sorting rimfire ammo questions

yodave

yodave

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Okay so Dryfire says I am over analyzing things and I have way to much free time........but I want to sort out some 22 match ammo and see if it really sings, oh it already does but I want to see if we can tweak it.......I searched like a bugger over on rimfire and found no good info.........other then some say it works and some say it is a waste of time and you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.......

This is what I have done so far.......I bought a G3 mark II bullet comparator, if you know what it is awesome, if not google it.......I just ran 10 thousand rounds through it.......I know the part about not having a life right.....I found a variance of 16 thous from the shortest to the longest round, going with the info on the G3 they say short, medium and long blah blah blah, well when I started I didn't know what the parameters were, so I sorted the lengths to the thou....

now I need a bit of guidance, I measured a sample batch of rims, they vary from 0.038 to 0.044, so what do I sort them by? the thou, 2 thou or maybe 3 thou?

and then.......weighing a sample I found that they weighed between 51.5 and 51.9 grains, so if I weight sorted by what parameters do I go, 0.1 of a grain? 0.2? 0.3?

Does any of this make a difference??? I don't know......but I do know that I have access to a indoor 100 yard range and can test under optimal conditions to see, and if I wasn't plagued with all this free time I could care less to.....but I want to put this to sleep, so that I can sleep at night...........oh USBR50 here we come.......with a vengeance.........
 
Years ago I saw a gadget advertised in the Champion's Choice catalogue. It measured the thickness of the rim with a wedge and a sliding ruler. I suppose the theory is that if a rimfire headspaces off the rim, choose the most consistent rims for the match. Sort them into some predictable pattern without outliers. Odd weights suggests the internals are more variable than desirable. OAL is less of an issue (IMHO). So, sort for rim thickness first. Then sort by weight. Ignore the OAL, unless you've found some that are extraordinarily out of the bell curve.

As for having lots of data to work with, great! If a measurement is made to several decimal places, don't remove or reduce that detail.
 
I have the slide that your referring to, but now I have one that attaches to my calipers.............but where I am stumped is to what degree do you break the groups up into? 1 or two thou and then again which weight? Short of doing a bunch of small lot testing to see where the breaking point is I'd rather just plug through the pile.............
 
I friend of mine, who has since passed, made the 1980 Canadian Olympic team for smallbore prone shooting. He sorted his ammo by rim thickness into .001 batches.

I also know one of the top female US 3P shooters. She also sorts by rim thickness. That being said, she told me one time that she has sorted 5000 Eley Tenex and there wasn't .001 difference in the whole case.

A few other friends used to buy Eley Club and sort by rim thickness. The ended up with several batches sorted to .001" but they claimed it shot as well as Tenex if they shot it all from the same batch. Results were not as good when they just shot it out of the box.
 
that's the kind of info I am looking for.......thank you sir........

digital calipers are getting a new battery now............
 
hometownhero said:
I want to see the results.
Click to expand...

so do I............all I see right now is a big stack of ammo boxes...........but I do have 4 boxes put aside, each has 28 rounds in it, 2 boxes have been sorted and are all the same length and the other 2 contain 2 rounds of each of the sorted lengths..............one set is for Dryfire, but he won't know which box is which...........
 
Ah, production lot! That is another factor in the formula. To keep it simple, why not just open each box of 50 (or carton) and arrange them thickest to thinnest rim. This way the group will change consistently. If you are good enough you might see the difference. The only other sort I would consider would be by weight. With 500 rounds to sample, you're guaranteed to get thick heavy to thick light and thin heavy to thin light. That would give you four groups to sort and to discard the outliers before a 100 shot match.
 
yodave said:
Okay so Dryfire says I am over analyzing things and I have way to much free time........but I want to sort out some 22 match ammo and see if it really sings, oh it already does but I want to see if we can tweak it.......I searched like a bugger over on rimfire and found no good info.........other then some say it works and some say it is a waste of time and you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.......

