot remington target. the russians have some stuff that is supposed to be good, but it's pricey. they have some cheaper grades, but I have never shot any of it.

[uscra112]

I hear ya, flounderman. I've got many '30s and '40s American Rifleman magazines that show groups we'd be proud of today, shot with Winchester and Peters ammo from prone. What happened IMHO is that the belly-shooting game died, and the demand for good ammo died with it. I also blame the popularity of the 10/22, which encourages "spray and pray" shooting.

Today, Wolf Match seems to be pretty decent, at a reasonably affordable price, (as compared with Eley, anyway). If you still shoot your smallbore, try the Wolf for practice. Made in Germany, and I wanna tell ya, based on 15 years of professional contact with German manufacturing tech, nobody does process control better than the Germans. The Japanese ain't even in the same league.

[uscra112]

I have an unopened brick of Blazers in my stash, but can't find the lot number anywhere. Any hints?

I bought a "bulk pack" - the number is on the outside of the carton. Can't help you if what you have is a brick of boxes. But the lot # is usually on the end flaps. On my carton it's pretty faint.

[9.3X62AL]

Another adherent to CCI Mini Mags here. They work in ALL of my 22 LR firearms, and overall are among the most accurate cartridges in them as well. In the SIG Mosquito and the Winchester 290, CCI MM are the ONLY rounds that will run reliably. They cost a bit more, but I'll cough up the coins to get good performance. Life is too short to put up with balky, tempermental ammo.

[Shiloh]

WInchester Widcat has a lot of duds. Even upom multiple attemps at ignition.

SHiloh

[rr2241tx]

Did a little ammo selection this weekend and without going into too much trivia here is a summary:

Rifle: CMP "Rusty" Kimber 82G cleaned up but basically bone stock.
Scope: Bushnell 3200 10X40 Target, the one that a certain catalog retailer sold for $199
Rings: Leupold dovetail clamp.
Rest: machine front, not windage adjustable, bunny ear tail bag.
Wind: <5 mph steady half value.
Ammo:

Blazer Bulk, CCI by serial number code. 2 10 shot strings after changing out the lube landed 14 shots on a 3" ShootNSee sticker at 50 yards, random distribution.

Remington white box surplus recently available through CMP: 2 10 shot strings as above put all 20 into one ragged hole measuring about 1" at 50 yards; at 100 yards could not verify that I was always hitting the NRA 100 Smallbore target I had the sticker on.

Federal 711B also recently purchased from CMP: 50 yard results similar to Remingtons above but dispersion was about .75 inch. 100 yards 50% hit the 3" target, the rest randomly scattered in the black of the backer.

Aguila Super Extra also purchased from CMP: 50 yard results as above but dispersion about .5 inch. 75 yard dispersion: two groups 3/8 w x 1/2 vertical separated by 3/8" windage. 100 yard dispersion: 20 shots 1 group 1" x 3/4".

These are listed in the order I shot them and by the time I got to the Aguila it had been a lot of trips up and down the range and I was getting ready for some supper, so no advantage there. Your mileage will undoubtedly vary. What really surprised me was that the Blazer that I run through my 10/22 really didn't work well at all in the Kimber and that the Remington and Federal just went to Hades in a handbasket beyond 50 yards while the cheapo Aguila just motored right along.

[brotherdarrell]

This last year I put quite a few rounds through 8 different 22's and came to a conclusion that may or may not come as a shock,,,,,size matters even .22 rimfire, and even more-so than lot to lot consistency. In addition I believe that it is better to have a boolit that is a little large rather than a little small. Sound familiar? We as boolit casters go to great length to find the right diameter to fit our barrels yet it seems we give very little thought to diameter in our rimfire .22's.

I came to this conclusion after obtaining one of Paco Kell's accurizers last June. A search will give a lot of info on this tool so I won't go into detail, but will add that the use of an arbor press instead of a hammer gave much more consistent results.

Here is what 'my' guns prefer:

stock 10/22 .225"
stock savage mkII .224"
ruger mkII pistol .223"
chipmunk pistol .223"
s&w 17-6 jury still out
cz 452ultra lux .223"
cz 452 trainer .223"
s&w 34-1 .222"
norinco em332 .222"

Here is my theory: we know that ruger uses one bore size for their single six revolver to accommodate .22 mag. Based on the 10/22 getting best accuracy with .225" it may be the same with rifle. I no longer have that rifle so I can't slug the barrel to find out. I also had a single six that slugged @ .225" which Ruger said was within specs. I have slugged the savage but it has an odd # of lands/grooves so
hard to say on it. The em332 and the 34-1 will barely take my 22 cal cleaning rod in the barrel.

