Gentlemen,

I have finished shooting our Walther KK 200 at 50 yards with all the different ammo we have.

And before I start testing at 75 and 100 yards, I thought I will try some of the suggestions that claim to have an improvement on the accuracy of 22 rim fire.

One suggestion put to me was that the barrel should be cleaned, then 25 rounds of one type of ammo fired in it before shooting groups for accuracy. The suggestion was that the lube plays a major role in how it shoots.

We have decided to try it in the following manner, using the Federal Gold Medal ammo - we picked this type of ammo because we have several thousands of it!

I have cleaned the barrel completely. Then fired 6 rounds to get the point of impact on target at 100 yards.

I have then taken a box of 500 rounds, and my plan is to shoot this whole box, in groups of 5-shots, at 100 yards, and see what improvement, or lack of improvement, we get as the number of rounds increases.

Any other suggestion from you on what we should do next would be appreciated.

way back when it was suggested that the best way to select 22 ammo was to weigh each round. don't know if that worked or not, but it might be logical

Thank you for the suggestion.

I will be happy to do that too.

I have also got one of those instruments that measures the rim size.

I will try this one too.

Oh, I forgot to mention, we had our first misfre while shooting this test.

It was from a box of Swartklip Match Trainer ammo - made in South Africa.

When the round did not fire, I cocked the bolt and tried it again.

Nothing happened.

I took the round out, and rotated it about 90 degrees, and fired it again.

Nothing happened.

I took it out and pulled the bullet off.

There was powder, but no priming compound in the rim.

I have seen this a couple of times before, with Lapua Club ammo, that comes in a metal can of 500.

quote:

We have decided to try it in the following manner, using the Federal Gold Medal ammo - we picked this type of ammo because we have several thousands of it!

I have cleaned the barrel completely. Then fired 6 rounds to get the point of impact on target at 100 yards.

I have then taken a box of 500 rounds, and my plan is to shoot this whole box, in groups of 5-shots, at 100 yards, and see what improvement, or lack of improvement, we get as the number of rounds increases.

Any other suggestion from you on what we should do next would be appreciated.

Saeed,
I would LOVE to get the complete dataset of all 100 groups - in order shot. It would be really interesting to analyze that just a little bit.

Brent

Brent,

I will post each group in order shot.

I have taken a box of 500 of Federal Gold Medal ammo, and weighed them.


Weight in grains followed by the number of that weight.

50.7 1
50.9 1
51.0 12
51.1 53
51.2 146
51.3 105
51.4 94
51.5 39
51.6 7
51.7 7
51.8 10
51.9 16
52.0 8

Saeed, as I have previously reported I have had no luck sorting by "rim thickness" but it could be that the difference were too small to measure with my measuring technique ie. eyeballing the group size! I was not really interested in differences in thousandths of an inch! Now, my real question is: have you tried any of the "barrel tuners" that are available for 22LR rifles?
Thanks, peter.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:

Weight in grains followed by the number of that weight.

50.7 1
50.9 1
51.0 12
51.1 53
51.2 146
51.3 105
51.4 94
51.5 39
51.6 7
51.7 7
51.8 10
51.9 16
52.0 8

That was a lot of time-consuming work if done on a beam scale. Cause everyone knows electronic scales can't be trusted.

that is quite a difference, i imagine its cumulative, but on premium ammo i guess i wouldn't have expected that much difference

A fairly Normal distribution. A bit of bump out there on the right. But close enough.



FWIW, I haven't seen a beam balance in a lab (including my own) at this university in 20 yrs - with the exception of nostalgic historic displays

quote:

Originally posted by butchloc:
that is quite a difference, i imagine its cumulative, but on premium ammo i guess i wouldn't have expected that much difference

I will weigh some of the match ammo from both Eley and Lapua for a comparison.

I have already started shooting that 500 rounds of Federal Gold Medal after having cleaned the barrel.

I have not finished all 500 rounds yet, but thought Brent might like to play with the following.

They are in order of being shot.

