Yesterday was nice, bright blue sky 59 deg. and calm conditions. Thought it would be a good day to finally try out the Ideal 225415 in my Hornet. This Ideal is an early vented block..and only one of two in my collection that drops at proper dimensions and is not egg shaped. Alloy is a diluted Steriotype metal about in hardness like the old Lyman No. 2. After weighing & inspection, annealed Hornady G.C. are fitted. They are then impact coated with NECO moly & carnauba wax., sized .226” dia., 1st. driving band taper-sized to 3 deg. to match throat @ .224” dia. Lyman Super Moly* ( I stiffen it up with Beeswax & Lanolin) is applied. RWS brass has parchment paper wad placed in primer pockets & Fed. 205M small rifle match primers fitted. All charges weighed using Redding No.2 scale. Bullets seated with Sinclair micrometer-top-Wilson chamber seater with palm pressure. 1st. band fully engraved by rifling when action closed. Rifle is a 26” oct. Shillen barreled Sharps-Borchardt panneled action sporting rifle fitted with a Leupold 12X CPC. Setting up at the 100yd. range, H4227 powder loads were first tried. Loads with charges from 7.0 thru 9.0 were tried..with very dissapointing results..none would group. I had expected much more from this nicely cast little bullet as this powder and other 225415 bullets..even the egg-shaped ones had given quite good accuracy in the past. Not expecting much improvement, I then tried loads using Vihtavuori N110. This is fast becoming my favorite powder in the hornet..clean burning..but for some reason only for G.C. bullets, I have not yet found an accurate load with it for plain-base.
Using charges of 7.0grs. thru 7.2grs., I was getting groups of .625" This was more like it! In the past with other 225415 bullets, groups of 1/2” to 3/4” were the norm..using H4227 powder. Now the puzzle is why didn't H4227 group with this superior dimensioned bullet? It seems the more I learn..the more I don't know...more testing in the future!