RELOADING
The .22 Hornet
Lightweight bullets are the key to success with this old-timer.
|
|
There's always a tradeoff in ballistics. The .22 Hornet is a good example. The Hornet has some very real virtues: hardly any recoil, low noise level, lightweight guns and good-quality bullets. The downside is simply that the Hornet isn't powerful enough for any use other than light varmints, and that use is limited to 200 yards or so.
Even so, the .22 Hornet is a great choice for upgrading new shooters to midrange varmint hunting and is always pleasant to shoot.
The Hornet bullet selection in the past has been somewhat limited. Yes, in theory it can shoot any .224-diameter bullet, but the standard factory twist for the Hornet is only 1-turn-in-16 inches. That's barely enough to stabilize 52-grain bullets, and it's marginal with 55-grain bullets. Unless you have rebarreled your gun with a faster-twist barrel, you are limited to the lighter bullets.
It used to be that the factories loaded only 45- or 46-grain bullets for the Hornet, but Hornady is offering a 35-grain V-Max load and Winchester a 34-grain JHP. Hornady's bullets are available as handloading components, but Winchester's catalog doesn't offer any .224-caliber bulk bullets lighter than 46 grains. All the independent bullet-makers offer .224-caliber bullets in 40 grains or heavier.
A little study of ballistic tables shows that for ranges below about 250 to 300 yards, muzzle velocity is a lot more important to flat shooting than ballistic coefficient. Winchester's catalog shows 3,050 fps for its 34-grain loads, and Hornady lists 3,100 fps for its 35-grain offering. Light bullets always give away a little ballistic coefficient but can be driven to higher velocities. That favors the lighter bullets in the Hornet, and this month we're limiting the bullet weights to a maximum of 50 grains.
When I first started reloading for the Hornet the powder choice wasn't very good. After Hercules 2400 (it was Hercules then) and IMR 4227 and 4198, there wasn't much else. Today there are more than a dozen powders that work well in Hornet cases. That's real progress. Suitable powders will be found with burning rates from the slower pistol powders through the fastest rifle powders. The loads here were selected more to give you a look at a broad range of powder options than to get the last foot per second out of each and every bullet.
Of course, Hornet dies have been around forever. Everyone makes them. The ones I'm using came from Lee.
I discovered a few years ago what the Europeans have known for a long time. The standard American chambers for Hornet rifles are much too loose for good accuracy. The European guns in .22 Hornet (5.6x35R) have much tighter chambers and as a group, shoot far better. This chamber-dimension discrepancy goes a long way toward explaining why Hornets have such a spotty accuracy history. Some guns shoot great, and some are worse than ho-hum.
The Lee dies I have do size down the cases to the nominal factory-ammo dimensions so they will properly fit the European guns. In 1997 I had a custom reamer made by JGS in Coos Bay, Oregon, which is even smaller than the SAAMI minimum chamber dimensions. The Hornet pressure barrel I'm using was made by Bo Clerke and incorporates this tight chamber. As you can see from the target, it shoots just great. The downside is that you certainly have to full-length resize any case that's been fired in an American chamber. That's not a big problem either, and it's a small price to pay for better accuracy. After all, if a light varmint rifle isn't accurate, it isn't worth keeping around.
The tiny Hornet case makes accurate control of the charge weight critical. The maximum charges are all below 12 grains, and a grain difference in charge weight is a whole bunch. Fine-grain powders that meter well work best. They also tend to have a greater bulk density, so you can get a little more powder in the case. That was the big disadvantage with the old IMR 4198. Those long grains were hard to meter accurately in small charges, and it didn't take very much to fill up the case.
Hornets find a use in the single-shot pistols that are popular with varmint shooters. Those short barrels do give away a little velocity, but as a class, these guns produce tighter groups than rifles. Again, it's a trade-off.
Even with its limited hunting capability, the .22 Hornet makes a wonderful choice for recoil-sensitive shooters. It represents a significant step up from the rimfire class, even the magnum rimfire numbers such as the .22 WMR and the .17 HRM.
WARNING: The loads shown here are safe only in the guns for which they were developed. Neither the author nor InterMedia Outdoors assumes any liability for accidents or injury resulting from the use or misuse of this data.
| Barnes: | 40 gr., 50 gr. | Accurate: | No. 7, No. 9, 1680 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berger: | 40 gr., 50 gr. | Alliant: | 2400, RL-7 |
| Hornady: | 40 gr., 45 gr., 50 gr., 53 gr. | Hodgdon: | HS-7, H110, H4227 |
| Nosler: | 40 gr., 45 gr., 50 gr., 52 gr. | IMR: | 4227 |
| Sako: | 45 gr. | RamShot: | Enforcer |
| Sierra: | 40 gr., 45 gr., 50 gr., 52 gr. | VihtaVuori: | N350, N110, N120 |
| Speer: | 40 gr., 45 gr., 50 gr., 52 gr. | Winchester: | 296 |
.22 Hornet (Bullets and Powders)