1.016
0.714
1.079
1.140
0.887
0.973
0.605
0.849
0.795
0.568
0.863
1.389
1.077
0.701
0.847
0.725
0.664
0.729
0.351
1.070
1.198
1.237
0.946
0.823
0.693
0.810
0.695
0.745
1.510
1.063
1.173
1.502
1.274
1.454
0.241
0.244
1.325
0.551
1.115
0.684
0.795
0.340
1.092
1.118
1.268
0.683
1.230
0.970
0.864
1.072
0.958
0.949
0.546
0.527

I will post the rest hopefully by tomorrow.

Interesting and not what I expected. A formal analysis of this will not support the popular views of cleaning



Just for the hell of it, a regression through that data produces
y = -2E-05x + 0.903
R² = 7E-07

Now, I don't think I have ever seen a flatter slope (-0.00002) or a smaller R²(=0.00000007)

Brent,

Just to dispell any misunderstanding.

I cleaned the barrel completely, then fired about 6 shots to get the POI on target at 100 yards.

I then proceeded to shoot all the groups you see above, without any cleaning.

This was done to check the theory that each ammo likes its own lube.

Also, may be I have picked the wrong ammo to test. Because, frankly, I am very disappointed with the Federal Gold Medal.

Some of the rounds sound very loud with a crack, others sound almost like squip loads.

The funny part is most of the ones that sound like squip loads hit almost exactly where I aim!

The lube on these seem to be very hard, and very thin.

And just to add to all the mystery, I have lubed one whole box 500 with SPL bullet lubricant from the Woodchuck Den. I have left all these to dry.

Once I have finished the 500 I am shooting right now, I will clean the barrel again, and then shoot those with the SPL lubricatn, to see what difference we get.

I tried shooting 5, 5-shot groups with Eley HV ammo, and 5, 5-shot groups with the same ammo but with SPL.

Over all I got about a 15% improvement with SPL.

It will be interesting to see if this continues.

Well, there is surely no sign that the barrel is conditioned past the first 6 shots. So, the lube theory is on pretty weak legs.

I ran a simple statistical comparison of the means of your Eley lube vs SPL lube groups and I found that the difference is well within the sample variances - in other words, there is little reason to believe that any differences between the two treatments is significant.

Brent

that makes it wound like some of the weight difference in the federals is in the powder charge, at least enough so to have changed the velocity, which i would expect with a difference in sound. might be interesting to pick out 2 rounds that had the biggest weight difference and break them down to see what part of the round caused the difference

A couple of thoughts. The idea that it takes 25 rounds for a rimfire to settle down depends. In testing numerous rifles, I find low cost factory rifles tend to take more rounds to settle down. Custom barrels take fewer. For instance my Lilja barreled match chambered bench guns throw the first shot high at 11 o'clock. Then it is on, shooting Lapua Center-X. In a match I always shoot four shots just to make sure. A factory 10/22 I have takes close to 25.

The number of shots depends on how the gun is cleaned. An example, I have an old Martini that takes 15 shots if cleaned with the old trusty Hoppe's #9 our fathers used. If I use Shooters Choice Lead Remover, or TSI301 and Iosso it takes about 5 using Lapua Master ammo.

Are you using a bore scope? Depending on the chamber a certain amount of lead needs to build up in the throat so that the next bullet seats properly. In my opinion it is more than just getting the lube down the barrel but getting the chamber seasoned too.

Weighing ammo. It does help in test I did years ago with cheap ammo. But it doesn't make it shoot like the good stuff. I also weighed Eley 10x back in the late 90's. much more consistent than the cheap stuff. But I did find a few extremes in a lot I set aside. At an indoor range, 50 yards, I alternated the heavy and light 10x and it all went in the same hole. Enough for weighing 10x.

