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[Shannow]

Given the eley thread (and the lack of comment on Paco's accuriser), thought I'd give some comment on something that I found entertaining some years ago (BC before children).

Rim thickness

- made a rim thickness guage out of a .223 case, neck trimmed square, and a vernier (yep, not digital) caliper. Took a brick of Winchester subsonic (hollowpoint) .22s, and over a slow evening, sorted them for rim thickness...shot the extreme ends of the spectrum off a bench, and they would consistently group at slightly different POIs...noticeable enough that throwing a thin one in with a bunch of thicks would look like a flier.

Dunno the physics, whether it was firing pin crush and hence timing, or less headspace and case rock on the thicker ones.

Diameter

- mucked around measuring bullet diameter not much variance, until the aforementioned Olin off brand, when I found that the pistol rounds were .224+, versus .223(ish) for the rifle rounds. Rifle liked the pistol rounds a bit more than the rifle for otherwise same performance.

Got a Paco Kelly tool, and found that .2245 was pretty good.

Not sure whether it was the slightly flatter nose (cut neater targets for sure), or the diameter, but going flatter didn't make it shoot better, so surmised that maybe the diameter was the issue.

Final "field fix" that worked pretty OK for volume shooting was to get the little Winchester "cradle" type plastic box inserts (way better than when .22 was packed "nose to tail"), and dip the lead end into a 2:1 gum turpentine (I had it), and Liquid Alox (works great on 4wd turn stops too)...Dunk and dry, dunk and dry...Can do a brick with little effort.