22 Long Rifle Accurizing Kits

Speaking with a shooter last night he mentioned accurizing 22 ammo with a kit. He had never used one but proclaimed a friend had with great results. Does anyone know what he is referring to? His description was of a lead bullet that had been flattened and dimpled much like Eley Edge ammo.

Probably talking about the Neal Waltz (or similar) die....this may help point you in that direction:
https://www.portercalls.com/neal_waltz_die.htm

Personally, I would suggest not going down that rabbit hole, there is much more to be gained by building strong fundamentals. Most SV 22 ammo will shoot better than most of us can hold....once you get to Master, start looking at stuff like that if you feel the need. My 2 cents....

Most target 22 pistols with decent ammo will shoot 1" groups at fifty. If you value your time that cheaply of if you enjoy fiddling with ammo, go ahead. I'll spend my time shooting.

I would argue that high end Lapua/Sk or eley is cheaper than reworking other ammo and will give you a better result. Function and feel are higher priority to me personally than any minor increase in accuracy.

Do the 3P rifle shooters accurize ammo? I'm thinking if they don't do it why bother?

If you can't shoot master scores with CCI SV it ain't the ammo. I'm still working on master with 3 guns but nearly shot HM average last weekend (2611) with a 208S and RWS Target Pistol, probably would have shot the same with CCI. If you're shooting RFBR then you might play with forming 22lr rounds but for pistol it's a waste of time, any decent pistol will group 2" or under at 50yd with CCI.

I have "fiddled" around w/ .22 ammo, measuring dia, and rim thickness etc w/o visible results in my Cz 455 HB. For rifle buy a better grade of ammo and for pistol spend your time on the range. As said above most decent Std vel will shoot X's which are satisfactory for the best of us.

Ron Habegger

I once had the opportunity to travel to the Eley Customer Range to lot-test TENEX in three Hammerli pistols.  IIRC, seventeen lots of TENEX were available while I was there.  For each pistol I was able to find a lot that would shoot sub-one inch groups at 50 meters.  The biggest groups were ~1.5 inches.  In no case did a lot that worked well in one pistol have any correlation to how it performed in another barrel.  The takeaway from this experience was that even in a product as consistent in TENEX, each barrel is unique, each lot of ammunition is unique, and the notion that you can do something to randomly chosen ammunition and make it "better" is wishful thinking.

Some 22 pistol info with groups.

Shooting Sports USA article on David Sams relining a S&W Model 41. 

www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201006/index.php?startid=22#/p/22

Shooting Sports USA New Eley Test Range part 1

https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201302/index.php?startid=18&device=nxthtml#/p/16

Shooting Sports USA New Eley Test Range part 2 - Testing a S&W M41

https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201303/index.php?startid=21#/p/22

I'll admit to sorting CCI SV by rim thickness, but the purpose was for reliability in matches rather than accuracy in a Ruger MkIII and a S&W M41. After a while Eley Club and SK Pistol Match came up on sale/good price/free shipping and I picked up some Euro 22s so the Neil Jones rim thickness gauge hasn't been out much.

To add to my previous reply, six or seven years ago a friend and I tested 22 ammo and two S&W M41 barrels. My friend had a Ransom rest that we mounted on a heavy wooden rifle bench and started with his 1990s M41 with a long barrel. We then swapped in a late 1970s 5.5 barrel that I had just gotten back from being relined by Alex Hamilton. On hand we had CCI SV, Wolf Match Target, Eley Target, Eley Club and RWS Target Rifle . We shot 30 shot 50 yard groups with each ammo. 

The RWS Target Rifle was the worst, with 3 or 4 shots just outside a B-6 X-ring. CCI SV and Eley Target were all inside the X-ring. Eley Club was smaller, maybe 1.25 inches. The Wolf Match Target made the smallest group (about 1 inch) but would not reliably cycle the pistol. 

It was fun to see the worst we could expect from the ammo. We never did it again.

I buy by the case but lot variation will drive you nuts. My first case of SK Standard Plus was very soft and I had to sell it to a rifle shooter as it would not cycle the slide reliably in my pistols at the time.

Thanks for all the great comments. I'm always looking for the better mouse trap but I see it is a waste of time to go down that road. Over the years I've seen how finicky .22s can be and trying to customize the round may not be productive. I shoot S&W 41, Hamerlli 280, and a Marvel on a Kimber 1911 frame. They all shoot CCI SV well, but I think I'll stick to the 41 and CCI in the hopes of bettering my score.
Thanks again for the insight; it is very helpful.

Richard Ashmore wrote:I once had the opportunity to travel to the Eley Customer Range to lot-test TENEX in three Hammerli pistols.  IIRC, seventeen lots of TENEX were available while I was there.  For each pistol I was able to find a lot that would shoot sub-one inch groups at 50 meters.  The biggest groups were ~1.5 inches.  In no case did a lot that worked well in one pistol have any correlation to how it performed in another barrel.  The takeaway from this experience was that even in a product as consistent in TENEX, each barrel is unique, each lot of ammunition is unique, and the notion that you can do something to randomly chosen ammunition and make it "better" is wishful thinking.

