Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Favorite 222 Remington loads for Tikka T3

Recently picked up a Tikka T3 Hunter in 222rem..... I own several Tikkas and have not had one that would not shoot 1/2 moa. Was wanting to jump right into loading a load that works in another Tikka T3. Would like to stick with 40 gr bullets and may be an occasional 50 gr........ all depending on what the gun likes. Thanks for your help in advance

50 grainer 19.5 grains IMR 4198

I bought a new 222Remington last year to go along with a couple others I already have, I did quite a bit of load developement as I was working with 2 other rifles at the same time. my new rifle did not like 40gr bullets as my others did it much preferred the 50gr SBK. In all of my 222Remington's I use Lapua brass to keep things simple. for some reason the case weights vary greatly from different brands in this chambering + it is the best brass.

On several rifles I have found VVN130 to be the best powder for every 222remington I have owned, 23gr for 40gr bullets and 22gr for 50gr bullets. Not very easy to find at your local store but bought some at Powder Valley last year as my last lot# ran out.

mistem,

I tried a bunch of powders in the .222 a couple of years ago, including some new ones. The new Accurate LT powders turned out to be the definite stars, LT-30 with 40-grain bullets and LT-32 with 50-55's.

Thanks for the info...... I live in your neighborhood John, only about 80 miles north

You must be north of the banana belt! But then all of Montana was this winter, at least for a while....

I have an old 722 in 222.

I've had real good luck with 50 gr Sierra BlitzKing with 22.6 grains of Benchmark behind it.

Loads run around 3200 fps.

22.2 0f H322 and a 50 grain bullet ...

John did you test Tac powder or CFE223 in the 222 Rem?

TAC did pretty well with 50-grain bullets. CFE223's a little slower and worked best with 55's.

Thanks... picked up a pound of LT-30 today. I'm hoping my gun doesn't like this powder- at $33 a pound Midway has 45 gr sp blems for $ 9.40 per 100.... this bullet in a hornet worked very well for me in the past

While doing load developement last year on my new 222 I tried 10 different powders. Benchmark in my rifle was the worst with 40,50,and 52gr bullets. did not find one load that did not have at least 100fps E.S.

That's why we do load developement every gun is a bit different

What ingwe said.. That has been working since the .222 came out in the 50's!!!!!!!

I was at a BR match in 2015 sitting next to Rodney Brown (President of the NBRSA), he had a bottle on his loading bench labeled LT31. I asked him "what is LT31" he said he mixes LT30 and LT32 50/50.................he cleaned house that day. I thought I would try it, did not work as well in my PPC as it did in his but tried it in my 222's and 223's and it's awesome still in my rifles N130 is the best for 40-50grainers but the LT31 has some real promise for some bullet weights in the 223.

boatanchor,

Interesting! I'll have to try some "LT-31"....

In my 6mm PPC, LT-32 is by a slight margin the most accurate powder I've tried, and have tested all the usual suspects. More recently I found Sellier & Bellot SR primers beat out both F205M's and CCI BR-4's.

Only problem with that argument is that IMR4198 was not the best powder for it then, but yes it did work then and now just better choices then and now

That is something I will have to try, never even thought of trying S&B primers.

I noticed my local store had some today will go buy some tomorrow.

I've been using S & B primers as they were real cheap at Cabelas for quite a while... $18 per brick with a military discount...

have had real good luck with them... not target shooting duty, but certainly minute of sage rat... which is good enough in my world...

Like a number of companies, S&B makes a couple of SR primers, a standard and a magnum. The one I tried is the standard, the 4.4 SR.

It was more-or-less by accident. A magazine asked me to try some S&G rifle primers to see how they worked, so I tried both SR and LR in several rifles with their most accurate loads, and the 4.4 SR worked very well in my 6mm PPC with 65 Bergers and LT-32, as well in the .204 Ruger with 35 Bergers and CFE223. In others it worked all right, but not as well as the primer normally used.

Ive had good results with R7, LT-32 and R10x in almost every 222, but Ive gone to 40s for pretty much all my 222s.

I4895, while slow, also makes wee groups with 50s.