Advantage of Weight Sorting Ammo

[bsekf]

I want to use plain Win. Rem or Fed ammo for practice. How much of an accuracy improvement do you see by weight sorting your RF ammo? Is there anything else you can do short of dollar a shot ammo?

Bill

 

[okie]

sort by rim thickness...???

 

[jbell]

A good visual inspection for defects / imperfections will net a bigger increase in accuracy potential than anything else with “cheap” ammo.

 

[redrockranger]

What are you practicing for ? Bench or off hand ? Your rifle is part of this equation also.

 

[Kerry Spurgin]

I think this is something you need to try and see for yourself.

agree with the above, first call out the obvious defects.

A problem is that the weight has a number of components (bullet, powder, case, lube, primer). So your result will not be precise but could filter out those outliers. not to mention the dimensional variations.

I suggest you sort some. cull out those in the very tails of the distribution.

then shoot groups of low end, middle, high end.. not sure what you will find.

could be no difference as the other sources of variation, not measured, overwhelm. I suspect each group will be similar, but possibly at a slightly different elevation.

then you will know what you should do to meet your desires. not sort, sort and shoot lots of weight, sort and just shoot them in order low to high..

at least you will know what works for you, what you will have confidence, and what is or is not worth spending time on.

if you do the experiment, let us know how it turns out..

 

[tominboise]

There are numerous forum posts on the Rimfirecentral forum, regarding this sort of sorting for accuracy, based on different characteristics and the results thereof. General opinion is that it is not worth it. Better ammo quality ($$) means better (typically) better accuracy. Testing a wide variety of ammo lots is more useful in the long term. Most of the sorting experiments i have read online generally do not have statistically meaningful results. Of course, there are always people who post about sorting cheap ammo and shooting one hole groups at 100 yards, with their favorite inexpensive 22. It does happen once in a while.

I think it also depends on what you are shooting the ammo out of. I have an Anschutz HB rifle that will shoot 25 rounds into very small groups at 50 yards. I also have a stock 10/22 that will shoot groups twice as large at half the distance.

 

[th82457]

The best .22 ammo has a few things in common, very low weight & rim thickness variation & consistent bullet seating. Also low velocity variation from shell to shell. Also, some rifles will prefer a certain velocity range ammo over others. The only way to find this out is to try a wide variety of ammo brands/types with varied advertised velocity. With that said you may see some improvement by sorting the less expensive stuff by weight, rim thickness & overall length - but there could be so much variation that you will end up with a lot of very small lot's of sorted ammo. Not trying to discourage you as I sort .17 HMR for weight & overall length for 100 yard match shoots, but only because there is no "match" ammo available in .17 HMR. This is a time consuming tedious process. As pointed out by previous poster, the rifle involved is definitely a factor on ultimate accuracy.

 

[Shawnba67]

I had a 22wmr that was shooting 2 shots into touching holes and the 3rd would open it up to an inch. So I wieght sorted an entire box, the spread was huge! This is off memory but like 3.5 grains hi to low. Anyway went out and shot my now wieght sorted ammo, it was exactly the same results as unsorted. I still ponder how sorting didnt help, but I dont question that it did not!