Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles reloading the mighty 22 Hornet

loading the 22 Hornet ,any help would be appreciated , I have heard they have a thin neck on the case , care in loading?
thanks

I have loaded lots of 22 hornet, I just load per usual, like I do with my other cartridges, maybe take a little more care when seating the bullet but not overtly much.

of course I always make sure the inside neck is deburred...

No crushed necks so far.

I use a Wilson neck reamer to ream the inside of the neck for about .05-makes starting the bullet a cinch....Have had great success with 2400, 296 and 1680 behind the Nosler 45 gr Hornet bullet in my Hornets.....read the range conditions correctly and the accuracy you will get out of good rifles will quickly dispel all the criticism some like to heap on this great little cartridge....

I have been loading the Hornet for 20 years and I think all the hype over case life and accuracy problems a re just that - hype. If you are looking to get 3000+ fps second from the Hornet do yourself a favor and buy a .222. But if you keep your velocity at more modest levels - around 2800 fps ( which is what the cartridge was intended for ) I think you will be pleased.
I have some Norma brass that I have loaded so many times that you would call BS if I gave the number. I have lost a few cases because of loose primer pockets, but they are still giving less than MOA accuracy.
I have used a number of powders, w680 was my favorite, AA1680, and 4227 that gave good accuracy. But I have to admit that it seems as if Lil Gun and the Hornet were made for each other. I use a case full and a 40 or 35 grain ballistic tip bullet. But some of those old Sierras shoot very well.
The Hornet performs well on crows and groundhogs out too about 200 yards.
Good luck.

Another Lil'Gun fan here. In my No.1A, it's a hummer. I have to use 50gr bullets, due to a really long throat in my rifle. A heavy slug for the Hornet, but I have to go with what works.

Jeff

I wrote this about nine years and sent it out to someone on an e-list who
was having trouble with loading the hornet. I have tried to keep it
updated as I learn more.


I have shot the hornet for about twelve years. It is a great round and I love shooting it. Here is some of what I have learned, mostly the hard way.

Always keep in mind when reloading the hornet that is was designed to be a hot 22 rf, not a slow 222. If you keep your pressures low and as a result velocities low you can get great groups and good case life.

I have a Redding neck-sizing die and size only 1/4" of the neck. This leaves the rest of the neck to help center the bullet in the chamber. I also put my case in the chamber of my TC the same way each time, this can be done by putting the R-P at the top or by filing a small notch in the rim and putting that at the top of the chamber each time you shoot. The
first works well for me as long as I am wearing my bifocals but the later is best for the field. There are a number of pretty smart shooters out there telling me that neck sizing is a bad idea in anything but a bolt gun but I have brass loaded 20 some times and have not experienced problems with this method.

Bullet seating depth can make a huge difference in pressure, as with all small case capacities. I have an old CH press that I take to the range with me and C-Clamp to a bench for hornet load development. I start by loading my test loads with the bullet as far out as the barrel will allow. Seat bullets farther in the case as I test and watch group size change and pressure signs begin to appear.

The hornet was designed for 40 to 45 gr. bullets and early twist rates were for these sized bullets. Most reloading books say that heavier bullets will not expand because of lower velocities. Don't believe it. My 14" contender will stabilize 52 gr. bullets and newer bullets like the Nozler Ballistic Tip and the new V-Max bullets will expand for the hornet.

I swage a 52 gr. bullet with Corbin swage dies that use a spent 22 rf case for the jacket. An expensive hobby but a lot of fun. My favorite load before the moly is 10.5 gr. of IMR 4227 and one of my home made bullets. This combination averages only around 2000 fps but has been the recipe that has send many Central Oregon rockchucks the "happy hunting ground". I am getting somewhat soft in my old age and one shot kills have become vary important to me. That is the way I would like to go rather than drag myself down a hole and take a couple of days to die. The last two shot kill I had with this load was eight years ago and that was my fault not the bullets. I have not been to the range with the moly bullets that I loaded this spring. My range is pretty wet and shooting in
the kind of weather is not much fun. I will let you know when I do get some results.

Most of my hunting is done in Central Oregon. We have a friend who owns an 550 acre canyon with a year round trout creek in the bottom. She raises alfalfa in a 30 acre field with prime rockchuck housing on 2 sides. She asked me several years ago to "deal with that problem" for her. She is a widow and the Bible commands us to take care of the widows so what choice do I have? The hornet has been the only barrel I have used and it has served me well out past 175 yards.

