The Hobbit Hole XXXVIII - There and Back Again!

[ExGeeEye]

I'd be particularly interested in your data on which ammo works best out of the box and your opinions on

—would your data from your 10/22 be approximately the same for all 10/22s, or do the characteristics of an individual rifle have an effect?

—would accuracy data from 10/22s translate across well-made .22s in general, or do such details as a longer barrel or different firing mechanism matter?

I have one operable .22 (the other one was my grandfather's and Dad taught me to shoot with it when I was 8, but it's not functioning and hasn't done since 1979), a cheap little Cooey that I rescued, painted, from a pawnshop in 1989 and repaired the finish; I have never tested it for group size on a range, but can reliably hit a pop can “a ways away” :)

[300winmag]

I'd be particularly interested in your data on which ammo works best out of the box and your opinions on....

The answer is, yes. :)

Seriesly, everything you mentioned has an influence, including shooter skills. There are plenty more variables involved, too. The trick is to start with some arbitrarily-fixed reference points, and then figure out ways to test some variable to see how much of an influence it has on overall accuracy. In most cases, the single biggest detriment to accuracy is the shooter himself.

In my case, I'm using my Ruger 10/22 target model because it has proven itself accurate enough to overlook any remaining flaws that still might reside in it. I'm starting with Federal Champion ammo because it's relatively cheap, highly rated by other .22 shooters, and I've seen its inherent accuracy in a number of my own weapons.

Now I'm working with gauges and gadgets to see what my rifle likes best about that particular brand. Tune in tonight for more details on progress so far. And the one thing that goes without saying, that I must say, is that everything can vary from gun to gun, brand to brand, round to round. But good data can help reduce those variables to below the statistical background noise.

[300winmag]

Tonight's Saturday Night Gun Pron, which happens to be published on April Fool's Day, is a look at more gadgets used in my search to find the "pet load" for each of my .22 rifles and handguns. Of course, once I finish that daunting task, I'll have no more excuses for bad shooting, except myself.

After shooting a nice group, you need a way to measure it precisely. Then the size can be entered into a spreadsheet for later analysis, and the paper targets thrown away. Unless I shoot a once-in-a-lifetime group, and then I'll have it framed.

The first gadget is a .22 rim thickness gauge from Brownells. It's a simple, but highly precise, gauge that attaches to the jaws of a caliper, and measures the thickness of the rim.

I couldn't figure out why it included a neck lanyard until I started using it, and then realized I would not want to drop an $80 gauge and a $200 set of mid-grade Mitotoyu calibers on the floor.

So far, while checking 50 rounds of ammo, I've found that there are four different rim thicknesses present, but all vary less that .0001" from the most-common .0420" thickness. I won't know without testing, but I suspect that rim thickness may not have a noticeable affect on accuracy with this ammunition, and this Ruger.

After the rounds are shot, the groups need precise measurement. Enter another Brownells gauge, which are now permanently attached to my dad's 40-year-old first-generation Mitotoyu digital calipers. They aren't as consistent to the fourth decimal place, so I figured it was easier to just leave the jaws on full time.

Measure the two holes furthest apart, and there's your answer. This particular gauge can also measure 6mm and .30 caliber targets. The data goes into a spreadsheet, and the target can then go into the trash.

I've been spending the weekend making different variations of test ammo for a quick look-see. Starting with .222-sized Federal, I'll see how much that tiny variation in rim thickness matters. I'll also test two boxes of pre-1973 (no bar codes on the boxes) Sears generic ammo. Fifty rounds sized to .222", the other untouched. I have to remember to check the rim thickness for grins, and see how it compares with the Federal.

Pretty soon I'll have the best "pet load" for the Ruger identified. Then I'll start working on the subsonic brands, and see how much things can be improved. A whole lot of work will already be saved because it already appears that the Ruger prefers its ammo sized to .222". If that holds true, all I'll have to do is check rim thickness, and see how much of a role it plays with other brands. With that much data in hand, I should be able to characterize the best fodder for each CZ rifle, and for some of the handguns, too.