I have been shooting smallbore prone about a decade now. Rifle shooters have a dimed sized ring at 50 yards.

This is a factory ten shot target supplied with my 1976 mfgr rifle. Some shooters claimed the ammunition was better back then.





An F Class shot this at 100 yards, the ten ring is around one inch. I think.



This is what former National Champion did, prone with a sling, 50 yards, irons, 20 rounds for record






this is what another former National Champion did, prone with a sling, 50 yards, irons, 20 rounds for record. Same day as above, the shooters were on adjacent targets and I had my camera.





Rifle shooters are shooting inside anything a pistol shooter can do. And the good ones, they buy good ammunition and don't mess with it. Often they are shooting lot selected ammunition. I ran into a shooter at the Nationals, he had his rifle lot tested 60 times (or was it 90). He was on a shooting team. Like everyone else, once I gain confidence in my ammunition, I hoard the good stuff for important matches. It takes about 500 rounds before I really have confidence in my ammunition. I have shot almost 10,000 rounds of Eley Edge, one case was lot selected at the Nationals, and I am not every going to buy any more of that stuff. The X count is always lower, regardless of it having been lot tested.  I have had my rifle lot tested at Eley and at Lapua and will say the groups in the March 2013 article

https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201303/index.php?startid=21#/p/22

are actually cherry picked. I seen worse from different lots of Eley Blackbox and Midas Plus. As a general rule, the more expensive ammunition is more consistent and more accurate than the cheaper stuff. There is over lap, really good Center-X overlapping the Midas + average. However, the lowest priced match ammunition, expect 8 ring drop outs



or worse





The same shooter who experienced this drop out with TAC 22, he stopped using it and shot those F Class targets above with Eley Black Box. He is a much happier Camper.

I am of the opinion, that given a good barrel, good chambering job, that the greatest difference between groups, is the ammunition. Ammunition varies more than anything else, quality levels being the same. Of course, you shoot match ammunition in a Ruger 10/22,  you won't see an improvement as the chamber was reamed with a pork sausage and the barrel itself is the highest quality barrel that Ruger can buy for $5.00. My Ruger 10/22, I can rock the round in the chamber with my thumb. Ruger knows its customer base and cuts huge chambers so the rifles will function with owners who never clean their rifles.

Eley came out to one National Match and gave a sales pitch for its American Test Range. They measure and control somewhere between 100 and 200 cartridge characteristics. They sort ammunition by how the stuff does in match barrels at the end of the production line. There is a lot of snakeoil equipment sold that does not improve accuracy one bit. You can find ads for rimfire rim gages. What the owners and sellers are doing is something called the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. They are seeing patterns that don't exist. They don't shoot enough ammunition to really prove anything. What they are seeing is what you would expect to see with random variance.

A tool that squishes the bullet and makes a cavity, can only make ammunition less accurate. The maker iis unpredictably and inconsistently changing the center of gravity of the bullet by deforming the thing. I am certain he is moving the center of gravity away from the rotation axis of the bullet. Plus, he is messing with the crimp at the base of the bullet. Look at what is inside the case, pressing down on the middle of the bullet is bad.




I read all the time, shooters who think they can improve on the accuracy of the best made bullets in the world with a crimp die.



well, you can't



What is true for centerfire is true for rimfire. Don't squish your bullets.

I don't know, but I am of the opinion that pistol match ammunition has more sensitive priming compound and a sharper  pressure curve than rifle ammunition. I have had all sorts of malfunctions, failures to fire, failures to eject with SK Std Plus. This ammunition is rifle ammunition. Rifles have more robust ignition systems due to bigger mainsprings. And, the typical bolt gun is manually opened. 

This rifle uses a lever. Works very well



Semi auto pistols, the most common 22 lr pistol on the firing line, these are blow back pistols. If the ammunition does not have enough oomph, the pistol won't cycle. I have shot next to shooters using Eley Red Box Pistol Match, Lapua Pistol Match, etc, and their pistols function fine. I don't think this is an accident, manufacturer's know that if their ammunition does not function, competitor's will find someone else's ammunition that does.

Sa-tevp wrote:To add to my previous reply, six or seven years ago a friend and I tested 22 ammo and two S&W M41 barrels. My friend had a Ransom rest that we mounted on a heavy wooden rifle bench and started with his 1990s M41 with a long barrel. We then swapped in a late 1970s 5.5 barrel that I had just gotten back from being relined by Alex Hamilton. On hand we had CCI SV, Wolf Match Target, Eley Target, Eley Club and RWS Target Rifle . We shot 30 shot 50 yard groups with each ammo. 

The RWS Target Rifle was the worst, with 3 or 4 shots just outside a B-6 X-ring. CCI SV and Eley Target were all inside the X-ring. Eley Club was smaller, maybe 1.25 inches. The Wolf Match Target made the smallest group (about 1 inch) but would not reliably cycle the pistol. 

It was fun to see the worst we could expect from the ammo. We never did it again.

I buy by the case but lot variation will drive you nuts. My first case of SK Standard Plus was very soft and I had to sell it to a rifle shooter as it would not cycle the slide reliably in my pistols at the time.

Ah, yes, the rimfire lottery.