For competition a person needs to do two things in regards to tuning. First, with a known clean barrel shoot 5 shot groups till it settles down. This way you can feel confident that your rifle, with your cleaning method and your selection of ammo will shoot good after x number of shots.
Two, keep shooting groups until accuracy fades. This way you know how often you need to clean. Most competitive benchrest shooters clean after every target. Even though most can get two targets before accuracy fades. This way each target starts exactly the same. Oh, and when I talk of settling down or accuracy fading after x number of shots we are not talking much here. But when thousands make a difference in whether you get a nine or a 10 you eliminate all the hurdles you can.
It can take several trials of shooting these groups to come to a conclusion because we are not talking big changes.
And one more caveat. A new barrel needs more cleaning than a broke in barrel. Even the custom barrels. Only a borescope knows.

Well, I am through shooting these 500 rounds.

I thought I will check the barrel with a bore scope to see what is there.

There is no sign of a ring, and the only things I could see are tiny bits of what looks like powder remains. Otherwise the barrel looks remarkably cleane.

At least compared to what I have seen with center fire rifles.

I will post the results later on.

Here is the complete results of 500 rounds.


1.016
0.714
1.079
1.140
0.887
0.973
0.605
0.849
0.795
0.568
0.863
1.389
1.077
0.701
0.847
0.725
0.664
0.729
0.351
1.070
1.198
1.237
0.946
0.823
0.693
0.810
0.695
0.745
1.510
1.063
1.173
1.502
1.274
1.454
0.241
0.244
1.325
0.551
1.115
0.684
0.795
0.340
1.092
1.118
1.268
0.683
1.230
0.970
0.864
1.072
0.958
0.949
0.546
0.527
0.567
0.738
0.722
0.916
0.650
0.812
0.706
0.703
0.740
0.852
1.098
0.423
0.991
0.874
0.687
1.167
0.447
0.961
0.605
1.357
0.863
1.126
0.630
0.807
1.088
0.805
0.612
0.406
1.496
0.596
0.851
0.719
0.578
1.239
1.203
1.544
0.587
0.915
0.783
1.007
1.027
0.727
0.586
0.680
0.917
1.043

So, here a plot of the final dataset. It is as strange as anything I could imagine and one thing that I was looking for in the second half turned up, though I don't pretend to understand it.

First, the average group size was about 0.87" over the entire data set. A simple linear regression (black line) shows effectively no trend over time in this value. This contradicts the notion that groups should start out large, then contract as the barrel adjusts from it's initial clean condition. Then finally, the groups should open back up as the fouling becomes to severe.

It is safe to say that the above fable definitely did NOT occur.




The regression shows a very very slight and inconsequential decline in group size over time. That is not significant, but it is in the WRONG direction if fouling build up is an issue. Effectively, accuracy did not change over the length of the experiment.

The strange part I noticed in the first half of the data set (groups 1-54) is that the group sizes seem to become gradually more variable ast time went on but then, near the end of that 54 groups, the variability shrank. Note this is variability in the variance (group sizes are a poor man's proxy for variance). So, when Saeed was shooting some of his worst groups, he was also shooting some of his best. How strange is that? If shooter fatigue or barrel temperature was a factor, one might expect the group sizes to open up, but then not contract until the barrel cooled (second half of data). Something like that would be approximated by the green dashed line, but notice, again, that when the worst groups were being shot, so were the best groups. And the reduction in this variability comes BEFORE the end of the first half of the data.

I'm assuming that this data was shot in two sittings - but maybe not. In any event, something odd happens in the middle of very long strings of shooting. I can't guess what it is and I can't, off the top of my head, think of a way to rigorously analyze something like this (third moment statistics?).

Saeed, if you are going to go back to testing lubes like SPL on .22 bullets, I think you would better served by testing in a method like this: http://www.public.iastate.edu/.../Testing%20loads.htm I'll do the stats if you do the shooting.

Brent,

I think the main reasons I got the results I did was because of the large number of variations I have found with the ammo being shot. The Federal Gold Medal.

It is not possible for me to chronograph each shot being fired while shooting these groups. The chronograph window of measurement is very small, which means I have to shoot one target, then replace it and so on.