Right now, a lot of people are probably rolling their eyes over something so picky. You ain't seen "picky" until you get into benchrest shooting. I like blasting cheap ammo as well as anyone else, but I also enjoy the challenge of using my skill and resources to wring the best accuracy I can with my weapons I know are proven performers.

[Squantos]

Picky ?

I am very picky an will pursue perfection till I pass from this life. No accusations from me friend. I’m not a bench rest shooter yet I live in the panhandle of Texas where a normal shot on a varmit is 800 plus yards with mirage an wind so bad its enough to frustrate the best of shooters.

My truck gun is a .338 lapua mag with a leupold mk4 16X . A no contour shilen bull barrel with. Harris bipod an a McMillan stock. 11 degree recessed crown an badger mounts on the Remington 700 action. Canjar set trigger completes my rig I was “picky” about.

Then an only then do I get to my selection of components for rolling my own fodder to feed that rifle. I would think over the years I have paid lots of coin to Sinclair, Brownells, Midway and Creedmore.

I’m very picky in all my endeavors from dinner to dwellings to what I drive.

My work involves precision measurement an exotic materials. A lack of attention to detail can be deadly.

Picky is a way of life per se..... :o)

If anything I own can be improved with a little extra effort I will do so.

Stay safe, hope yer well !

[300winmag]

I am very picky an will pursue perfection till I pass from this life. No accusations from me friend.

I've got no problems with that, although I'd call myself a "practical perfectionist". In my working life, I've found that 90% of a job takes just 10% of the time. It's up to my boss to decide if perfection is needed, and it usually isn't.

At home, for myself, family, and a few friends, I will spend endless time to get a computer or weapon as perfect as I can make it. They all say, "that's amazing, why don't you do that for a living?" Of course, nobody is willing to pay $80 an hour (the going rate for just about any kind of custom one-on-one labor) when they have no idea what I actually did, or why it took so long to do it.

I still get a chuckle reading the Ruger Mark x sites with everyone moaning about how it's impossible to get it to function reliably with low power/subsonic ammo. Heck, the first time out of the box, I had 100% failure-to-feed with RWS subsonic ammo. $200 of Volquartsen parts, a bunch of Nanolube, and two weeks of studying sources of drag and friction gave me a handgun that now functions reliably with every kind of creampuff .22 ammo I can find.

It's not rocket science, it's experience, study and analysis, and a willingness to bust your ass to get the job done. OTOH, maybe that is the definition of rocket science. :)

Meanwhile, a final photo from last week, where I finally took my CZ 452 in .17HM2 to the range for first tests with the Timney trigger, and mounting the scope on the CZ 455. These are tough rifles to photograph, because it is so hard to show how gorgeous the wood really is.

[Squantos]

Agree agree agree..... on the photos, have you considered changing you background to blue for the weapons shots. I know the targets are your current background but I am told that blue brings out firearms , especially those with great furniture, much better..... maybe a test !....:o)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-HbVQUq73pFA/TXZkCQ4YnnI/AAAAAAAAAeA/ceEPIgkBx8w/DSCN1572.JPG

Stay safe !

[300winmag]

I’ve got some light blue foam packaging sheets. I’ll give it a try right away. Thanks.

[osagebowman]

Evening ExGeeEye - well, an inoperable rifle is an opportunity imho. Check out rimfirecentral.com and you’ll find kindred spirits that truly enjoy resurrecting old .22s the clutches of disrepair. Regardless of the make, model and condition, someone on there has either the parts or the know-how to make the rifle run again, and occasionally you’ll find some withone with both. Good Luck in your quest.

RE: rimfire ammo, I’ll echo Win-Mag’s observation: try different brands at a known distance, from a stable rest or position and record the results. Sometimes you luck out and get appropriate, note: appropriate is what you decide it is, results. A peep sight helps, a scope even more if you have a rifle with a grooved receiver. Again - good shooting.

