Weight-sorting .22 LR Ammo?

[NewAZShooter]

I read a post on RimfireCentral where a guy said if you really want to shoot tight reliable groups you need to sort your ammo by weight to reduce fliers (I guess if weighing them sorts that out, that the fliers must come from under/overcharged rounds or differences in bullet weight or brass thickness great enough to show up on a scale.)

Well, I had a bunch of different types of .22 ammo around so I weighed 15 rounds each of 4 different brands from bulk Remington to Eley Match EPS, just for s's and g's. The bulk stuff varied in weight by 1 grain, Eley Silhouex varied by .4, Lapua Master M varied by .4 the Match EPS varied by .3 grains. In general, the more you spend, the less it varies in weight, go figure.

Maybe its easier to just buy the expensive stuff. But for those of us who might have more time than money I suppose weight sorting whatever we're shooting (even Match EPS) to the tenth of a grain might help. I can't imagine how tedious it would be to weigh and sort a brick or more, but maybe a box of 50 here and there just for an important match might be feasible.

Is anyone out there besides that one guy on rimfirecentral weight sorting your .22 LR ammo? And if so, have you seen any reduction in fliers as a result? Just curious. Thanks.

[glocker17]

I have weight sorted some of the cheaper ammos, and did see a measureable difference in the number of flyers. It will not get rid of them all, but some. I had good success doing this with Eley Sport which had large weight variations. I think the better quality you buy, will benefit less from weight sorting. It certainly cant hurt, but it grows tiresome when you want to shoot alot of ammo. I would rather spend the time shooting . Now back to sorting that rim thickness............

Blake

[chickenchoker]

I did the weight sort and rim thickness sort seperately and together. I did it with cheap to expensive ammo. I did it with ammo each gun liked and didn't like. The end result was that sorry grouping ammo didn't become super tight grouping ammo. Only ammo my gun liked grouped well and regardless of what it was [ cheap or expensive] I would buy as much of it as my pocketbook could handle. The biggest plus from the whole test was I got a whole lot of trigger time.

[oldrifleman]

I have sorted rimfire ammo by weight and rim thickness, I now only do Weight. It will not make ammo that my rifle hates turn into Gold, but it will take ammo my rifle likes and improve the groups, I believe by reducing the velocity variation. Steven

[Jerry G]

I think the best way to get tight groups is to buy good ammo. Practice with the cheeper stuff and learn to live with the flyers.

[_Shorty]

It's kind of a waste of time with stuff like Eley Match or Tenex, but with the lower-end stuff it can help. I've been shooting Eley Target Rifle lately, and have been sorting it by weight. You really need to do at least a brick at a time, as sorting just a box or two of 50 isn't going to tell you very much. It varies enough that you need to do a good number just to start seeing where the curve lies. If you do a brick or two at a time you get a very good idea of which ones you should just use to do initial barrel fouling with, and which ones you can better trust to go where you want it to.

The Eley Target Rifle I've been getting for the past year or so has all been from the same lot. They've all ranged in weight from 50.7 grains up to 51.5 grains. Very rarely get any lighter than 50.7 or heavier than 51.5, and could probably count either situation on my fingers for the entire year. I go through maybe 2-4 bricks a month, and at least for this lot they've all varied about the same. Probably just because it is the same lot, I imagine. Anyway, I got another two bricks the other day and this is how it came out:

50.7 - 7 (0.7%)
50.8 - 19 (1.9%)
50.9 - 36 (3.6%)
51.0 - 120 (12%)
51.1 - 195 (19.5%)
51.2 - 299 (29.9%)
51.3 - 188 (18.8%)
51.4 - 111 (11.1%)
51.5 - 25 (2.5%)

That's typically how it looks when I've measured out a brick or two of this stuff. There's always a big lump in the middle, with a lot fewer at the extremes, as you might expect. I use the 51.1-51.3 stuff when it matters, the 51.0 and 51.4 stuff is usually ok, too. The rest just gets used for getting wax fouling in the barrel at the start of a session, and I usually use up 20 rounds to do that. It's been said that rifles usually shoot their best once you have a good coating of wax in there, and that it usually takes one round per inch of barrel or so to do so.

