Hello, greenrivers. Boy are you in for some fun! I have been shooting cast in a Shillen barreled Borchardt Hornet, & a Ruger No. 1 in .222 Rem. since the early 90's. In the Hornet, I first worked up the most accurate jacketed-match bullet loads..it was shooting in the .3's. Now I had my benchmark. Five years, custom moulds, special tapered die for matching first band to chamber leade & dia., nose-first sizing dies, and LOTS of testing, later, & I was able to equal best jacketed bullet accuracy at 100yds. Now I can't do this every time out, but enough to know it's not a fluke. I have found that you can get these little pills too hard..cast some up from straight Steriotype metal..harder than Lyno..the little old-style Lyman 225215..it weighed 45gr. liked it, but everything else didn't. I now dilute this hard alloy with soft lead. I had tried just about every mould I could get my hands on, including an Eagan MX 3. Sometimes they shot ok, but were not consistant. Then I happened to come across an old original Ideal 22536..this was for the old .22-15-60 Stevens black powder number. It weighed 60grs! I took these to work, & using a collet stop on a bench lathe, faced off to 50grs. On some, I turned a gas-check shank. At range, these were some of the most accurate bullets I had shot to date! Sent off samples to Fred Leeth at Pioneer Products for custom nose-pour plain base & gas-check versions. You know whats funny?...For pure ACCURACY...NOT velocity, the plain base likes 7.0gr. H4227, the gas check has to have .3gr. more....3gr! I got discusted with the poor quality of some .22 gas-checks..they tend to be uneven in height & base is wavy. Tried annealing & flattening..helped some. I had Dave Corbin make up a die & punch to remove the offending wavy center altogether..The jury is still out on this one though. Best of luck & let us know how your doing!
