I have a Stevens Walnut Hill in .22 Hornet that I believe has a .223 barrel. Found .224 cast lead bullets but no .223 so far. Will this cauuse a problem? I have a supply of .223 jacketed bullets but would like to try lead. I've seen discussions in the past that slightly oversize cast lead bullets are ok but I like to be sure. Will stay with low end load for this rifle due to the weak action design. It's a 44 action.

I have two Hornets (Ruger No. 3 and Low Wall) and a relined Stevens 44 in .22 WCF.  IME the best cast bullets are the biggest diameter gas-check designs that will chamber in the case.  In the Hornets, this is the  Ideal 228367, sized 0.228”, with as much 4198 as I can trickle into the case through a tube, ~9.5 gr or so.  The Ideal 225462, sized 0.225”, works nearly as well.  These loads are just about at 2000 ft/sec muzzle velocity.  Accuracy is 2” or under at 100 yds.

For the Stevens 44, I’ve mostly used an Ideal 225107 which is oversized enough to size to 0.228”, with 4.3 gr Unique.  My 44 is beefed up somewhat in the linkage, but I haven’t tried the heavy-bullet loads in it yet.

All of them do OK with the usual Hornet bullets sized to 0.225”:  225438, 225415, the plain base 45 gr Winchester, etc, but it seems like all of them like oversize, and the solid breeched ones appear to indicate that oversize/overweight bullets work even better.  The Low Wall and the Stevens have AFAIK standard Hornet twists and diameters; the Ruger might have a 14” twist, but I’ve never measured.  Holes are round at 100 yards and under.

It’s enough to cause a Crisis of Faith in Gunwriters!   

YMMV, of course, but as long as you mind your charge weights and shell lengths to keep pressures down, a thousandths (or even a few more) in nominal bullet diameter is not disastrous, and sometimes even helps.

I bought a Lyman 22 cal mold many years ago to try in my Hornet. It was a gas check design. I couldn't get the gas checks to seat without distorting the bullet since either the bullet shank was too large or the gas checks were too small. In hind sight I should have ordered a plain base bullet since the object was to shoot them in the 1000-1100 fps range. I was using soft bullets with that velocity in mind and had no reason to cast harder bullets since the jacketed ones were cheap and accurate. I may have been able to seat the gas checks on a harder bullet but that would have been pointless in view of what I was trying to do which was to duplicate 22 long rifle velocity for small edible game. The impact point of the bullets I did get to work was so far different from my high velocity jacketed coyote loads that the whole idea was a failure anyway. Some times that happens.

JS

As I remember Barry Darr did some really good work breech seating a .22 Hornet on a fix Brothers action. I remember a photo of the cutest little mold he made for casting the bullets.

40 Rod

The single shot Hornet I play with (aside from the bolt guns) is a German kiplauf. Normally those 5.6x35R's have bores dimensioned much like .22WCF rather than like Hornets. This one has a tight-ish bore for a 5.6x35R (.225 groove diameter, .226" throat diameter), much closer to Hornet dimensions in that regard. (And yes, I use Hornet dies to load for it, with a home made expander plug to provide a better neck fit for the .226-sized cast bullets I use. It's ROT is 1-9".

My favorite bullet for this rifle is the Lee Bator, a Midway house special not available anywhere else. It's a nominal 55 grain, blunt (very blunt), gas checked design. My mold produces 53 grains, wheel weight alloy+tin, bhn 12-ish. .226" out of the mold- it goes through the lubrisizer to lube and seat the check only. They are fed through this rifle as-cast. After a lot of testing I settled on 6.0 grains 2400 for a .22RF Magnum performance level, with accuracy hovering around 1/2-3/4" at 50 yards, 1"-2" at 100 yards depending on how much coffee I've had and the alignment of the stars and moon. (4 grains Unique is a close second place.) That bullet is blunt enough that when sized to .224 and fed into a tight bored slow twisted Winchester M54 Hornet, it shoots even better than out of the kiplauf. Go figure.

1.5-2.0 grains Bullseye under that bullet makes for a snappy .22LR-like load. A pound of powder goes a loooooong way.

Lube: nothing special. Just regular old NRA formula 50/50 alox/beeswax.

The RCBS 55 grain flat nose shoots well in the kiplauf also due to the fast rate of twist. It truly sucks out of my other "normal" Hornets. Too long, it is.

I should note accuracy/bench work is done with a 6x Small Game scope, squirrel hunting done with a 3/4" Redfield 4x baby big game scope.

I could live out my Golden Years playing with nothing but cast bullets in Hornets and Lovells, and die a happy man.

Barry is still with us and no one I know of has had more success and Ballistic Program Data on the 22 Hornet and Breech Seated Cast. He also shot it in our 200yd. ASSRA Anysight monthy Matches.

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