Another observation is that 'in general' remington bulk seems to have the largest bullet out of box and winchester bulk and cci blazer bulk have the smallest. This is what I found with the ammo I had on hand. This did not hold true for boxes of 50 nor with cci in boxes of 100.

Just a few thoughts and observations. Take them for what they are worth.

brotherdarrell

[405]

Mileage will vary BUT a dud is a dud no matter how well or poorly a rifle generally shoots. With much of the questionable 22 ammo I've tried, while there have been very few true duds, there have been plenty of partial duds. You can easily hear the difference without even having to look at the target.

Most "bulk" poke or milk carton ammo (Rem and Federal) I've tried has been relatively poor. The poorest ammo I EVER tried was some low vel Rem CB Longs. The Rem "subsonics" have been so so at best. A few years back the cheap Win Wildcat wasn't too bad. Without a doubt, based on the variety I've shot, the best low cost regular 22 ammo has been CCI Blazer. All this opinion is based on using rifles capable of good to very fine accuracy.

If in the target game and have a rifle capable of competing at a high level, forget the regular stuff. Then it's $8-15 a box Eley, RWS, etc. Of course the best handgun ammo may be different from the best rifle ammo- but still it has to be good to begin with.

[uscra112]

Just a comment on the "duds" issue - much of what I'm shooting is 10 years old, and has not shown me any duds. I literally cannot remember any at all since I started this adventure. Food for thought. More evidence of process control having gone slack in recent times. . . .

[Wayne Smith]

FWIW, I believe Paco is still making his tool. It is much more consistent and easier to use using an arbor press than with a hammer. I've not used the Waltz tool but I would imagine this puts the two in much the same class. Paco makes them in four sizes, too.

[Four Fingers of Death]

FWIW, I believe Paco is still making his tool. It is much more consistent and easier to use using an arbor press than with a hammer. I've not used the Waltz tool but I would imagine this puts the two in much the same class. Paco makes them in four sizes, too.

I got a Paco tool a few years back, never used it as it went to ground in my garage shortly after arriving and hasn't been seen since, lol.

We had a 'group buy' at the pistol club a few years ago and we each bought 5000 Lapua 'Magazine' 22LRs. They came in a box with ten baked bean cans of 500 each. I didn't expect much when I saw the baked bean cans, but it has proven to be phenomonly accurate ammo in both my 50s vintage Browning Standard Pistol, more recent Baikal Target pistol and my SAKO Quad rifle.

I have only used the bulk Remington for plinking and it was Ok, kinda, sorta. I didn't get many duds that I can remember but accuracy was pretty ordinary, acceptable for cheap stuff, but nothing to get excited about.

I have an old Rossi 22 Pump actioned rifle that I bought for my late wife in the mid 70s. It is a very agreeable rifle. It's favourite ammo is Winchester Bushman Hi Vel HPs. This is an economy product sold in Australia, but the Rossi loves it!

I am settign up an old Browning pump action rifle for spotlighting rabbits at night. I must try the CCIs. I usually use WInchester Power Points with great success over the years.

My old BRNO Model 2 (now CZs) wil shoot anything, another agreeable rifle.

[Four Fingers of Death]

I popped into the gunshop this afternoon and picked up a pack of CCI Mini Mags, seeing you guys think so highly of them. I will try them on Sunday (provided the car races aren't on and the wind is blowing the wrong way. Our range i son the side of the Mt Panorama race track. Technically we can shoot 24/7 because the range is completely baffled, etc. But if they hear the guns go off they go into a complete flat spin. I don't know why, shooting is way safer then tearing around a race track in a car! But, if th ewind is blowing away from the track, they won't hear us plugging away.


D'Oh!!! Major race meeting, that means campers on the range, etc. Looks liek I will have to adjust plans, the rest of the month is out as well, another race meeting and Newton's meeting (Newtons's law of realitivity, skates, skateboards, street Luge', billy carts, etc, etc, etc.

A gunshow the weekend after this one and I will have to man a stand there, so no weekend shooting for April. I'll have to go find a paddock somewhere.

[rollmyown]

Thanks guys for the excellent and detailed responses. After reading them I'm reconsidering my leanings toward cheaper bulk ammo. I'll probably go for Mini Mags or stick with Aussie made Power Point. - I've used alot of this over the years, and it is a great round on rabbits. I was thinking I could save a bit buying cheap bulk. Ausglock has done an interesting youtube video comparing lots of different brands and price ranges with some very interesting results. It's a shame (for me) that a bolt action rifle was not used for the tests as that would more accurately reflect what group sizes I could expect (given that would be my use).