I have just finished some quick and dirty testing of two relative new molds. After many years of listing no 22 bullet molds Lee now offers a 55-grain design which looks a bit like the more recent Lyman 225415. The other mold the NOE 22560 RN has always looked like a reasonable design. I shot 20, 5-shot groups with each bullet using each both with gas checks and as cast without gas checks.
Half the shooting was with a classic Sako L461 (14 inch twist, 12 grooves) and half with a stainless steel and plastic Tikka T3 lite (8 inch twist, 6 grooves) -- Beauty and the Beast but good lightweight hunting rifles in 222 and 223
I tested the bullets as a beginning CB shooter, or one who wanted to shoot with the least trouble, might test them. No load development, no tinkering with sizing or alloys, no weighing of bullets, powder, or cases, no discarding small to medium wrinkles, no cleaning of necks or primer pockets, no neck turning or trimming, no swaging, no case prep., Sizing was with Lee Collet die so no case lubing, no cleaning, no M die, no crimp. I guessed at a load, alloy, and lube stuck with them. I had fun shooting. 4.5 grains of TiteGroup (5.0 for gas checked), WSR, 24:1, and one coat of tumble lube for all 200 shots. No gazing at and analyzing groups, no shots called out, but 2 wild shots more than doubled their groups and were disregarded as unrepresentative. 198 of 200 consecutive shots counted.
When I get the results sorted I plan to write a detailed article, or maybe one for each bullet for TFS but thought some of the initial findings might be of interest to the denizens of this forum.
Both molds were hard to clean but when clean, cast great bullets. The diameters at the bands were both over .226" and the noses just right for my two rifles. Mold halves matched better than any of my other molds. Magnification was helpful to see seams. Cast bullets don't have to be round to win, matches and most of mine are pretty lopsided from beagling, but both molds produced very round bullets.
Short bullets like these are harder to shoot well than long ones and I have never been able to shoot an honest aggregate smaller than about 1.5 moa with 22 bullets that will stabilize in a 14" twist and I've never seen anybody else do it (although JoeB gave it a good try and came, close as reported on the forum, a couple of years ago.) But surprisingly, the NOE gas checked bullet averaged 1.02 moa for five consecutive groups and the Lee averaged 1.21 for six consecutive groups from the Tikka.
The results showed that either gas checked bullet, if pointed in the right direction, would hit a squirrel's head every time at 50 yards from either rifle. The plain based bullets in the Sako would do the same. The percentage would go down a bit for the plain based in the Tikka but most of them would get a squirrel. I certainly recommend either mold for anybody wanting the ultimate squirrel rifle in a 22 centerfire. They don't require any special fussy loading techniques to shoot very well.
I enjoyed just banging away without worrying about whether this or that would improve matters. I had a great time seeing what these two bullets would do with guessed at loads. It would be even more interesting to see how well they would shoot in a load they really liked.
I recommend a similar test of other bullets and rifles as an enjoyable project.
John