If (or when) you do split a case, here is my favorite method of removing it. Take a 1/4 20 tap and insert into the chamber. Gently push and turn until you feel the case slip. It will then slide out on the tap. With moderate loads you may never need this.

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Since I wrote this I have been experimenting with AA 1680 and moly coated bullets. I swaged 40 gr. and 33 gr. bullets using J-4 commercial jackets. I shot about 25 rounds and noticed a real difference in the moly coated barrel. Group size went below .5" at 100 yards and a friend�s crony showed a 5 shot average of 2975 fps! Faster than I ever expected to see with this round. There are no signs of pressure. Here is the load:
Case Remington nickel plated
Primer CCI small pistol
Powder AA 1680 13.5 gr.


New Information added 7/1/98:

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a mule deer doe at 240 yards with this load. I was hunting with another hornet shooter for rockchucks in the above mentioned canyon when several deer took over the alfalfa field. I shot high a couple of times to get them to leave the field. They just looked at me and kept on eating. The ranch foreman was with us and told me to kill one as he had several agriculture tags and entirely to many deer. I had been shooting squirrels at the same distance all day so I held for a spine shot just behind the neck and took my shot. She folded up and never even kicked. I am NOT suggesting that the hornet should become the next deer round, but that with a well placed shot, it will do the job. I do not recommend the hornet as a deer round but it is legal in my state. It is not something I would try again but it was great eating. An interesting side note, the rest of the deer kept on eating and were not disturbed by the shot.

Y2K:

My hornet is gone now, traded off with the rest of my TC. A new Ruger #1
in 22 BR now lives in my home. I may someday own another hornet, at least
I hope so and when I do it will be much better as the result of my experiences with the BR.

I will no longer use nickel plated brass as the neck is very rough on the inside. It will have a tight neck and I will turn my brass for fitted necks. This is a method of reloading where you turn the neck outside diameter so that when a bullet is seated there is 0.001 clearance with the chamber. This allows the brass to expand when fired to let go of the
bullet but not expand past the elastic limit of the brass and so return to its original size. The brass will most likely never have to be resized and case life will greatly increase. I have made a hand die for seating the 22 BR and would use hand dies exclusively for the hornet. Once you get used to hand dies you will never want to go back to the press. They
are available from Sinclair if you don�t have a lathe to make them yourself. If you do have a lathe they are vary simple, it took me about an hour from start to finish.


2004
A CZ 527 American has come to live at my house and it is a real keeper. The first day at the range while developing loads at the bench with hand dies I made three of us all shot sub quarter inch 100 yard groups from the bench. It is now rechambered in 22 K hornet. I am in the midst of prepping 500 new cases and will report the results.


In HIS Service

Scott Fairing
717 Viewpiont Dr
Culver, OR 97734
(541) 771-2088

Scott,
I forgot to ask you when we discussed the Hornet before, have you noticed any adverse effects from having a .223 bore diameter on the CZ 527? Like lowering loads due to the tighter bore, or early signs of pressure? Do you use .223 bullets or .224?
Thanks,
Don

While not Scott, I can share that I shoot a Winchester 54 .22 Hornet which was made with the early .223 bore diameter. I use it with factory Winchester Hornet ammo using .224" bullets and also a variety of handloads with .224" bullets, and have never had any problems with it. Accuracy is excellent, using an original 6X Fecker scope. It really likes the light 35 gr. V-Max bullets and H110. Hope this helps,
John

John,
Thank you for the reply. Good info.
The only difference between your 54 and the CZ Hornets is the CZ's all have "tight" barrels. By that I mean, their bores are actually smaller, maybe .2229, than their American counterpart rifles identically spec'd. I have two CZ 527's, one a 222 and the other a 223. Both of the barrels are "tighter" bores than any of my other 22 centerfire rifles. The cleaning rods, 22 Dewey's, are very tough getting thru the bores, compared to our 22's made here.
I also have a CZ 452 in 22RF and the cleaning rod (Dewey) got stuck in the bore, so I had to drive it out. I've been using 17 caliber rods for those all of the CZ rifles in 22 caliber ever since.
I do appreciate your info though.
My Step Dad had a 54 in 22 Hornet that I got to use just about 60 years ago for chucks in Pennsylvania, my home state. He had a Unertl 8X, 1 1/4" scope on his. Maybe it was a 1 1/8", not too sure now that I think about it. Loved the 54.. Take good care of yours. As I recall, we used Sierra 45gr bullets in 223 diameter with 10.0 gr of 4227.
Don

I have a 527 in hornet and have no problems if mine in fact does have a .223 bore. I use the same loads that I used in my Ruger #1 and it shoots just find.