Now, there are a few different ways to look at this. Am I getting better accuracy from my efforts? Yes, no question in my mind at all. This really does reduce the amount of fliers I get from this cheaper stuff by a noticable amount. But is it really cheaper? I'm essentially throwing away anywhere from 10% to 25% of the stuff, since I'm only using maybe 75% of it for real shooting. So while it may be costing me $40 a brick, in a way I'm paying $40 for 75% of a brick. I could be buying more expensive stuff and saving the time it takes me to sort it. Also by the same token, if I did that I would also be wasting 20 rounds of more expensive ammo to get the wax lube in the barrel, too. Whereas right now the sorting process is giving me fouler rounds to begin with, just by nature of removing the below average rounds from the brick.

You'll hear the "how do you know what you're weighing" argument whenever this subject comes up. It is somewhat logical, though. I don't know if I'm weighing differences in the bullet, or the case, or the powder, or the primer. True enough. But what I *do* know is, no matter what I'm weighing, by taking the ones that weigh in the same range I am making them more consistent in one more way. And chances are that the more alike each round is, the better the chances are of them behaving the same way. Chances are greater that the rounds that vary greatly in weight will behave differently than the ones that are more similar in weight, since that weight variation dictates that they are different than the others. In my two-brick example here, the chances that the 68.2% (or even 91.3% perhaps) majority behaves the same as the 8.7% minority aren't very good. There's enough difference in their cases, bullets, powders, and primers to make their total weight that much different than the majority that they will be different in operation. And they surely are when I fire them off at the paper downrange.

I weigh mine while I'm watching Letterman. I don't have a storyline to follow, so the distraction of weighing doesn't matter much, hehe. I don't mind spending the time since it does save me from having to buy more expensive ammo. If I didn't want to spend the time, I wouldn't have to if I didn't mind spending a bit more money. The more expensive stuff is, after all, more expensive because they've done the sorting for you. Eley Tenex Ultimate EPS is Tenex Ultimate EPS because they've been sorted and meet the requirements they've set out for Tenex. Stuff that doesn't meet those requirements gets downgraded. Eley Match EPS is stuff that varied too much in one way or another to be put into Tenex boxes, so it is now in Match boxes. And again, anything that didn't meet Match's slightly looser tolerance requirements gets put into Club Xtra EPS boxes. So as you go on down the line you run into more and more variation. You can do some sorting yourself to gain back some ground, at the cost of having surplus rounds that you don't want to put into serious use. Now, obviously it isn't going to give you the same results as the high-dollar rounds will. But it will give you an improvement, none the less. I'm certainly not going to see Tenex Ultimate results from sorting Target Rifle rounds, haha. But I sure am getting more satisfaction in the results from spending some time sorting.

These two or three latest bricks I've also started sorting by rim thickness. I haven't had the time to make it through the whole brick yet, but I have measured the 51.1, 51.2, and 51.3 grain rims so far. They are a bit more surprising than weight, as far as variation goes. I've read where measuring rims for stuff like Eley Tenex and Match is a huge waste of time since it hardly varies at all. Which only makes sense, since Eley sorted them according to strict requirements in order for them to make it into those boxes in the first place. But I really see a lot of variation in these Target Rifle rounds, it really surprised me how much variation there was. These total round counts don't match the above numbers because there are some thrown in from three bricks ago, not just the last two, and I haven't gotten through measuring the last two completely yet.

51.0 grains (in thousandths of inches)
31.5 - 2
32.0 - 2
32.5 - 1
33.0 - 0
33.5 - 0
34.0 - 0
34.5 - 15
35.0 - 12
35.5 - 20
36.0 - 16
36.5 - 26
37.0 - 33
37.5 - 17
38.0 - 7

51.1 grains
31.5 - 0
32.0 - 0
32.5 - 0
33.0 - 0
33.5 - 5
34.0 - 23
34.5 - 27
35.0 - 40
35.5 - 47
36.0 - 29
36.5 - 17
37.0 - 6
37.5 - 0
38.0 - 1

51.2 grains
31.5 - 3
32.0 - 1
32.5 - 0
33.0 - 0
33.5 - 0
34.0 - 3
34.5 - 30
35.0 - 31
35.5 - 30
36.0 - 41
36.5 - 66
37.0 - 67
37.5 - 27
38.0 - 1

