I have spent a good bit of the last 2 years investigating the accuracy potential of .22 Short match ammunition. I have obtained several types of Rapid Fire Match Shorts from a man who once competed in the Olympic rapid fire pistol events, back before Shorts were ruled off the field.

I am shooting with a Winchester Winder Musket for the lesser types of Shorts and a Stevens-Pope for the high grade stuff.

I think I am seeing accuracy deteriorate (just a bit) in Shorts manufactured in 1972. That makes them 42+ years old. Does anyone else track shelf life?

quote:

Originally posted by waterman:
I think I am seeing accuracy deteriorate (just a bit) in Shorts manufactured in 1972. That makes them 42+ years old. Does anyone else track shelf life?

I have not done anything formal but have seen what I think was an increase in misfires in ten-year-old Eley Match.

The six million dollar question: how was the ammunition stored and in what conditions?

It was stored in a garage in Pennsylvania. I do not know if the garage was heated, but it might well have been. The man who was the Rapid Fire Match shooter had a workshop in the garage. He has since passed away, so I can't ask him.

If heated, the many boxes may have not experienced many periods of high or low temperatures. All are in very good condition, so that is probably the case. If unheated, although protected, the ammunition would have passed through many, perhaps hundreds of freeze-thaw cycles. I have had the stuff about 6 years. My storage place is not heated, but temperatures rarely drop below 40 F or exceed 70 F.

Ignition might be a little inconsistent...hard to do a before/after test now, but some grouping statistics might be interesting.

I am writing a series of articles on the experiments. First 3 of an open-ended series has appeared in the Single Shot Rifle Journal, Vol.67, Nos 2 & 4, and in the current issue.

Technique used is 2-shot groups, fired from rest at 75 feet. I was led to the 2-shot group by a serious smallbore shooter who is also a professor of statistics at a large university. Target is the Wyoming Schuetzen Union 6-bull galley target, a reproduction of targets used in the 1900-era indoor Schuetzen Leagues. I fire 2 shots at each bull, from a rest. 3 values are recorded; the numeric scores of each shot and the maximum distance between the smudges left by bullet lube.

Of late, I have also been recording the velocity of each shot. Higher velocity shots always hit high and low velocity shots hit low, proving that gravity works. Starting from a clean barrel, velocities are quite variable until 25 or 30 shots have been fired, at which point the shot-to-shot differences are minimized. The old timers always said it takes 1 shot per inch of barrel length to get your rifle settled down. This quantifies the old axiom.

The whole study came about after looking at the recorded performance of Peters Shorts, copper cases, and loaded with King's Semi-Smokeless powder. Those would put every shot into a 0.700" circle at 75 feet. That was the accuracy standard 1898-1915. The questions were, given a very good barrel, how accurate are today's Shorts and how accurate were the recent match loads?

Back in 1978 we chronographed several types of HV .22 LRs from the 1930's. I have no idea how they had been stored but the boxes and ammo were all pristine. They all chrono'ed from 1160 fps to 1180 fps.
On the other hand, at the same time I bought lots of bricks of Remington 6122 SV ammo, probably made in the mid-1970's. I had one brick left, which had been stored in the various garages I have owned since 1980. Temps ranged from -25 degrees in Colorado winters to @145 in Arizona summers. Tried some last summer and all were duds. Finally threw the rest of the boxes away.
My theory is that the extreme heat of AZ melted the bullet lube which got into the small powder charge and killed the bullets.

Waterman-I would love to see a copy of your article. Also, where do you find info on the performance standards of .22 ammo of yesteryear? I would love to read any and all such info.

Steve- The articles are in the American Single Shot Rifle Association's "Single Shot Rifle Journal" for March/April 2014 (V.67#2), July/August 2014 (V.67#4) and January/February 2015 (V.68 #1). Performance standards come from "The American Rifle" by Townsend Whalen (1918), from "22 Caliber Rifle Shooting" by C.S. Landis (1932), "Small Bore Rifle Shooting" by E.C. Crossman (1927) and (strangely & most informatively) from match results published about 1910 in Peters Cartridge Company advertisements. Peter adverts said "these gentlemen won the following matches with our cartridges. Here are their scores."

Landis & Crossman both report machine rest results fired on both indoor & outdoor ranges, with many details, even down to Lot #s.

Shortly before US entry into WW1, Whelen wrote of Shorts loaded with Semi-Smokeless powder "with a good rifle and fresh ammunition, a good rifleman can keep all his shots in a ten cent piece at 25 yards". A 1916 ten cent piece has a diameter of 0.700 inches. Whelen also wrote that "if you bought a case of ammunition in April, accuracy would begin to deteriorate by the following August". He also wrote "if you value your rifle, do not shoot (22 rimfires) loaded with smokeless powder and/or non-corrosive primers". Following Whelen's advice, I do not test fire any ammunition made before the post-war resumption of rimfire target loads, 1946-47.

Great info. I love this kind of stuff. Keep it coming.