[osagebowman]

Evening Win-Mag - good shooting; the ruger project is coming along nicely. I recall seeing some steel blocks with holes drilled in them at a gunshow, the fella used them to as drop in quick test for rim thickness. He had done a similar test to yours and he found which rim thicknesses went with his rifle and his pistol, each hole was marked as such, the no-gos were saved for his grandson.

Some serious ‘chunk gun’ BP shooters weigh, caliper and check each roundball for concentricity. Premeasured powder charges etc. are also favored. The bench rest shooters go several steps further to ensure uniformity from shot to shot.

Although I tend to favor the “five dollar trigger job” school of gun repair, I thoroughly enjoy your posts. Shooting out the center of the 10 ring certainly is satisfying.

PS the bic click pen spring ‘3 buck trigger job’ reduced the pull on my old Marlin .22 bolt action from somewhere north of 10 pounds to a satisfying 3 or so pounds.

OB

[300winmag]

I took your advice, and see some positive results. Unfortunately, there was only one blue object I could find that would fit. Here's the CZ 452:

And the CZ 455:

It's still not as good as seeing it in real life, but that blue seems to fake out the camera enough for more to show through.

I'll be looking for some appropriate blue background, and use some high-quality wax to cut down the glare from overhead lights. A thin coat just to kill the shine, then buff it back up when done.

I've worked with slave strobes, diffusers, indirect lighting, etc. in some of my previous jobs. I'm not into all that happy horsesh1t now, I just want good pictures with the least fuss. It's not like I'm being paid for something that will go on the cover of some glossy magazine.

Oh, and a professional photographer once told me the hardest thing in the world to photograph properly is ice cream. :)

[300winmag]

Busy week, this week. However, did some quick-and-dirty ammo tests, and learned a lot, all of it unexpected. I shot everything on one target, left at the (approximate) 25 yard line so I wouldn't have to pull the target back and forth, and have ranges vary by a few feet each time.

It turns out my 10/22 is a very picky eater, at least with Federal Champion ammunition. But give it what it wants, and it can perform vey well.

It seems to like the .0415" rim thickness much better than the others.

Unfortunately, that's the least-common size I've encountered in my first few hundred rounds of checking. But some other rifle might favor one of the other flavors. I'll do some quick checking with the CZ 453 and 455 soon. Now that I have a supply of sized-and-sorted ammo, things can move faster.

Testing with other combinations, including dog-and-cat mixed old ammo, left me with lots of contrary results.

Aside from learning how rewarding it is to feed my finicky Ruger its favorite snack, I've come to the conclusion that so many variables are involved in firing a round that some will cancel out the others, randomly. Since every individual variable probably presents itself as a bell-curve distribution of arbitrary x-and-y dimensions, stack a dozen or so on top of each other, and you get a roughly "round" group with lots of what I thought were my flyers thrown in. Cut down on some of the variables, and a simpler pattern begins to appear, or at least be hinted at.

For the Ruger, sized-and-sorted Champion ammo seems to string itself out in a roughly horizontal group. I suspect it may have some relationship to something mechanical going on inside the rifle. I suspect a bolt action rifle like the CZ will work best with anything that is as consistent as possible. We'll see.

And I ordered a brick of Federal Champion Match, which I will test against my home-rolled ammo. Since I've run across four different rim dimensions in the stock ammo, I suspect they have four different machines to make the cases. They may use only brass from their "best" machine, and test more regularly for consistency in the match ammo.

As with science, each answer brings up two newer-but-subtler questions. But with a dependable standard rifle and ammo combination, these new questions should be quicker and easier to answer.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I find when I build, modify, tweak, or study something, my subconscious more readily accepts that device as an extension of myself, and I have a more instinctual feel for how to use it, with a lot less work on my part.

