22LR powder uses
- Thread starter lone ranger
- Start date
I've used powder from 22lr rounds to load my 22 Hornet.
It's quite fast and doesn't give near the velocities as Lil Gun, but it's still quite impressive.
What I like about it the most is it's very consistent burn rate.
Lil Gun can be temperamental at times.
It's quite fast and doesn't give near the velocities as Lil Gun, but it's still quite impressive.
What I like about it the most is it's very consistent burn rate.
Lil Gun can be temperamental at times.
Lol...you must be retired,without a wife, and never watch TV,or have a lawn to mow, or have kids or grandkids living within 100km of you...
I'm kidding of course! I wish I had the spare time to devote to such a thrifty enterprise.
I'm kidding of course! I wish I had the spare time to devote to such a thrifty enterprise.
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I don't think the OP is trying to be thrifty. Maybe he is?
I think he's just curious and wants to see for himself what the results of his "burning questions" peaking his curiosity will be.
He's repeating at home experiments many of us have done over the years, learning from it, etc.
I've picked up thousands of snow cuddled rounds out of the target berms at our range. Mostly to clean up the lead. It's amazing how quickly it adds up.
We don't see a lot of unfired rounds, but about a decade back, I found a half dozen bricks of CIL 22lr in the bin. A few boxes had been take out of each and the duds were still in the little yellow plastic trays with black inserts to separate the rounds.
I guess the person couldn't be bothered to take them home.
I tried a few in my rifle and had the same results.
I took them home for the bullets, which pulled very easily, and ended up with appx a pound of small flake powder, that was yellow and gray. Much different than that in the OP's photo.
The lead bullets could have been reloaded and I even did reload some in my 22 Hornet.
They didn't shoot well, the loads were too hot and caused them to strip on the rifling, rather than spin. I had to reduce the loads to appx the same velocities generated by the original 22lr rounds to get good accuracy. Why bother?
I ended up melting them all down into .500 round balls for my Lyman 50 cal Plains Rifle. A bit hard but still workable with a thicker patch.
The powder in all of them was fine. The priming compound in the rims had deteriorated.
I filled the 22 Hornet case with as much of the powder as I could compress and maintain OAL to fit in the magazine with 40 grain, flat base bullets. I believe it was around 10.5 grains.
Velocities were OK, close to factory offerings. Accuracy was borderline acceptable out to 100yds on bunnies.
I wouldn't do it again unless I was desperate.
As for pistol bullets. I've picked up a lot of those as well.
The OP is right on when he states they load well, feed well, and are quite accurate—even the cast lead bullets.
Do you save any money? I guess that depends on how you value things.
I've picked up and shot a few thousand fmj 30 cal and 31 cal bullets in days gone by, and they worked OK. Not nearly as accurate as their new counterparts but fine for fouling shots and a few other things, or just shooting branches floating by on the creek, to practice on moving targets.
Cool. Maybe I'll actually give mine a try... I tested it a bit when I first got it, but I'm always leary of cheap digitals drifting...
Suther, I felt the same way you do about "cheap" scales. That is until I bought one of those cheap MTM brand units, around $50 at the time.
I checked it against my Dillon electronic scale and the readings were identical, on every charge weight from 4.0 grains, to 75 grains. Not even a tenth of a grain difference.
I had encouraged people to stay away from them, but no longer.
I found the same thing with range finders.
I have a thing about good quality glass. I pay dearly for that thing.
I tried a low end Bushnell range finder. It was only accurate out to 400 yards which was OK but not what I felt I needed.
So, I purchased a Swarovski. It works incredibly well out to 1500 meters.
This spring a fellow brought over his new to him Bushnell range finder, which the instruction manual says is good to 900 meters.
That manual wasn't inaccurate by any means.
We took them out to compare them and at all distances, right out to 1100 meters, they measured withing 3 meters of each other at most.
Up to 500 meters they were plus or minus a couple of meters different. Not enough to make and real difference to anyone, unless you're building a bridge.
- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
I have the same one but Hornady branded and it matches my beam scale if I double check.
