dracb
(.300 member)
31/03/14 01:21 PM
Re: 22 Hornet

Not unless they are berdan primed, but I would probably not load them if they were mine. I learned 25 years ago how sensitive the 22 hornet is to seemingly minor changes in components.

I sold a single shot break action rifle to a friend's son. I gave him a box of loaded ammunition and he and his father bought the components to load more. The brand of brass he bought was different from what I had been loading. The primers, powder and bullets were identical to what I had loaded except they were of newer manufacturing lots.

They loaded the same weight of powder and bullet as used in the rounds I loaded which was taken from the mid-range of a name brand loading manual. All of their brass was new, but of another brand than I was using in my handloads of which there had been thousands fired out of that rifle. This all checked out when the unfired ammunition was subsequently broken down when we returned from the range.

I was shooting from the bench beside the one the young man was shooting from and happened to look over to see how he was doing. By chance I happened to notice black smudges on the primers of his fired cartridges. He had half a dozen rounds with perforated primers. Even though the father was a very experienced and careful handloader, I suspected there had been an error in the powder weight or changes in other components.

Just to verify that it was not an issue with the particular firearm, I fired a few rounds of 22 hornet ammunition that was I had loaded identically but had brought to fireform into k-hornets now that I no longer had a hornet. There was no problem with my loads and a chronograph showed they had a velocity close to what should be expected from the load manual.

I never found out what produced this unsafe condition, but have subsequently been extremely careful in not changing components in loads developed for the hornet or k-hornet. That would include avoiding
the use of brass with two flash holes. Since removing the spent primers would be a recurring adventure I probably would put them in my curiosity drawer and use them to confound visitors.



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