I just picked up a Browning 65 in .218 Bee. The old Francis Sell idea of an understudy rifle for my Winchester 71.

At $50 to $55 bucks a box for factory I really want to reload for this caliber.

I would appreciate any of your loads or experiences. Thanks!

In my Ruger # 1 I use 40 gr Vmax's and 13.3 grs of H110. The pointy bullets are not a good idea in a tube magazine. You could use the 2 round method, ie, one in the chamber and one in the mag. I've also used 15.7gr R-7 with the same bullet.

When Kimber of Oregon came out with the Bee, I was fortunate enough to have B79. It responded extremely well to 13.5 grains of WW680 with a 40grain bullet, and 13.0 grains with a 45 grain. Otherwise the rifle was difficult to get to shoot well. I do believe that AA 1680 would interchange reasonably well in this pursuit. Good luck!

craigster, 308Sako,

Thanks for your replies!!

I have one of the 1894 Marlin CL in .218 Bee and also find the old cans of WW-680 to shoot very well in this rifle. I was given this tip by one of my shooting buddies who has a .218 Bee in a Ruger #1.
JP

In my win 43 I use up to 14gr LILGUN with a 35gr V-MAX-it's my most accurate load and it gets a ways over 3000fps. I probably wouldn't use that bullet in a tube fed lever gun but in my opinion LILGUN is the powder to use.

In my Winchester 65 .218 Bee one of my best loads was 14.6 of IMR 4227, 6 1/2 primer and the 35 grain Hornady. My gun was set up with a lyman peep sight and the 50 yard and one hundred yard groups were very respectable. However, I put the bullets into a slightly tightened precision chuck and filed the plastic point flat almost to the copper, and then loaded them. No tube feed problems or change in accuracy were evident.

300 H-H,
I'll have to try some of that Lil Gun in my Bee. I have played with VMax's as well fed singly to see what kind of accuracy the rifle can do. Haven't done a whole lot with it however. I also bought some VV N120 to play with as IIRC it got good velocity with 40 grn VMax bullets per the Hornady site reloading data. According to the data sheets, 3000 fps can be reached with the 40 grn vMax and N120. The gal at Hornady also sent me their internal data reload records for the .218 Bee using a Marlin 1894 CL like mine.

WRT 1894 Marlin's - last time I checked, I found that no one made a non-Weaver scope base for it. So I found an old NIB Redfield base on ebay which makes for a solid setup. Nothing wrong with the Weavers wrt functionality. I've got an older non-belled Burris compact 4x scope mounted on mine.

Jeff P

I'm using 11.5gr of 2400 with my contender with a 22" bull barrel. Accuracy is quite good. This is with a 45 gr bullet.