This is what I have done so far.......I bought a G3 mark II bullet comparator, if you know what it is awesome, if not google it.......I just ran 10 thousand rounds through it.......I know the part about not having a life right.....I found a variance of 16 thous from the shortest to the longest round, going with the info on the G3 they say short, medium and long blah blah blah, well when I started I didn't know what the parameters were, so I sorted the lengths to the thou....

now I need a bit of guidance, I measured a sample batch of rims, they vary from 0.038 to 0.044, so what do I sort them by? the thou, 2 thou or maybe 3 thou?

and then.......weighing a sample I found that they weighed between 51.5 and 51.9 grains, so if I weight sorted by what parameters do I go, 0.1 of a grain? 0.2? 0.3?

Does any of this make a difference??? I don't know......but I do know that I have access to a indoor 100 yard range and can test under optimal conditions to see, and if I wasn't plagued with all this free time I could care less to.....but I want to put this to sleep, so that I can sleep at night...........oh USBR50 here we come.......with a vengeance.........
Click to expand...

Yodave,
I just sent you a PM regarding the "action". If you need some Lapua match to try for your test, I have some to trade.
 
The weight is tricky. Is the weight variance due to the bullet, the powder charge, the primer, or the brass?

I would think that concentricity and diameter are easily as important as any other parameter.
 
maple_leaf_eh said:
Ah, production lot! That is another factor in the formula. To keep it simple, why not just open each box of 50 (or carton) and arrange them thickest to thinnest rim. This way the group will change consistently. If you are good enough you might see the difference. The only other sort I would consider would be by weight. With 500 rounds to sample, you're guaranteed to get thick heavy to thick light and thin heavy to thin light. That would give you four groups to sort and to discard the outliers before a 100 shot match.
Click to expand...

the length from the ogive can be 16 thou different in one box of 50...........does it matter? doesn't now because 2 cases are sorted by length...

so how long does this take??? well so far its about a hour a brick to measure the ogives, and half of that to measure then rim thickness.....I just sorted two bricks for rim thickness while drinking my morning coffee........
 
Grouse Man said:
The weight is tricky. Is the weight variance due to the bullet, the powder charge, the primer, or the brass?

I would think that concentricity and diameter are easily as important as any other parameter.
Click to expand...

that was the general consensus over on rimfire and proven for truth by those that disassembled a few rounds and measured the bullets and the cases, this is why I am leaving the weight to the bitter end, although I will sort a few sorted boxes by weight so that I have 4 different sorts to shoot for results those are....

right out of the box
sorted for length and a half a box of the middle of the road
sorted for length and rim thickness
sorted for length rim thickness and weight

will any of that make any difference??? I dunno..........but what I do know.......time is free and so are the results, and the real pay off is that I will be able to sleep better in the future knowing that either A) I sorted my ammo and I have nothing to worry about or B) There is nothing to gain by sorting my ammo and it really shoots this bad out of the box and can't be fixed..............
 
Not an uninteresting article, but it pertains to bullets for CF use and not RF ammo. Another interesting comment from the article . Quote referring to the bullet sorting "Only the most accurate rifles and shooters can fully exploit the benefits of this technique."
There are also several more variables with RF ammo than with what the AMU uses to sort their bullets. Another interesting comment the writer has is that much more can be gained with shooting practice than fretting about projectile uniformity.
 
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I was reading on Bill Myers over at accurate shooter using a concentricity checker for his ammo. He first weighed and eliminated low charge rounds that impacted low. He then checked but the rounds were pretty consistent as he was shooting Eley Tenex. His final result was using Eley ammo only from batches from the #5 machine.

I think I am glad that I am not that good a shooter. Here's the article:

http://www.accurateshooter.com/guns-of-week/gunweek078/
 
well in Canada its hard to find eley from any machine............
241-7x on a USBR 50 target so far with the sorted stuff, still sorting it out by weight and sneaking the rejects into dryfires range purse.......
 
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