[142]

for a lack of anything better to do i decided to weigh some wmt. out of 100 rounds, i found a spread of 6 tenths of a grain. was just wondering if this could contribute to the flyers that sometime occurs. of course the variation might not be in powder charge. it could be in the bullet or case itself. so has anyone ever tested this before? i'm gonna sort some more and come warmer weather try it out on a calm day.
i know when i am reloading .223 i weigh each charge and would never accept that much of a spread. would love to hear your comments on the issue.
brian

 

[1807]

The lot I checked was almost perfect as far as weight.

Some lots vary a little in rim thickness but this is not as important as powder charge.

 

[050]

I'll second that opinion on the rim thickness... I sorted about 300 rounds and could detect NO difference in a five step sorting.

Ron

 

[368]

Agree on the sorting: not worth the time and effort. Give it a try, though. It might work for you.

 

[350]

I sorted a bunch of WMT and some dynapoints today. and shot some test groups even though it was 34 degrees here in Florida. WMT lot number was 091 37. All shooting was don with a CZ Varmint bedded with a 20X Weaver Grand Slam scope from the bench at 40 yards. WMt ammo weight varied over a range of .7 grains. all weight sorted groups wer shot with ammo that varied no more than .2 grain.
CONCLUSIONS:

1. Sorting helped the Dynapoints the most. I got solid half inch groups, and no flyers. If you are going to shoot Dynapoints anyway and you got plenty of time on your hands and have a digital grain scale it might be worth the trouble.
2. With WMT the sorted groups average was not enough better than the unsorted groups to ever get me to do that again. I will just buy better ammo if I want better accuracy. I only shot 15 five shot groups, so my results are not written in stone.
3. I pulled 5 WMT bullets from the casings and weighed the lead only. I found bullets were within .2 grains except one bullet that was .5 grains different. From this small sample, I believe the bullet weight might be a big factor in weight sorting.

 

[Sav99age]

EZ

Is this lot of WMT last years stock or this years shipment. (I think I read a RFC post from someone who had tested rounds from a new shipment and thought they were not as good.)

 

[3112]

All you ppl have 2 much time

 

[050]

Not really!

If you spend a couple hours sorting bullets, you have a nice pile of matched ammo. If you spend the same amount of time watching TV, all you have is a few more dead brain cells...

 

[350]

Last years WMT

Sav99age,
The WMT I have is from late last year. I bought 10,000 rounds of the stuff from Champion. While this ammo I have is as good or better than anything else at that price, I don't think it is quite as good as some I got back in Jan. of 2002.

Antlurz, LOL, you are right! anything is better than sitting in front of the Brain Sucker )

 

[1807]

Sorting works best on questionable ammo with known weak rounds. It WILL weed out the rounds with a very light powder charge.

 

[Jay]

Ignorant question if you please..............

I maybe shouldn't have said ignorant, but I am ignorant about weighing rounds. I have never done so, and have never had the ability to do so.

When you weigh a round, do you assume that the lead projectiles are consistant enough round to round that any variance will be as a result of a difference in the amount of powder?

Not trying to be a smart ***, but how do you know?

 

[Kent Owens]

Actually, you don't know if it's the powder, case weight, or bullet weight, or amount of priming mixture in the case. The only way you could do this would be to disassemble the cartridge, and still the measure of priming mix would be almost impossible to determine. The amount of priming mix is a very critical component--Eley does it well! By weighing it, you're just trying to get all af the rounds that weigh the same together. I've experimented by weighing lesser grade ammo (Wildcats) before and ended up with about 5 different piles of bullets, and in shooting the various piles through a very accurate 52 Winchester bench rifle the accuracy of each pile was much improved. I tried the same thing with Eley Tenex and could not find any difference from round to round. This was just an experiment to see why the Wildcat ammo was shooting so poorly. In no way would I go as far to say that you can sort bulk ammo and get it to shoot with the world's best match ammo--"it ain't going to happen"--at least not consistently. Sorting can improve the bulk ammo, if a person wants to go to the trouble.

 

[1807]

Jay

The biggest variation in cheap .22 ammo is powder charge weight.

I have proved this to myself by pulling bullets and weighing the bullets, powder charge, and cases.

There is very little difference in weight between bullets and cases.

The amount of priming in a .22 case is very small. It weighs almost nothing.

But in some cheap ammo you can find a huge difference in powder charge which results in very poor longer range accuracy.

 

[Kent Owens]

That may be, but I've noticed as much as 4 grains difference in some of the cartridges we weighed. No way you could get that much powder in that case, so that had to be case and bullet weight. Just a minute quantity of ptiming mix can make a difference. CB's propel the 29 grain bullet with just the priming mix--no powder--imagine that..

 

[1807]

I have weighed thousands of rounds over the years and I have never seen a varaition of 4 grains.

I have never seen over 1.5 grain differrence in Federal Lightning or CCI Blazer. Of course with Remington it could be possible.

The average .22LR round has from 1 to 1.2 grains of powder depending on brand according to by scale.

When I find a light round that is way below average I can pull the bullet and weigh the powder charge. If the entire round is .7 grains light compared to average I can pull the bullet and the powder charge will about .7 light.

The bullets can not vary a lot unless they were formed with an air space inside.

The lube on the bullet can vary but useally it is not much.

A light round in my experience is almost always caused by a light powder charge.