The other night just befor dinner I saw 5 or6 magpies in the wheat stubble field next to my house. Got the CZ out of the safe, put a bipod on and crawled to the fence line. The only bird that would sit still was the farthest one away. Set the trigger, lined up the crosshairs and touched one off. The magpie took a couple of hopps and fell over. Thought this was strange as the hornet usually explodes magpies. Anyway I ranged the shot (189yds.), this with a 46gr. Win. bulk hp. / 13grs. of Lil'Gun. Guess out yonder the 46grs. are a mite too stiff. Pete

Sorry for taking so long, my 81 year old mom is visiting from the right coast and I have been spending some wonderful time with her. This is most likely the last time I will get to see her so I am making the most of it.

My CZ does have a tight barrel. I had no pressure problems with my old 1680 loads in old brass but did notice reduced velocities and was getting more ricochets than expectable using 40 grain V-Mav bullets. A local smith ran a K-hornet reamer in the CZ and the problems went away with increased loads. The coronagraph shows 3175 FPS with the modifications and still using 1680 and 40 grain V-max�s.

I am a hornet fan, I always be a hornet fan, but I am in love with the K-hornet and would recommend everyone invest the money to get your chamber opened up to K-hornet, it was the best twenty dollars I ever spent.

I am still looking for the time to play around with Lill-Gun. I have heard great things about it and want to se for myself.

I found a rewrite of my old hornet work up and am posting it below just for fun.

A Twelve Year Love Affair With the 22 Hornet

You have to look back to the late 1920's to find the beginnings of the 22 hornet. While looking you will find famous names like Townsend Whelen and Captain G. L. Wotkyns along with a handful of others at the Springfield Armory. It was developed from the old lead bullet, black powder 22 WCF. Many consider the 22 hornet to have been the first factory produced cartridge intended for varmint hunting.

The 22 hornet gained popularity in handgun shooting when Thompson Center chambered it in their Contender handguns. That is where I first came to know and love the hornet. I received a TC Contender with a fourteen inch 45-70 barrel as a bonus from the company I worked for in 1990. It was a real kick to shoot (pun intended) but I soon tired of it as my only barrel and ordered a fourteen inch 22 hornet barrel. I shot the hornet barrel for almost a year with the iron sights before trading for a slightly used Burris 10X handgun scope. With the 10X Burris I started to learn just how much fun you can have with the hornet.

In the Fall of 2000 the Contender and all of the barrels I had went to live at a friends house and a Ruger #1 in 22 BR came to live at my house. Now don't get me wrong, the 22 BR is a fun round and the Ruger #1 is a wonderful rifle. The combination is a great shooter and has accounted for the sudden demise of hundreds of Belding's Ground Squirrels, but I was experiencing severe withdrawals from the loss of the hornet. I had to do something before I experienced permanent damage so I started a little horse trading and ended up with a brand new CZ 527 American in 22 hornet. This is the finest rifle for the dollar I have ever held in my hands. It came out of the box with a fully free floated barrel and a single set trigger. An RCBS trigger scale, borrowed from a shooting friend, measured the trigger unset at three and a half pounds and I could detect no creep. Set, the same scale measured the trigger at eight ounces. As I write this, I am saving my pennies to get another CZ 527 in 22 hornet, this one to be re-barreled for 17 Ackley Hornet.

Over the last twelve years I have loaded a lot of hornet ammunition and have learned how to make it shoot well in both the Contender and the CZ. I have read and listened to others talk about how the hornet can be a love/hate relationship, how it is fickle and hard to load. I have not found this to be so. I have found instead that if I keep a few hard learned rules in mind, the hornet can be easily tamed and a joy to load and shoot.

I will not give any of my load data other than to talk about powders and bullets that have worked for me. The reason for my secrecy is not because I am selfishly guarding my loads but rather because the hornet varies from gun to gun more than any other cartridge I have loaded. The load I am currently using in my CZ would have blown primers out in my Contender. I found the best loads in the Contender using a forty grain bullet swaged in Corbin swaging dies and moly coated. Accurate 1680 pushed these out at 2975 feet/second with no signs of excessive pressure and gave me twenty plus loads out of my brass. I shot a ten shot group with this combination at two hundred yards into a three-eighths of an inch group. The CZ shoots its best groups with a forty grain V-Max and almost a full grain more AA 1680 at 2550 feet/second. I took the CZ to the range this spring with two friends and we all three shot five shot groups under a quarter of an inch at a hundred yards. My CZ is now a K-hornet and performs even better than I had hoped. It was well worth the twenty dollars I spent at the gunsmith�s shop to get the work done with 40 grain V-Max�s now leaving the barrel at 3175 FPS.