51.3 grains
31.5 - 0
32.0 - 0
32.5 - 0
33.0 - 0
33.5 - 0
34.0 - 2
34.5 - 13
35.0 - 9
35.5 - 8
36.0 - 18
36.5 - 36
37.0 - 20
37.5 - 15
38.0 - 11

totals - 783 rounds
31.5 - 5 (0.64%)
32.0 - 3 (0.38%)
32.5 - 1 (0.13%)
33.0 - 0 (0%)
33.5 - 5 (0.64%)
34.0 - 28 (3.58%)
34.5 - 85 (10.86%)
35.0 - 92 (11.75%)
35.5 - 110 (14.05%)
36.0 - 104 (13.28%)
36.5 - 145 (18.52%)
37.0 - 126 (16.09%)
37.5 - 59 (7.54%)
38.0 - 20 (2.55%)

So here we can see another trend that's similar to weight, yet again like a bell curve. The majority in the middle, with a lot less at the extremes. So, this will again drive the percentage of 'good' rounds down, making the cost of those good rounds go up, since you now have even more in the waste/fouling category. I haven't gone through enough on paper of the sorted rims to see how much of a difference it makes over only sorting for weight, so I don't yet know first-hand if it is worth my time to also sort rims. Or if only sorting for rims shows any better results than only sorting for weight. Going to need some more range time to make my mind up about that. Once I get time to do that I'll be able to better judge if it's still worth the time, if it's only worth doing one or the other, or if I'd be better served by upgrading at the purchase point. Once I get more range time I'll be able to do the math. For the moment I feel better justified by weight sorting Eley Target Rifle than I do spending more for Club Xtra or Match EPS. Whether I'll keep that opinion once I get more rim thickness results, who knows. For silhouette specifically, I think I get more than enough accuracy from the Target Rifle that's been sorted for weight. The fliers I get then, as seen on paper, are small enough that it isn't going to matter much during silhouette shooting. I mostly want to gain a bit more on paper if I can, for the local paper matches.

[NewAZShooter]

Thanks for chiming-in here with your thoughts and personal experiences regarding weight-sorting. I went ahead and sorted a few boxes with the plan to shoot some groups with the sorted and unsorted stuff side-by-side to see if there is any noticeable repeatable benefit to sorting my particular ammo choice in my rifle before I commit to sorting a whole brick.

If I see any interesting results, I'll post 'em here.

[chickenchoker]

The last test you need to try after you've done your sorting is to shoot your group with your "good" stuff and then shoot the "rejects" and see if they go into the same group. That's the true test of sortings worth.

[_Shorty]

Well, here's what I did.

Clean rifle.
Shoot 20 foulers.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with unsorted.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, majority.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, minority.
Clean rifle.
Shoot 20 foulers.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, minority.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, majority.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with unsorted.
Clean rifle.
Shoot 20 foulers.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, majority.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with unsorted.
Shoot 5 5-shot groups with sorted, minority.

The unsorted ones grouped OK, but contained fliers.

The sorted majority ones grouped much better, and had relatively few fliers. It didn't eliminate them, but they were much less frequent, and not as bad.

The sorted minority ones didn't group as well if I classified them all as 'rejects' and shot them mixed. They shot a little better if kept segregated, light minority with light minority, heavy minority with heavy minority, but POI was obviously different from the sorted majority rounds since they naturally tend to be the fliers.

The order that I shot them in didn't seem to matter, whether it was unsorted first, majority first, minority first.

[chickenchoker]

I guess you misunderstand my statement and it's the thing I'm most intrested in discovering from your [ Shorty ] data. Since the majority of your ammo weighs 51.1-51.3, if you take 5 rounds of your majority and shoot a group and then take 5 rounds of lets say 50.9 and shooting at the same group, does it open your group up more or less than 5 more shots of your majority? And if it does, how much? What happens at 50.7 and how much? Do all the shots or just some of shots go outside the majority group and is it a predictable pattern? What SIZE groups do you get with sorting and not sorting? Just curious.

[_Shorty]

As I mentioned, the POI changes for the ones at the extremes compared to the majority. I've been looking for the targets I did back then so I could measure the groups, now that I have some calipers. I haven't found them again yet, though. If I don't find them shortly then I'll give it another go the next time I head out to the range.

[lone ringer]

Without trying to state the obvious if he added more shots to the groups they would open up regardless of which weigh ammo he used.

I was fortunate to know a friend that was very knowledgeable and he would order samples of at least three lots of Eley Tenex and would shoot them at the same time in sequence at 100 yards or meters: Ammo of lot 1 at target 1, lot 2 at target 2 and lot 3 at target 3 until he had fired 30 rounds of each lot at each of the three targets. He then would order a few cases of the lot that shot the best and would proceed to sort it by weight on some very expensive weight scales.

