rim thickness

[Barlow]

I have read that measuring and sorting .22 ammo by rim thickness aids accuracy. Does it work? Barlow

 

[Shynloco]

Barlow,
Some say it does, others say its a waste of time. IMHO, it depends on HOW accurate you are seeking. By that I mean are you shooting in competition against serious shooters or looking for accuracy that put rds together with .500 @ 50 yds. The key to accuracy in a Rimfire rifle is finding which ammo your particular rifle likes the best. When I'm just looking for fun target shooting, I'll pull out the Savage TR or BV and use Wolf MT (was $5.00 per 50 when I bought a year ago). When I'm competing against the more serious guys with the custom rigs with the higher dollar actions, I pull out the Anschutz with the tuner, as well as the Lapua or Federal Match ammo (that cost $17.90 per 50 and the boxes are sorted by rim thickness). As an aside, part of expensive ammo translates into consistency which means you are real close and rim thickness measuring will only prove useful when the difference between coming in first or placing second among a serious group is like within 10 points of each other - ARA scoring - 2500 points total and the top guy shoots 2460 and 2nd place comes in 2450. And that my friend is no easy feat regardless of what brand of rifle you shoot.

Alex

 

[Outrider27]

What Alex said. In our experience, sorting by rim thickness had a positive effect on accuracy, while sorting by weight never did anything for our accuracy. We have also found that with any high end ammo that your rifle likes, sorting by rim thickness makes less difference than it makes with bulk pack low dollar ammo in whatever brand your rifle shows a preference for there. And this makes sense, as the match grade ammo tends to have a lot less rim thickness variation when sorting a brick's worth than bulk pack discount ammo, in our experience. Another interesting finding with ammo sorted by rim thickness, based on our tests, is that the thicker the rim gets, up to about 0.040"-0.041", the better the group size gets; beyond 0.040" the accuracy doesn't seem to improve much of any, which is fortunate, as the number of rounds out of a brick that measure 0.041-0.042 is usually quite small. Also noted in the limited testing of match grade ammo we have measured, in addition to showing much less rim thickness variation than garden variety ammo, match ammo is mostly at the high end of the normally encountered thickness range.

Mike

 

[Barlow]

Mike & Alex, Thanks for the great info. A few local shooters hold a 200 yard 22 match a few times each year which I have never been able to attend. I also don't have any match grade 22 rifles. I do have a Ruger 77-22 and a 61 Winchester. The Ruger wears a 4x Leupold and the 61 is iron sighted. I think I'll do some ammo testing and go shoot a time or two. I have a small horde of CCI standard velocity on hand, and a couple boxes of Fiocchi match to try. Thanks again, Barlow