There are several other powders I have used that show promise in the hornet. IMR 4227 and H110 are two that come to mind. Hodgdon has a couple of new powders on the market and I have been reading a lot of good things about what they can do in a hornet case too. I have not tried moly in the CZ yet to see what difference it will make.

I get the best groups with both guns using CCI Small Pistol primers.

Always keep in mind when reloading the hornet that it was designed to be a hot 22 rimfire, not a slow 222. If you keep your velocities low and as a result, pressures low, you can get great groups and good case life.

I started reloading the hornet with a three-die set of Redding dies that included a neck-sizing die. Now I have switched to hand dies and can reload and do load development in the field. My hand dies are homemade and I have not seen any listing for Wilson hand dies in 22 hornet. Someday I may set up a small shop and offer custom hand dies because I feel you get the best loads possible with hand dies. Either way, I like to size only about a quarter of an inch of the neck when sizing. This leaves the rest of the neck to help center the bullet in the chamber and I feel it increases the life of my brass by not overworking it. There are many wise shooters out there with much more experience shooting Contenders that tell me you have to full length resize every time and I would never argue with them in their findings, but I never had a failure to lock up or fire. Any bolt action should be able to chamber a neck-sized bullet without a problem.

Bullet seating depth can make a huge difference in pressure, as with all small case capacity cartridges. You can test this for yourself by loading your test loads with the bullet as far out as the barrel will allow. Seat bullets farther in the case as you test and watch group size change and pressure signs begin to appear. When I start developing a load for a new rifle I test several bullets and powders to find some combination that looks like it will shoot, then I adjust my seating depth until I find the "sweet spot" that gives the best group. Then, and only then, I go back and fine tune the load to get the best group.

The hornet was designed for 40 to 45 grain bullets and early twist rates were for these sized bullets. Because of this, most reloading books say that heavier bullets will not stabilize nor expand because of lower velocities. Don't believe it. My 14" contender will stabilize 52 grain bullets and newer bullets like the Nosler Ballistic Tip and the new V-Max bullets will expand at hornet velocities.

If (make that when) you do have case head separation, here is my favorite method of removal. Take a 1/4 20 tap and insert into the chamber. Gently push and turn until you feel the case slip. It will then slide out on the tap. Even though I have not needed to remove a split case since I learned to keep my pressures at a reasonable level, I still keep a long handled tap in my shooting box just in case.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to take a mule deer doe at 240 yards with my Contender and my hornet barrel. I was hunting with another hornet shooter for rockchucks in a 500-acre canyon when several deer took over the alfalfa field. The ranch foreman was with us and told me to kill one as he had several agriculture tags and entirely too many deer. I had been shooting squirrels at the same distance all day so I held for a spine shot just behind the head and took my shot. She folded up and never even kicked. I am not suggesting that the hornet should become the next deer round, but that with a well placed shot, it will do the job. It is not something I would try again but it was great eating. An interesting side note, the rest of the deer kept on eating and were not disturbed by the shot.

Scott F,
Thanks for the info.
I think there's a 527 Hornet in my future... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Was worried about the tight bore at first, but not now.
Don

You won't be sorry.

Scott F
Just recieved my 527 , loaded several test loads tomorrow we shall go to the range , I talked to RCBS today they got me squared away on my ripping necks off incide my sizing die , when I got past that every thing whent smoth , I thought your artical was great thanks
Popareid

Scott F
PS I am in Klamath Falls Or.

Cool, please let me know how you like your CZ. One way to stop the neck problem is to never pull an expander through the neck. Look at Wilson hand dies or the Redding bushing die with the right size bushing. Neither need an expander to finish the job and that will add to case life big time.

I lowered the expander ball very low in the die toward the primer pocket as per info by RCBS and it seams the problem has fixed itself, will follow your ideas thanks
I have a 204 in the 527 it shoots in the .1's second time out what a gun, that why I bought another 527.
Bill

Shot my 527 could not tell much , my trigger is broke the set trigger does not work , so pulling 4 pounds or what ever its bad, Groups about a halh inch , I shot terrible I did not take a Bench rest as I went with a friend and cut back on what I took.I do believe it will shoot . I should have gone by myself and gone through my routine. Shot Little Gun and H110 some guns are fun I think this is going to be one of them THanks to every one for their help it does load diferent.
Bill

Sorry for the bad trigger. I am sure they will make it right. Keep in touch.