Cast bullets in the mighty 22 Hornet?

[YRUpunting?]

I posted this in the Handi forum but maybe the is a better place.  Anyone loading cast bullets in their 22 Hornet?  My Hornet is a 1:9 twist, my plan (hope?) is to have it shooting cast a little hotter than a 22 Mag.  Anyone loading like this?

[Nobade]

With a twist rate that fast you won't be able to load the hornet to its full potential, but you should easily be able to match 22 mag speeds with 55 - 60 gr. bullets.

Some hornets are easy to achieve very good accuracy with cast bullets, others aren't. It all comes down to the chamber and throat design, SAAMI Hornet chambers don't really have a throat and are difficult to work with. Hornet chambers like Thompson Center cut have a nice throat design and can really be made to sing with lead.

So, make a cast of what you actually have and that will tell you what bullet design you should be looking for. With that fast twist you could shoot up to 70gr. with no problem so you will have a pretty good variety of mould designs to choose from. Of course if this is a magazine fed rifle you'll be limited by overall length if you want to use it as a repeater so keep that in mind as well.

[LaOtto222]

In general, you want to shoot a bullet that is .001" - .002" over bore. So you will want to slug the bore to find out exactly what it is. If you want to shoot hard cast at 2000 fps or a little faster, dictates a gas checked cast bullet.

Looking at Lyman's 49th edition, the 55 grain is the heaviest cast listed. It is listed at a maximum of about 1800 fps. You can load 55 grain Jacketed up to 2100 fps, so I would think you could do the same with a cast bullet. I think I would stick with that weight because loading data is available for it about anywhere.

Good Luck and Good Shooting

[.22-5-40]

Hello, YRU.  I have been shooting cast in my1 in 14" twist Shillen barreled Sharps Borchardt for the past 18 years.  Spent the first 5 working to equal best jacketed match bullet accuracy at 100yds.  A couple of custom moulds, sizer dies & a tapered sizer to size first band to match chamber leade angle..and I did it.  Yes, you can equal .22 mag. ballistics.  My go to powder has always been H4227.  You can also load down to .22 long rifle level for small game hunting.