But, we notice from the sound of the round that there is quite a lot of variations between them.

In fact, this afternoon I took a box of the ones I have sorted by weight - in this case the ones that weighed 51.1 grains.

I shot all of them in groups of 5 shots, and they did not look any better than the ones that have not been sorted.

I have just received a case of Eley Tenex.

And I am thinking of doing the same test again using the Tenex, just so we have a comparison.

I have had some question my shooting setup. It is definitely not what bench shooters use, but the rifle is rock steady. And in between shooting groups I pull the trigger on an empty chamber, to see if the chross hair moves.

It never does with this rifle.

On some center fire rifles I have seen the cross hair move quite a bit as the firing pin falls.

Also, on many of the shots, I can actually see the bullet moving to land at different locations on the target.

It would be interesting to see if what was mentioned in the link above holds true.

I will fire 2 shot groups as described, with all the ammo I have, and I would appreciate it if you do the maths on them, before I try them all at 100 yards with the normal shooting of 5, 5-shot groups as we have been doing.

Saeed,
If you are testing two different ammunitions or two different treatments (e.g., Lube A and Lube B), then the 2-shot will work very well. You could test Eley Tenex against the Federal Gold Medal that way.

But testing for a gradual change over time due to fouling is something to be done just exactly like you did it.

Don't worry much about everyone's quibbling about your shooting set up. They aren't doing anything better - not by a long shot (most of them aren't doing anything at all )

You are ambitious indeed... Nice work!
Brent

I have started shooting the Eley Tenex, and an immediate improvement is seen in the groups.

I cleaned the barrel, completely, fired 5 shots of the Tenex, then started the groups.

In order of being shot.

Not sure if anyone is interested in this, but the lot number of the Eley ammo here is 1010-05064-1061.

0.610
0.548
0.568
0.810
0.754
0.292
0.180
0.481
0.452
0.522
0.695
0.470
0.496
0.678
0.236
0.678
0.456
0.765
0.407
0.557
0.690
0.715
0.315
0.358
0.404
0.329
0.364
0.370
0.570
0.218

Well, that looks a lot better. Group sizes are about half of what they were. I assume this is at 100 yds. Correct?

This time, you do see a bit of reduction in group size - about 0.006" for each successive group. However, the R2 of the regression is extremely small suggesting that there is very little likelihood that this effect is real and more likely just coincidental. The larger data set may eventually suggest something more significant, and it may be worth trying some nonlinear regression to it.

Brent

Not sure what is going on with your test. But something is not right. I have done extensive testing at 50 yards indoor tunnel with multiple rifles using tuners and one piece rest. If at 50 yards w/ good ammo such as 10X you should have seen your first shot go high (95% odds) and leave a clean hole in the paper. Second shot should have left a gray ring around the bullet hole (crap it picked up in the barrel from the first shot) and been lower. Subsequent shots should have been near the second shot. With the quality gun you are shooting I would have expected the second to third groups to be in the .25 area or less. These groups should vary from .2 to .26 or there abouts as an example (depending on the gun). By about your 70th to 120th shot you should have seen groups start to open, .21 to .28 or there abouts. If I am reading your results correctly, a thousand or so benchrest shooters in ARA, IR 50/50 and such are cleaning far to much. Your results are not what we see.

benchrest220


We are shooting at 100 yards, which seems to magnify all the shorcomings of the 22 rimfire ammo.

The new Eley Tenex I am shooting right now seems, at least from the report of each shot, that it is more consistent in velocity than the older ammo we shot before.

I am still seeing the unexplanable flier, and some groups seem to be very good.

I have not posted these yet, I will measure teh targets tomorrow and post them.

Friday is a school break for us, so I had to stop testing as the kids wanted to shoot.

Are you shooting free recoil? That is preferred. Only touching the trigger and pulling strait back. Even with a 2 oz trigger it is possible to exert sidewise pull on rifle. If the rifle moves put it back exactly the same place on the rest for the next shot.