[osagebowman]

Evening Win-Mag - Well, been to therange and a couple of lgs; one, I got to fondle a new Ruger 10-22 take-down. He got two in, one left on the rack. Ergo, full retail, sigh. Came with a nice carrying case with space for an extra bbl. Speculation running rampant that Ruger will offer a bull-barrel version. The outside pocket on case sized for a pair of 25 round mags. I couldn’t tell if the case was sized for scope to remain on the receiver in breakdown mode. One would think so but...The other point was there were no studs for mounting a sling, I know we can add studs but one would think, wouldn’t one?

In other newz, no used glocks, sigs in either store, just new ones. Revolvers were in fair supply, and ammo shelves had been depleted, hmmmm. Some models of rifles and shot guns limited selection. Supplies, powder, primers in good supply, no run up (yet).

Federal Champion .22s in short supply round here. I did see one brick at the lgs/range.

Range-trip successful, paper was punched, brass was collected, all highways safely traveled.

[300winmag]

Range-trip successful, paper was punched, brass was collected, all highways safely traveled.

Glad to hear about your trigger time. Shame about that 10/22 takedown. I haven't even seen one yet, but I suspect extra barrels will come threaded for use with "muzzle accessories", as Ruger calls them. Considering their production capacity is already booked for the rest of the year, I might just grab the first 10/22 TD I see. I'm glad I did that to all three Rugers I bought (so far) this year. These models seem to trickle in slowly, if at all. Often, it's just the one in the rack that's left.

I got some Federal Champions from Midway, where currently they're on sale. I think I paid $1.89 a box, which is a steal for what is basically match-grade ammo. Midway's ordering page was a bit confusing. I wanted a brick, it said "$1.89 per box", so I put in the number "10". Then the other day this hugh box arrives from them, and inside were ten bricks of Champion for a total of $189 plus shipping. I missed the part on the page that said "sold in packages of 10 boxes".

This worked out better than I expected, because I now have about 14K rounds of just that one brand of ammo, with a very good expectation that I will find the perfect formula for each .22 I try it with. I suspect the CZs will be much less fussy than the 10/22, but I have a "sample pack" of one box of everything, just so I can follow where the results are pointing.

I'm also starting to test the Ely Rifle Match against the Champions. Right now, rather than resize them, I just segregated the ammo by rim thickness. I noticed better consistency in the Ely, with only two about-equal distributions of rim thickness, both .0005" apart. The Champion fell into four groups, with varying percentages, but again each group varying only .0005" from the next. The uncertainty of my measurements (me and my calipers) makes the fifth position to the right of the decimal dicey.

Until I do more testing, I only have hunches. I suspect the Ruger is vey finicky about what it likes, with .222" diameter bullets and the thinnest rim dimensions the best. The CZs, I can only guess that they will be happy with one particular bullet size, but that's only SWAG at this point.

Aaaaannnddd, I was able to sort the rim thickness of my Ely .17HM2 ammo into four about equal groups. Can't resize the bullets, but I can see how well the CZ 452 does with different rim size, especially since I now have the Timney trigger on it.

I could never afford to do this kind of research with centerfire ammo, especially match-grade ammunition. I've decided I need a thousand rounds of a particular brand of dimensional/weapon combinations to find the best, and still have about a brick left over for "productive" shooting. That means I'll have to double my inventory of subsonic test ammo. When I see things on sale.

[300winmag]

Tonight's Saturday Night Gun Pron takes a break from .22s to look at a new product for "America's Rifle", the M-faux carbine. It's another replacement for the regular GI pistol grip (the most user-unfriendly item on the rifle, IMHO), but with some fresh thinking behind it.

