hornet loads for 22-250

wobbles99

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I happened to get some .224 bullets from a friend of a friend. He sold his 22-250 and was just getting rid of what was taking up space on his shelves.

One of the boxes is labelled .224 40gr Hornet Varminter. When I asked him about these he mentioned that he bought them by mistake and never bothered to return them.

I do not own a 22 hornet nor do I plan to in the future.

What I was thinking about is making a reduced load to fire these at hornet speeds through my 22-250. Anyone have any experience with this?
 
wobbles99 said:
I happened to get some .224 bullets from a friend of a friend. He sold his 22-250 and was just getting rid of what was taking up space on his shelves.

One of the boxes is labelled .224 40gr Hornet Varminter. When I asked him about these he mentioned that he bought them by mistake and never bothered to return them.

I do not own a 22 hornet nor do I plan to in the future.

What I was thinking about is making a reduced load to fire these at hornet speeds through my 22-250. Anyone have any experience with this?

Do you know what brand are they? If so, that would help considerably. I just took a quick look through some of my reloading manuals and the only one I found that designates a particular bullet as a HORNET is in the volume I, sixth edition Hornady in the loads listed for the .22-250. This one, #2230 HORNET, is 45grs and maximum velocities are listed at 3600 f/sec. This is slower than the max loads listed for the 40gr V-MAX (4100 f/sec) and slower as well than the heavier 50gr bullets (3800 f/sec). I'm assuming it 'possibly' has a thinner jacket? Don't know if this helps much.
 
Johnn Peterson said:
Do you know what brand are they? If so, that would help considerably. I just took a quick look through some of my reloading manuals and the only one I found that designates a particular bullet as a HORNET is in the volume I, sixth edition Hornady in the loads listed for the .22-250. This one, #2230 HORNET, is 45grs and maximum velocities are listed at 3600 f/sec. This is slower than the max loads listed for the 40gr V-MAX (4100 f/sec) and slower as well than the heavier 50gr bullets (3800 f/sec). I'm assuming it 'possibly' has a thinner jacket? Don't know if this helps much.

Their sierra's.

Come to think of it I dusted off the ol' lyman manual and there are quite a few loads for cast lead bullets at reduced speeds. I can't see why they wouldn't work.

I may have to load a few up and see.
 
wobbles99 said:
Their sierra's.

Come to think of it I dusted off the ol' lyman manual and there are quite a few loads for cast lead bullets at reduced speeds. I can't see why they wouldn't work.

I may have to load a few up and see.

A 'little' update, and I should've looked a little closer to start with. :redface: In my old Sierra 2nd Edition manual, the maximum velocity I see listed for the 40gr. Hornet is 3500 f/sec in the 223 Remington, 222 Remington Magnum & the 225 Winchester. In the Sierra Rifle & Handgun Reloading Data, Edition V, the highest velocity I see listed for the 40gr. Hornet is for the 223 Remington (bolt action) and the velocity is 3700 f/sec.So, I think I'd keep that bullet under 3700 f/sec.:)
 
The funny thing is that I emailed sierra to see what reprocussons, if any , there would be for using the bullets in a 22-250 cartridge and they emailed back that they do not recomend them for anything higher than 3000fps as the jacket can separate midflight.

I'm thinking of a load at about 2500to start and then seeing what kind of accuracy I get. Then I may up the charge.

I found this on the subject.

have received several email messages adding to the data about Blue Dot loads. In the .22-250, several readers have reported that a good load uses 45-grain Hornet bullets over 14.0 grains of Blue Dot. This yields 2600 fps.

http://www.reloadingroom.com/page33.html

I just so happen to have some blue dot kicking around. I'm going to drop the charge back to about 12 grains and see what comes of it.

It's nice to see that I'm not the first to try this out.
 
I had a friend of mine who said he tried to drive some bullets designed for hornets out of his 22-250.He was moving them pretty fast and said some never made the target at 100 yds. Said he thought he saw puffs thru his scope. Figured they were disintergrating before reaching the target. That was his story,never did see it happen....Ken
 
wobbles99 said:
The funny thing is that I emailed sierra to see what reprocussons, if any , there would be for using the bullets in a 22-250 cartridge and they emailed back that they do not recomend them for anything higher than 3000fps as the jacket can separate midflight.

I'm thinking of a load at about 2500to start and then seeing what kind of accuracy I get. Then I may up the charge.

I found this on the subject.



http://www.reloadingroom.com/page33.html

I just so happen to have some blue dot kicking around. I'm going to drop the charge back to about 12 grains and see what comes of it.

It's nice to see that I'm not the first to try this out.

Plan # 2, if you want, PM me your e-mail address and I'll scan and send you a copy of the page from the Sierra Edition V that has quite a number of loads at the lower end of the velocity 'scale', 3600 & 3700 f/sec. Let me know.
 
Johnn Peterson said:
Plan # 2, if you want, PM me your e-mail address and I'll scan and send you a copy of the page from the Sierra Edition V that has quite a number of loads at the lower end of the velocity 'scale', 3600 & 3700 f/sec. Let me know.

Sorry, I neglected to mention, the loads are loads actually listed for the .22-250 Remington in that velocity range for the 40gr bullet weight. Been a long day.
 
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