If holding rifle, it is most important to grip it exactly the same each shot.

A tuner will reduce flyers to some extent. Keeps barrel vibrations more consistent with variations in each rounds velocity. A tuner would be expected to reduce .25 inch groups to about .22 inch.

The reason I keep using 50 yards as a standard as all the major benchrest games are shot at 50 yards/meters. I have little experience at 100 yards other than prone matches. The best ammo at 50 yards is not necessarily the best at 100 yards and visa versa. So most benchrest shooters only test and tune at the distance we compete at. There has been some discussion of tuning at 100 yards as it shows variations more and easier to see results change. But experience of those who have tried it has shown the results at 100 yards does not result in improvement at 50 yards necessarily. Good luck

benchrest220, Saeed has been around the block.
Headed to the Super Shoot, see you June 1st.
Butch

Butch,

Yep, you are right, I certainly have been around the block, may be a few times if I listen to what my friends say!!

I wish you the best of luck in the Super Shoot, and please tell Dwight hello. If he is still having problemsw with his barrels - I understand he has taken quite a few to the Super Shoot this year - I will be happy to lend him the one on my rifle, the one he had built for me.

It still shoots in the 0s!

He might still be recovering from his flinch after shooting my 375/404!

I think we are going to get him to shoot our new 700 NE next time he visits Dubai! It kicks a bit more than the 577 T.Rex. Even Roy was complaing about the recoil of this rifle - this news will make Dwight's day!

Here is an update on our results.


0.610
0.548
0.568
0.810
0.754
0.292
0.180
0.481
0.452
0.522
0.695
0.470
0.496
0.678
0.236
0.678
0.456
0.765
0.407
0.557
0.690
0.715
0.315
0.358
0.404
0.329
0.364
0.370
0.570
0.218
0.976
0.576
0.472
0.682
0.718
0.375
0.311
0.499
0.848
0.396
0.311
0.447
0.514
0.423
0.274
0.147
0.324
0.377
0.575
0.558
0.377
0.477
0.634
0.318
0.519
0.298
0.428
0.315
0.294
0.420
0.976
0.517
0.559
0.468
0.671
0.773
0.383
0.344
0.480
0.308
0.548
0.771
0.572
0.466
0.685
0.646
0.317
0.379
0.435
0.570
0.877
0.384
0.432
0.533
0.419
0.487
0.273
0.263
0.476
0.543
0.730
0.689
0.600
0.439
0.925
0.392
0.492
0.818
0.552
0.587



In my mail box this morning I had an email from a gentleman asking about the barrel temprature. Which is a surprise, as yesterday I started taking the temprature as I was shooting!!?

Cold barrel before shooting start was 24.0

After

5 shots 25.2
10 25.2
15 25.6
25 26.1
40 26.9
50 26.6
100 27.6

Saeed,
I will plot this out and see what I can come up with later today or tomorrow. I'm about to head off to a match (200 yds .22 benchrest).

If you have the time and inclination, I would love to see you try one more test to do with fouling.

If you would clean your rifle one more time, and then shoot ten groups but run a dry patch down the bore after each shot using the same ammunition (Tenex) - I know that may be a pain in the rear, but in your system, they would be quite comparable to your longer string of Tenex. I have a sneaky hunch that it just might matter and your set up is good enough to see an effect if it is there. I think about 10 5-shot groups would do it.

Brent

I remember doing this same things a few years back, at 25 yards with a ruger 10/22.
I did not not notice any improvement. In fact, I thought generally the groups got slightly bigger.

I did the same thing with blowing compressed air into the barrel after each shot.

Again, I did not notice any improvement at all.

We certainly have a better rifle, as well as better ammo, so I will do this tomorrow, and post the results.

Good luck on your shoot.

quote:

Originally posted by onefunzr2:

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:

Weight in grains followed by the number of that weight.

