smalbore f class ammo sorting

pei precision

pei precision

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so ive started shooting f class smallbore with my savage fv-sr and am realy loving it and am useing match grade ammo but im looking to squeeze every ouch of accuracy out of the gun so ive upgraded my glass, and and looking at a new trigger ( 4oz-4lb and) but im looking at ammo sorting ive picked up a scale that goes to 2 decimal points of a gram so my bullets weight 3.3x grams and ive also heard about rim thickness gauges, anoyone have experience with anything of this sort and results?
 
The first time I saw one was in the old Sinclair's catalogue. I giggled, but the rim is a variable I hadn't thought about until then. If it makes you feel more confident, do it. But you can't buy bullseyes in any of the shooting disciplines. All you can do is teach yourself to win the mental game.
 
Sorting by rim thickness has never worked for me. Given that all the bolt rimfires I have owned cam forward squeezing the base a schnick, not sure if sorting by variation matters.

for me, I buy a true quality match ammo. then I test at distance. good ammo doesn't have fliers. SK rifle match has worked well for me so far.

Jerry
 
Among precision shooters(benchrest competitors being the most demanding) the jury is still out on sorting by weight or rim thickness. There is far greater performance gain by using better match grade ammo and matching the ammo to the rifle. However, if sorting the ammo gives some level of confidence or satisfaction then don't let anything dissuade you.
 
Sorting by rim thickness can help eliminate bigger groups. By sorting into .001" batches within a lot of ammo will help make mediocre ammo group just a little tighter. That being said, not all rifles shoot the same lot# of match ammo equally.
 
RF match shooter normally buy a box or two in a bunch of different lot numbers and then the one that works best they go back and buy a case. RF is fiddly pain the the rear stuff for me!
 
In talking about this with my friends on the national team, there's no direct correlation between time spent weighing and sorting rimfire ammo and higher scores, especially if you're not regularly shooting 590+ on the international (ISSF) 50 m target. As others have already noted, you're better off finding something that your rifle likes and just focusing on training.

Jason
 
Bigger accuracy gains are probably available to you by testing several different kinds of ammo, and finding which one works best in your rifle, if that is an option available to you.

Once you have selected the ammo that works best in your rifle, you might (or might not?) want to try further improving the performance you get from it. Sorting by weight, rim thickness, etc, will never hurt your accuracy, and might conceivably/possibly help it. At worse, it'll be useless (i.e. the only thing you have to lose is your time and effort). Be warned though that small improvements in accuracy are notoriously difficult to detect and to nail down, by the time you eliminate false positives and false negatives.

W.r.t. ammo choice... .22s are notoriously picky and unpredictable. Shooting match ammo is a good thing to do, but there are no guarantees that by using good $10/box ammo you'll get good results in your rifle.

About 15 years ago I bought a couple of cases of .22 match ammo, for myself and a friend. The ammo seller had an indoor 50m range with a machine rest, and if you were to buy a case of ammo he would test your rifle (barrelled action actually) to let you pick the ammo that works best in your rifle. So I got to test my rifle firing 10-shot groups from a machine rest, with different kinds of ammo, in absolutely zero wind conditions. And a very pleasant couple of hours with a wonderful older shooter.

My rifle was an Anschutz 54, and we shot about 6 or 8 different kinds of ammo - for the most part, the "budget match" and "super premium match" offering from each of the major manufacturers. From memory we fired:
RWS Target
RWS R50
Eley Target
Eley Tenex
Lapua Dominator
Lapua Biathlon

It was surprising how unpredictable the results were. For example, RWS R50, which is used by shooters to win the Olympics, was truly mediocre in my rifle (and the RWS Target was pretty mediocre too). It's not that RWS is bad .22 ammo, far from it - but for whatever reason, it simply did not shoot well in my rifle.

It ended up that the two kinds of Eley shot best in my rifle, almost equally well in fact (the bottom-of-the-line, and the top-of-the-line offering), so I bought a case of each.
 
As a business who sells a lot of .22 match ammo we can atest to the fact that top shooters test various product/lots. We have not heard of rim measuring for years, but you may wish to check benchrest central on this.

Regards,

Peter
 
I remember reading on a bench rest forum about this and the conclusion was that sorting by rim thickness and weight made crap ammo shoot better, it didn't make any difference with true match grade ammo.

Given the price of low end match ammo (from memory sk from hirsch precision was about $500-600 for 5000) I wouldn't bother trying to make crap ammo shoot better.

All the major target ammo manufacturers have test facilities where customers can come test ammo batches in their rifle. Eley has one in the UK & US and Lapua has one in Germany & US.
 
rnbra-shooter said:
About 15 years ago I bought a couple of cases of .22 match ammo, for myself and a friend. The ammo seller had an indoor 50m range with a machine rest, and if you were to buy a case of ammo he would test your rifle (barrelled action actually) to let you pick the ammo that works best in your rifle. So I got to test my rifle firing 10-shot groups from a machine rest, with different kinds of ammo, in absolutely zero wind conditions. And a very pleasant couple of hours with a wonderful older shooter.
Click to expand...
Rudy is missed.

Jason
 
A friend of mine bought a brick of "Wildcat" and it shot fantastic. Too bad the case he then bought wouldn't even fire half the time and when it did was ultra crap. Buy good stuff and watch the lot numbers.
 
thanks alot i have 3 variations of match ammo at my club the $5 a box "yellow"bow the red box and the $10 a box lapua match i sorted some federal champ ammo just regular factory ammo and saw not change sadly i think ill just keep my focus on training and minor rifle improments, bedding, trigger and more much more training and trigger time thank you everyone tho
 
At 25 yards indoors you won't find too much difference between so-so ammo and great match ammo. Where it starts to make the big difference is at 50 yard/m and 100 yards/m.
 
actually you notice a big diffrence in my experience if i shoot factory federal champ 40 grn solids 1250 i get about a 1/2inch group, now shooting match grade ammo i can put 5 bullets through the same hole.
 
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