22 hornet powder

Looking for a powder recommendation for the 22 hornet. I have w296 and 2400 on hand, any suggestions? I know there are other good ones but these are the only two I am concerned with at this time.
Thanks

Try them both with loads from any book. You may find that you get better accuracy with small pistol primers instead of small rifle.

I have loaded the Hornet and K-Hornet for close to forty years in probably ten different rifles and a few Contenders and found of all the powders one stands out and that is WW 680. Unfortunately it is no longer available but if you find a can it will load this little cartridge for a long time. Like all WW powders 680 is a true ball powder and flows and measures like a dream. Olin brought this powder out along with many of their ball powders in the late 60's and 680 became the standout for the Hornet and K-Hornet. It is a powder with limited application but the Hornet is one of them.

680 however is not a good powder for reduced loads in the Hornet in my opinion. It really performs best for full power loads due to it's density. For reduced loads I would stick with 2400 or the second best powder which is IMR 4227. 4227 has always given me good accuracy but as a stick powder in this small case it is a bit more work to load. Either 680 or 4227 will give you great performance with this wonderful cartridge.

Not sure what you are shooting but the K-Hornet mod is worth looking into and not expensive to do if you can find an old time gunsmith with the reamer. Once done you will almost never have to trim that case again with an honest 10% increase in velocity.

Try AA1680, It's what I used in my Ruger Hornet for PD Hunting and it worked great.

I too have played with the 22 hornet for about 40 years and after
you have tried 296 and 2400 switch to Hodgdon Lilgun and watch
your groups shrink about 50%. My favorite bullet for this is the
45 gr. sierra hornet which is very blunt and works best with the slow
twist of the hornet rifling. Try both small pistol and small rifle primers
for best grouping. you will enjoy your little rifle.

I started out with 296 and accuracy was good so I stopped right there. I had heard all the horror stories about how fickle the Hornet will be and was content to have a decent load on the first try.

I never considered Accurate 1680, but I'll save that for 7.62x39, which is certainly the priority at the moment.

Dave Sinko

I have been loading Alliant's MagPro-300 for a few months now, with 45gr. bullets. Higher velocities, no pressure signs, very low fouling. Check Alliant's web site. Good luck finding any for sale.

_______________________
Boxers or briefs? At my age, Depends.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Hodgdon Lil' Gun. It's been quite popular for some time now. My choice has been 296 for my Cooper K-Hornet using 40 gr. Blitz Kings. If I ever use up my stash of 296 I'll switch to Lil' Gun.

Have used 11 to 12 grains of 4227 with 45 and 50 grain Speer spitzers for years in a 10" Thompson Contender with great results.

296 works okay but I switched to Lil Gun and got more velocity & accuracy with no problems using the recommended starting load in the Speer loading manual #14

Hodgdon Lilgun is a good choice as G.A.Sea53 and others have said.
I've used it as a reduced charge for silhouette for several years.

You have 3 choices for a 22 Hornet powder, Lil'Gun - Lil'Gun and Lil'Gun. IMO that powder has breath new life into the 22 Hornet. With a 50gr bullet Lil'Gun will deliver at least 250fps more velocity than W296/H110 and do that at lower pressures. With lighter bullets the spread is even greater. That is a lot of additional velocity which is usually unheard of by just changing powders.

Adding that much velocity to a cartridge is like creating a different cartridge all together.

Thanks for the replies I guess the life of a 22 hornet shooter is never complete until you try Lil Gun, I will see if it lives up to it's reputation.

It looks like there are some people here who have shot the Hornet and loaded it for a while so let me ask a question. Hodgdon's Lil-Gun powder is new to me or let me say I don't have any in stock and have not shot it. From what I have read it looks to be the perfect solution to the Hornet.

So I will ask did any of you ever use WW-680 years ago. Since it was Olin-WW it was a true ball powder and as I recall was really developed for the Hornet, 218 Bee, 32-20 and similar small cartridges. Of course it is no longer but I still have a couple of cans which at Hornet consumption rates mean about another life time right now. So if anybody loaded WW-680 in the past, or like me still does, then how do the two compare ?

Part of my problem, if it really is a problem, is that I don't need anymore powder as my supplies are up there. So since I am not out in the market place for powder many things have changed and Hodgdon seems to shaking things up and no doubt still blending and tweaking somebody else's materials and calling it something different.

Is Lil-gun a ball powder or a flattened spherical ? I ask this cause they say in their literature it was developed for the 410 and normally ball powders with deterrent coatings don't do well for fast burning shotgun shells. I therefore would suspect it is not a true ball like the old 680 was. The ball powders were perfect for these small cases since you could get good density and I never had pressure issues no matter what. Not knowing but it sounds like Lil-gun pours and fill these cases fine huh ?

One more thing I shoot both the K and standard Hornet but one of the posters said he was getting another 200-250 fps with Lil-gun and I believe he said a 45 gr bullet. My records show with the straight Hornet 40 gr. Sierra and 12.5 grs of 680 I was getting consistent 2825fps with superb accuracy out of my old Thomson TCR 'Aristocrat ' rifle 24" barrel. The K-Hornet would take another grain and a half powder and yield around 3180 fps with great accuracy from my Anschutz 24". This data was worked up over a couple of years time but these were my best loads and all around better that I could get with 2400 or 4227. I shot H-110 for a while and ran into pressure problems very abruptly so gave up on it.

So can I realistically expect another 10% performance yield using Lil-gun with comparable powder levels in a 24" barrel ? This sounds too good to be true to me especially in this small case at near or over max powder levels. Perhaps this performance increase is from the shorter TC barrels ( 10 - 14" ) and since this is a shotgun powder you could very well be getting the near perfect pressure curve with this powder in those barrel lengths. Anyway this is interesting stuff to me since the Hornet in both forms is one of my all time favorite cartridges. They can be little tack drivers and make little noise where you might have to worry.

You can add my name to the Lil' Gun bandwagon, 12-13 gr. behind the 35 gr. V-MAX and a Remington small rifle primer = one accurate load in my CZ 527. Also, I've been using the LEE collet die to eliminate overworking the Hornets thin brass neck. Works for me..........Dan.

garbler, I've not tried WW-680, so not able to do a comparison. I started with the Hornet about 12 years ago.

LilGun meters very well. Max for me is 13 grains for rifle use. For the 10" Contender I use 8 grains in my attempts to knock steel down.

LilGun is useful for jacked loads in 357 Mag also.