Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Sorting ammunition yes or no?

They "studied" Russian Olymp ammo long and hard and finally gave up.

Remember the Federal ammo had a dimple in the middle of the base. Maybe that was a way to ensure the priming compound all went outward and into the rim. I know my 541-S sure liked it

I was teaching Basic Handgun back them for CCW permits. IIRC the Federal Match was $11/box.

Tail chasing, I've decided. Best weight tested was 55.4 grains.
First 10 shot group gave me a SD of 15, second time around had me at 29.

No for me. Life is short. Just get some Lapua Midas.

Taylor, That's pretty good ammo there, even at ES-30. See my post "Chrono Test..." earlier this week. SK-RM or SK-FN were the best I had. Not as much variety up here in Canada.
I keep records of Lot#s vs Accuracy, but don't have ES for all my ammo . . . yet.
I don't 'sort' anything except 'Accurate' and "NOT Accurate" . (unfortunately I've got lots of NOT, that keeps my plinkers happy)

When they make it in .22 WMR I might just do that.

in my opinion and experience sorting wide swings in rim thickness is a good thing in most any gun. but to get too picky for anything but a top quality bench rest top gun or at least a gun that has true bench rest accuracies is a waste of time.

Good enough for small varmints without sorting.

That whole Federal UM story was pretty cool as an example of Federal exhibiting the will to produce a medal winning product. They had to revamp their thinking about what went into consistently accurate ammo. I'm told that Olymp-R was their target which was pretty hard to come by in the US. Not long after, OK Weber was able to import quantities of Russian 22lr. By most accounts, UM1 and UM2 help up against Olymp.

I shot fair amounts of Temp and Sniper. Olymp was harder to come by.


IYKYK!

Again y'all are getting off in the weeds with this .22 lr stuff. I'm talking about wanting to find a way to more consistent .22 MAG ammunition. This post has never been about how to make my .22 lr shoot better. I really love all the suggestions for the wrong cartridge.

The WRM isn't worth all this rim thickness poop. Be happy and shoot. Try different brands.

I would not even waste my time with 22wmr ammo. Find what shoots the best in your rifle and use that ammo. Easy enough.

I replaced a scope on my .22 WMR and had it threaded for my suppressors. So I ran some different types of ammunition across my chrony, and was surprised by a 400 fps difference in velocites between high and low from the same box. I only sorted the Federal 30 grain TNT because I had 5K of the same lot.

I did thighten things up a bit in the ES and SD, but didn't see a huge improvement in group size, other than maybe vertical. It was pretty windy and had to hold 1-2 Mils for wind and I wasn't always right on my calls. The rifle shoots most ammunition around 1-1.25" at 50 yards, and over 2" at 100. From CCI, Hornady, Federal, and Fiocci 30-40 grains there isnt a clear winner. I do have a brick of 33 grain Remington Premier on the way to test, I'm just trying to keep it under $150 a brick delivered.

Lol! Welcome to the Csmpfire where tangents and ADHD are part of the norm (for me at least!)

I sorted a pile of Aguila ammo to try to get better, or at least more consistent, groups. I sorted it by weight, by rim thickness, and sub-sorted it by both weight and then rim thickness. It may have worked, but it didn't work well enough for me to spend the time/effort to do any more sorting of .22 LR ammo. I prefer to spend a little more money on medium or higher grade .22 LR ammo then the time and effort to sort lower grade .22 LR ammo.

I do sort .22 Magnum ammo by rim thickness because there isn't any match grade .22 Magnum ammo on the market. I'm happy enough with the 17 HMR and 17 HM2 ammo performance without feeling any need to sort it either by weight or rim thickness.

Other folks may have had better outcomes than I did, but my experience showed that, for me, sorting wasn't worth the time and effort when better .22 LR ammo was widely available and easy to come by.

I have done both, weighing and measuring. It paid me no dividends on Eley Club or better and on cheaper stuff wasn't all that great. maybe my guns can't take advantage of the effort or maybe it is me. Custom 10-22,_Kidd, Shaw, etc. CZ455 Varmint. Old Win 52.

Pretty sure I would give up shooting rimfire, or get a better rifle, or try different ammo if I had to sort, weigh, measure, and otherwise play with my ammo in order to get it to shoot well enough...

22 WMR is made for hunting and we've yet to see any match 22 mag. At least, I haven't. I'm surprised though. A match 22 mag rifle with high quality ammunition would be challenging. Maybe a 50/100/200 yard match.

Not too many years ago, I remember reading in the gunrags about QC differences between 22 WMR and 22LR. In a nutshell, they said that 22 WMR wasn't made to the same standard as its little brothers. No doubt this was comparing 22 WMR to better (read more expensive) 22 LR ammunition. As well, no one made rifles with decent triggers or target stocks. That was back when stockmakers were employed to work on rifles. There weren't any aftermarket stocks with aluminum bedding blocks or pillars for DIYers.

But even if it's a hunting rifle, shooters are always looking for better accuracy. I'd bet that almost immediately after the 22 WMR arrived, people started weighing for consistency and checking rim thickness.

But you cannot forget the rifle advances that have improved performance. With machining improvements, recently manufactured rimfire rifles have better barrels, adjustable triggers and more. Some are bedded and most rifles have better stock fit. Remember when every rimfire rifle trigger was heavy, with a lot of drag? Consistency wasn't so good either.

While the ammunition manufacturing process is better today, hunters will continue to demand better accuracy. As others have suggested, sorting and weighing isn't worth the bother to them. But you can still try it. There's no harm in experimenting!

A few years ago, I checked a box of 200 22 Mag cartridges to see how much difference there was between them. I never weighed them. I just measured the rim thickness like others have done. I remember thinking that rim thickness wasn't the only thing. The bullets had to be of decent quality and the powder amount and consistency had to be good. Regardless, these shot good enough to take hunting.

I recorded the results of the test, but like most of you, I didn't find the differences to be enough to make checking the rim thickness worthwhile. I don't have the targets. I only have what was done in my reloading room.

Of the 200 cartridges, I left 100 unsorted to compare against the sorted ones. Of the 100 that had their rim thickness measured, this is what I found,

.0445 - 1
.0450 to .0455 - 22
.0460 to .0465 - 72
.0470 to .0475 - 5

I shot the 72 sorted versus 72 unsorted and I couldn't see a difference. The math geeks will say that this wasn't enough of a sampling to make a determination, but I think the ammunition companies have already done the work for us. My conclusion was it is not worth the bother. It was a lot of work for little, if any gain.

...

Any ammo analysis for better shooting will apply equally to WMR. You won’t find WMR that is built to the standards of .22 so sorting WMR by weight and rim thickness may yield even better results.