Thread: Sorting 22lr

What do you guys do? I have never bothered doing any sorting but see in a few posts some go to the effort, is it worth it? What sort of sorting? Measure overall length, weigh them inestered to hear your ideas

I think it's rim thickness.
As in.... in a rough way... drop the round into a socket where the rim doesn't go through. And the projectile doesn't stick out then measure between the bottom of the socket and the top of the rim.
Just look for different thickness.
I did some 17hmr it may of helped on paper but I don't see much need.
If your after consistency in .22 rim fire maybe try the Lapua rounds.

More you pay the better the results... Looking for a way around it! Socket idea sounds a nice simple way

I'm pretty sure that's what I did. But it was ages ago. Maybe Google about it to check up.
The rim fires make small centre fires and custom hand loads attractive to me for this reason.

The more you pay the better the results. That's why RWS & eley ammo is expensive, but it's good enough for the Olympics.

There's a good post on RFC about sorting vs resizing vs cost. Thousands of rounds over a few different rifles. Final result was basically quality costs.

I run mine through a rim thickness gauge.You won't make honey out of goat shit and you won't make better honey but you can by batching the ammo tighten your groups and remove quite a lot of the fliers.Worth doing IMHO.

Running fci subs at the momentband fairly happy just wondering if it can get better. Might get sum eley next time i'm in town, might be jore expensive but i'm sure its still cheaper than factory centrefire

In the early 90s Norinco 22 ammo was available. It was supposedly made using equipment sourced from Eley. For smallbore club shooting we used to sort it by rim thickness, wipe off the excess lube, and it shot as well as any club grade ammo. The sorting by rim thickness seemed to make a difference. Obviously the dearer Eley match ammo was still the best though. I still have the tool we used to use RIMFIRE GAUGE
His claims may be a bit optimistic though with some of the ammo around with rim thickness being only one of the variables.

I have recently been through the weight sorting exercise with some Norma 22LR ammunition. The Norma ammunition was cheaper than the Lapua I was using and had a slightly better average group at 100m and 200m. I still get the occasional flier in the groups though and weight sorting didn't seem to make much difference to this.

My next step is to look at rim thickness - although with Norma I am not expecting to find much variation. The last step I thought I might look at is rim to ogive length. I don't mind for practice ammunition but for competition those fliers may prove to be frustrating.

I have also read of good resulting looking at concentricity but as I don't have a concentricity gauge I will leave that alone!

@Gillie where are you getting your Norma from?

Hi @zimmer, I get mine through a dealer from NZ Ammunition Company.

Originally Posted by Gillie

Hi @zimmer, I get mine through a dealer from NZ Ammunition Company.

@Gillie Checked their website and only saw the Ruag RWS. What line of Norma are you using? Sorry to ask for you give away secrets ha ha. Thanks

@zimmer, I am using this Norma Match 22LR Link - but mine comes in a different box.

My testing with 22LR ammunition proved what someone else tried explaining to me when I started testing. My last lot of 22LR accuracy testing involved Lapua Polar Biathlon, Eley Black, SK Rifle Match, Norma Match, and several RWS ammunition types including Target Rifle, Special Match, Rifle Match, and R50. I shot ten shot groups at 50m, 100m and 200m as well as 10 shot strings over the MagnetoSpeed to check velocity consistency.

The Eley Black had the best group at 50m but several of the ammunition types came in with 12mm groups on average. Several groups had occasional fliers as well.

At 100m it was the Norma Match and SK Match that had the best 10 shot groups (about 30mm) by a slight margin over the Eley Black, RWS R50, and Lapua Polar Biathlon. Again there were occasional fliers that I did not exclude from the group.

200m is a serious test for a 22LR and this is where the Norma came through - under trying conditions it produced a 10 shot 2MOA group with 8 shots just over 1MOA. The SK Match, RWS R50, and Lapua Polar Biathlon produced 3MOA groups with most of their shots coming in to a 1.5-2MOA group. The Eley Black did not perform this well at 200m at all.

I have since shot a series of 10 shots groups with the Norma at 200m and it looks like there is on average 1 flier every 10 shots or so - otherwise is was consistently producing a 50mm vertical group at 200m with the fliers up to 100mm high or low.

To be clear I am not the best shooter, have never been a small bore shooter, and all the groups were shot off the bipod and rear bag.

So being happy with the price and the overall accuracy I want to try and eliminate the fliers from the groups. Weight sorting didn't seem to make much difference... so now to try something else.

BTW I would expect different results in a different 22LR barrel/rifle

Try testing CCI std . I think you will be very surprised