He would end up with ammo that turned out to be lighter than the rest and he would use that ammo for practice, the heavier ammo he would save for shooting rams only and the rest for the first three targets. This happened back in the 1980's when ammo was less than half of what it costs today but the testing method still valid in my opinion if some one out there cares to try it.

[_Shorty]

Yeah, when I get around to it someday I'd like to pick up some with examples from each of their 5 machines and see if the rifle prefers any. I've read about a lot of the benchrest guys finding that their rifles seem to prefer one machine over the others. Perhaps a brick from each machine, to have plenty for testing, and go from there.

[chickenchoker]

If your looking for an accurate, relatively inexpensive digital scale you might look at a Denver Instruments MXX-123. It will register a kernel of Varget which weighs 2/100th of a grain. About 6-8 years ago I went to the nra convention in Charolette, NC and I talked to the rep from Zanders which at the time was the sole importer of eley ammo into the USA. He told me that if you found some Tenex or Match EPS that shot well in your gun, to take note of the machine and what its published velocity is. If you run out and there is no more of that lot available, to find other lots from the same machine AND the same published velocity and you stood a good chance of getting more good ammo for that gun. Pretty senseable advice. When I asked him if that worked for the cheaper ammo ,he said "NO". He said eley's efforts went into producing Tenex and Match EPS. The components that didn't meet spec are used to manufacture the cheaper stuff. He said there was no way to tell what the cause of a bad group was from. He told me if a machine that makes the good stuff produced more than a small handful of rejects, the machine was shut down and the problem was fixed. In a way all the cheap eley ammo is Tenex reject, just not off the good machines. As dies and machines start to get out of spec, they are used to produce ever cheaper ammo with less quality control. I suspect that if eley does it, so do the other target ammo manufacturers. Now, eley supplies some of the components to Aguila to make their ammo and in return Aguila makes eley Sport for eley. The same holds true for SK-Jagd and Lapua. Lapua used to have a part intrest in SK-Jagd because they supplied all components to SK-Jagd and in return SK-Jagd made Super Club for Lapua. Now Lapua has taken total control of SK-Jagd and Lapua has more intrest in producing Lapua ammo [it costs more, go figure] and that's why we see the shortages in SK-Jagd and Wolf. The most important thing I've learned in this shooting thing is if you do something and you see results that give you confidence you need to keep on doin' it. Hope any or all of this helps.

[chickenchoker]

If your looking for an accurate, relatively inexpensive digital scale you might look at a Denver Instruments MXX-123. It will register a kernel of Varget which weighs 2/100th of a grain. About 6-8 years ago I went to the nra convention in Charolette, NC and I talked to the rep from Zanders which at the time was the sole importer of eley ammo into the USA. He told me that if you found some Tenex or Match EPS that shot well in your gun, to take note of the machine and what its published velocity is. If you run out and there is no more of that lot available, to find other lots from the same machine AND the same published velocity and you stood a good chance of getting more good ammo for that gun. Pretty senseable advice. When I asked him if that worked for the cheaper ammo ,he said "NO". He said eley's efforts went into producing Tenex and Match EPS. The components that didn't meet spec are used to manufacture the cheaper stuff. He said there was no way to tell what the cause of a bad group was from. He told me if a machine that makes the good stuff produced more than a small handful of rejects, the machine was shut down and the problem was fixed. In a way all the cheap eley ammo is Tenex reject, just not off the good machines. As dies and machines start to get out of spec, they are used to produce ever cheaper ammo with less quality control. I suspect that if eley does it, so do the other target ammo manufacturers. Now, eley supplies some of the components to Aguila to make their ammo and in return Aguila makes eley Sport for eley. The same holds true for SK-Jagd and Lapua. Lapua used to have a part intrest in SK-Jagd because they supplied all components to SK-Jagd and in return SK-Jagd made Super Club for Lapua. Now Lapua has taken total control of SK-Jagd and Lapua has more intrest in producing Lapua ammo [it costs more, go figure] and that's why we see the shortages in SK-Jagd and Wolf. The most important thing I've learned in this shooting thing is if you do something and you see results that give you confidence you need to keep on doin' it. Hope any or all of this helps.