Bravo Company Mfg has come out with a pistol grip that has less of an angle than the original 1959-version AR15 grip, which has been more-or-less been standard with aftermarket stuff ever since. However, the company points out that shooting styles and combat tactics have changed in those 50+ years. Tactics, optics, and body armor have brought a more square-to-the-target stance, rather than the "blade stance" of presenting your left side to the target (if you're right handed), with the weapon pressed against your chest, and your right elbow stick out like a chicken wing. That stance works best with a more acute angle of the pistol grip to the barrel axis. But today's shooting style with this type of carbine works best, and is most comfortable, with a more vertical grip angle. At least that's what BCM says, and after buying one of their grips, they may have a valid idea. The picture below shows the original AR15/M-16A2 grip, my still-beloved Magpul, the new BCM grip, and a Sig 556 grip, just for comparison.

The Magpul has about the same angle, but is vastly better for me because of its slightly-arched backstrap, and more hand-filling cross section. Eugene Stoner obviously never studied ergonomics, and the GI grip, with its smaller cross section and straight backstrap can shoot a bolt of pain through my arm when my carpal tunnel is acting up.

The BCM grip, second to the end, is noticeably more vertical. Otherwise, it has the same benefits as the Magpul, including a longer grip length, which allows for more room to find the right spot to grasp it, or a slight change of grip to allow some muscle relief. The BCM has a shorter front-to-rear length, but a wider body. This may be helpful to more people with varying hand sizes, but I have no way of telling, as of now.

All I can say is that it feels different, and looks vey different on the rifle. I guess I may have grown so used to the one-unchanging-angle that this new grip seems so out of place. It feels good, but different.

So here it is on my gas-piston rifle, which has become my M-faux "guinea pig", having that new buffer tube, and a Magpul mid-length handguard that sort of reminds me of the FN FAL. Of course, the original FAL had a pistol grip that was even more angled than the one on the AR15, so while it looked sexy and space-agey (we are no longer in the space age), might not have worked the best, at least for me.

I find the Magpul MOE handguard to be comfy for me, without the need for an angled grip, although one could be added. The added Magpul front sling loop is unobtrusive and silent, and works well with Magpul's MS3 sling (not shown here). The Magpul MOE or MIAD (more deluxe, configurable pistol grip) both work well for me, so I'm eager to see how the BCM works. I expect the results to be approximately equal, but if the new grip proves far superior, I see future upgrades to my rifles that use that type of pistol grip. Only extended range time and handling will tell for sure. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. :)

[osagebowman]

Evening WinMag and Happy Easter - say, that last shipment should keep you supplied for the upcoming testing jamboree. Midway has some good prices but the combination of sales tax and shipping leaves me looking at other suppliers or usually a local source.

[300winmag]

Midway has some good prices but the combination of sales tax and shipping leaves me looking at other suppliers or usually a local source.

Happy Easter to everyone here, lurkers and regulars.

I usually don't buy ammo from Midway, unless it's either a hugh sale, or something that's hard to find elsewhere. No sales tax for me, but I figure the more I buy, the less the shipping costs per round. It's no big deal for me to buy a brick of .22s locally, but I still get weird looks, even from my regular EBR store, when I ask for a thousand rounds of .357Sig. Ammoman.com to the rescue, although I had to wait a year for them to get 30-06 ammo back in stock. They still have absolutely no .22lr in stock, except for German blanks.

[SuziQ]

Happy Easter to you, as well as the other regular Hobbit Hole folks!

[SuziQ]

Thought about you earlier this week while watching a series on TV about the Coast Guard in Alaska!

[Ramius]

I’ve watched those... They’re great! They do a nice job of showing what the job is all about. Of course they show lots more of the rotor heads than the rest of us... But still... They did a good job of it. That was my old stomping grounds. It’s a nasty place to do that sort of work, but it’s the most gorgeous place in the world, too. :-)

[Ramius]

I’ve watched those... They’re great! They do a nice job of showing what the job is all about. Of course they show lots more of the rotor heads than the rest of us... But still... They did a good job of it. That was my old stomping grounds. It’s a nasty place to do that sort of work, but it’s the most gorgeous place in the world, too. :-)