“I was told to use nothing but CCI’s in my .22 pistols and rifles since the regular ones don’t have enough power to really throw the bolt back...” [SkyDancer, post 38]
“...CCI Quiet .22LR won’t cycle the action on my Ruger MK III. Every brand of standard .22LR will cycle it just fine.” [gundog, post 44]
“Aguila is best 22 cal ammo you can get anywhere, bar none...” [Beagle8U, post 59]
“...’most serious shooters’ don’t claim ‘Brand A is the most accurate ammo on the planet!’...” [Who is John Galt?, post 75]
There is no “one best” make, nor load, of ammunition. All firearms are different: more true of rimfires, and rimfire ammunition. Two identical guns, one serial number digit apart and right next to each other on the assembly line, can exhibit radically different performance in accuracy, reliability, and cleanliness - firing ammunition from the same box.
True in part because 22 rimfire rifles and rimfire ammunition don’t enjoy the profit margin of centerfire, so quality control is unavoidably less exacting. Premium match ammunition from makers like Eley and Norma typically exhibit better precision in target guns or other higher-end arms, but there is still detectable variation. Inexpensive ammunition fired from an old budget-priced rifle sometimes delivers smaller groups than the highest-priced match ammunition fired from a premium-grade target rifle.
Not all 22 rimfire ammunition is loaded equally.
From the introduction of smokeless powder until the 1930s, the common 22 rimfire rounds (Short, Long, Long Rifle) were loaded pretty much to a single velocity for each. Then ammunition manufacturers introduced what they call “high velocity” loadings, about 100 to 150 ft/sec faster in muzzle velocity. Previous loadings were still made, but got renamed “standard velocity.”
The “hi speed stuff” is now the most common type available - not nearly as speedy as the hypervelocity rounds, frequently not even labeled as “high velocity.” Most semi-auto arms are built to function with it: often bolts of different mass and springs of different strength are required, compared to standard velocity.
Semi-auto pistols are by far the most problematic - their barrels are so short that the chamber pressure can drop before the bolt has received enough of an impulse to push it all the way to the rear.
Loads recently introduced have been developed for use on varmints. They are intended to be fired from manually operated rifles, sometimes sound-suppressed. Not that they always need suppression: the CCI Quiet-22 Segmented Hollow Point 22LR I purchased last year was labeled as developing 710 ft/sec. I fired some from my 1953-vintage Winchester 52C target rifle; the report was no louder than a neighbor’s 177 cal air gun.
My grandad showed me a picture of a hyper velocity .22 rifle. A machinist attached this short tube (the length of a .22) mid barrel. The idea was to put a blank .22 in that tube and when the gun was fired the initial round would cause the blank to also fire as the bullet went past thereby increasing the velocity.
100% correct - even changing a single part of your firearm (a rifle stock, for instance) can affect the firearm's performance with different ammunition.
Semi-auto pistols are by far the most problematic - their barrels are so short that the chamber pressure can drop before the bolt has received enough of an impulse to push it all the way to the rear.
Even revolvers should be tested with different loads. My wife has a S&W .22 rimfire revolver (purchased new), from which some fired cases are almost impossible to eject. Changing to a different load (IIRC, she settled on Remington HPs) solved the problem...
Thanks. I still haven’t tried the CCI Quiet .22 40 grain HPs, mostly because I put in a lifetime supply of these:
https://www.remington.com/ammunition/rimfire/cbee-22
a number of years ago to address the need for something that would feed from a 10-22 magazine when manually cycled. 33 grain truncated hollow point( their Yellow-Jacket bullet, I believe) cut at the tip to segment on impact
CCI is, to the best of my knowledge, the only company to ramp up production of the low-profit .22 round, and I’ll reward their investment when I can.
Aquila ammo is like the Mexican CCI, and I don’t mean that disparagingly. They make a wide variety of specialty ammo. I tried a lot of different ones for fun, and have many varieties in the collection.
And, just for the hold-my-beer-and-watch-this-hell-of-it, there’s this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hcBFR3BDd0Q
If you don’t want to click on it, it’s just some folks putting .22 cal pellets in a rifle and propelling them with the kind of .22 blanks used in construction to drive nails. I don’t know if the Kalifornia law covers the purchase of either of those.