50.7 1
50.9 1
51.0 12
51.1 53
51.2 146
51.3 105
51.4 94
51.5 39
51.6 7
51.7 7
51.8 10
51.9 16
52.0 8

That was a lot of time-consuming work if done on a beam scale. Cause everyone knows electronic scales can't be trusted.

That distribution is about what I got when measuring Wolf Match Target.
I use a Denver Instruments APX-153 Digital Scale, a laboratory scale, for 22 weighing ammo.

Brent,

Here is what you have asked for.

I cleaned the barrel, then shot one shot, run a dry patch through, shot another and so on.

0.866
0.736
0.890
0.750
0.825
0.671
0.427
0.279
0.550
0.925

I hope you can make any sense of that.

I am taking a break from 22s for a couple of days. I need to make some bullets on our CNC lathe.

After that I will finish off testing the ammo at 100 yards as I have being doing at 50 and 75 yards in the Walther KK 200.

I am getting a few requests to do the same on a Ruger 10/22.

Saeed,

Thank you so much for all the testing you are doing and sharing your results. You have confirmed many things I thought but could not prove in the way you have.

Please know there are many people out here that appreciate what you are doing.

You too Brent, your number cruching really helps!

Thanks Guys!!!!

Saeed,
Your results are interesting. Recall that the first 30 or so groups was suggestive of a very weak declining group size as you went along. I was suspicious that this was just an artefact and indeed it was. Here is the complete dataset.


The slope is over the entire data set is positive - though even smaller than ever and really completely insignificant. This demonstrates pretty clearly that your barrel is neither conditioning itself, nor fouling out.


The temperature data is nicely linear. I didn't produce a graph of it, but it is increasing in a nice linear fashion very slowly over time. Obviously, this cannot continue but it also shows that barrel temps are not substantial enough to effect accuracy.

Very nice work. Thanks a bunch.

Next my one-patch data. It does not look promising.
Brent

It looks like my much hoped for positive effect of dry patching just does not cut it. Well, good to know. Here I plot simply the data points without any linear regression. I think they are pretty clear that no great effect is observed. If anything, it does a little worse. A little closer look suggests that there is a fairly strong reason to believe that dry patching actually does a little worse - about a 93% chance.

Saeed, Dwight said you wanted him to get knocked on his butt. He said the further he fell the more you would laugh. After mumbling a little, he said you were a good guy.
Butch

Poor Dwight. I feel like we have corrupted him since we taken him to Africa!

Next time you see him, ask him where he likes to shoot impalas?

Walter is very upset, as he has Dwight to compete with now.

Gentlemen,

I have had a few requestys of when is this test going to be completed.

I have ran out of some of the ammo, and waiting for a new supply.

As soon as that comes, I will continue shooting.

Saeed,
Just got home from the SS. Dwight was shooting well, surely in the top 20. Pretty good considering 350 shooters. They are the best BR shooters in the World. 15 countries were represented.
I asked Dwight where he liked to shoot Impala. He just smiled and turned around and walked off.
Butch

everyone needs to remember, every rifle/ammo combo is an enity all its own. Learn your rifle/ammo pairings to be competitive. One of the most accurate rifles I ever had would always stack four bullets, flip one out and then stack four more with a certain ammo. It shot more consistent groups, no /flier with other ammo, but none as tight is the four/waste one/ and four more. I shot it very competitively, but had to throw every 5th shot into a practice area. I finally decided that it was a powder fouling issue and that the bullet was impacting different because of the build up.
My KK200 was the best cold bore/first shot rifle I had ever had. I had an bunch of different rifles and a lot of experience with others and various ammo/ ammo makers.
Rimfire rifles are at the mercy of the ammo makers.Most of them could do better quality control, but then how much money is there when you chase a very small portion of the rimfire world. One ammo maker I tried to team up with could not imagine the need to have a .22 rimfire group in the teens at 50yds
Those days are all in my past, and I wonder why I even bothered to read into this article. I commend his efforts but the data gathered will be of little use to any other rifle/or ammo combo. Shoot well/shoot often.

any rate the results wont be repeatable so what does it matter?