22 hornet way over pressure

[brokeasajoke]

1680 and these 33gr midway seconds/overrun or what ever looks like will do what I'm after as well. Thank you @msalm for giving me a heads up on these.

 

[brokeasajoke]

Finally got some 40gr vmax to try. Still haven't picked up any 4227 powder but hopefully this week if the weather holds I'll load these 40gr vmax and see what they do out of the Ruger m77/22KH. The 33s and the 35s seem to be doing well thus far.

 

[Tiratore]

I have some experience with Lil'Gun in 22K Hornet and what you are seeing is common. Some bottles you can fill to the neck with no problems, the next bottle will blow the primer with everything else in the load being the same. Worse than that is Lil'Gun hates being loaded light. If there's too much empty space you can have over pressure as well. I've found that there is about .5 gn window with some lots where others have 2 gn window.
I've moved to TCM for my K Hornets and use the Lil'Gun for the 357 mag rifles, where it is stellar. TCM seems to be made for the Hornet sized rounds and so far lot to lot variation is not a problem.

My experience is similar. Primer leaks and wild velocity variations. I will not use LilGun in my K now. I've gone to AA 1680.

 

[Pawnee Bill]

Does anybody use H / IMR 4227? Back in the day that was the go to powder for the Hornet.

 

[SmokinJoe]

Read the first page or so then to the end here so if some of this is redundant I apologize. I think that you will find that the S&B brass is on the heavy side so less capacity, more pressure. I quit LG because of sorta unpredictable problems. Have been using 13.2grs Alliant 300MP with great success for past several years in Remington brass which has the most capacity of any Hornet brass. Lately have been experimenting with SW SBR-SOCOM powder with very interesting results; best SD's I've ever gotten in the K-Hornet and about 3150fps with 40gr bullet. In my experience the 40gr bullet with a case full of AA1680 is the no-brainer load if you are having problems. That load is very consistent and accurate with mild pressures. The SW SBR-SOCOM powder is just a tad faster than 1680 in my experience so it is just a little more optimum fit. I use mostly W-W or Remington cases so may have slightly to significantly more case capacity than your S&B cases. You might want to pick up some PPU cases if the opportunity presents as a lot of Hornet shooters seem to be having good results with them. I think you are on the right track with the 1680 but thought I would share some of my experiences for future reference. I shoot quite a bit of K-Hornet in Cooper, Anschutz and CZ rifles; its a fun little round as long as you keep the pressure under control.

 

[brokeasajoke]

I have quite a few of ww cases of unknown firings and unknown age. I lost about 75% of what I tried to load today to split necks. I thought I had annealed all of it but maybe I missed several, I hope anyway. The hornet brass availability is what it is.

 

[brokeasajoke]

Also some other observations. If you can zoom on the pic you can clearly see the base is being deformed upon sizing as it has the imprint of the shell holder. I'm trying neck sizing from here on out. Also primers are not being seated below flush. I swiped this case across a sharpening stone so it is very visible in pic.maybe i need to uniform the depth and yes I cleaned crud out.

 

[JSH]

With so much taper to the case and headspaces all over the place, what you describe does not surprise me. I know a lot of guys went to the Lee collet die because of such issues.
My Hornet rifle, I cast up some and seated them to be a fairly hard jam to begin with, pretty much seated the bullet when I closed the bolt.
It has a definite bulge right above the rim, not bad, but not good.
Guys shooting Ruger’s we’re shimming the two piece bolt to get a proper headspace. Problem is it makes it specific to that brass. One fellow I knew set his back far enough he would then skim cut the face of the brass, yet some it would all but remove the stampings being thicker.

 

[brokeasajoke]

185yds with 40vmax and 1680. These groups are what I started with at about 95yd so I'm not complaining at all. Thanks @jds holler for the 40s.