Old Powder, Old reloads

[RossRR]

My father would take a trip annually to the Dakotas to shoot prairie dogs with a variety of rifles and ammo. When he passed in '98 I kept his 22-250 along with a bunch of reloads he had ready for his next prairie dog hunt. I was a normal busy working man back then and never got the gun out to a range to try it out but, being retired now, I took it out last year to see how it shot. The gun did not group well at all at 100 yards and some of the reloads wouldn't let me close the bolt on the rounds in the chamber so I put the gun aside. This winter I decided to look at his reloads. The ones that wouldn't chamber were "gov't 30 cal" casings according to what was written on the boxes and the stampings on them was some government lot code so those I disassembled and tossed the casings because the case heads looked different from the casings marked "22-250" or "250 Sav". Of the remaining reloads, I took a random ten rounds, extracted the 55 gr. bullets and measured the powder weight from each round. The powder loads varied with a difference of over 2 grains from the lowest to the highest so I took another ten rounds and checked them and found the same inconsistency. I disassembled those 300 rounds, dumping what was labeled as "BLC-2" powder into a coffee can and started reloading the cases with my own powder and load. I noticed that my measured loads were filling the cases to various heights in the casings, with some filling to almost the top of the casing. When I dumped that new powder into a bowl, I found some grains of the old powder within the new powder. I took a small screw driver and I scraped the interior of those cases and discovered that some of the old powder was "caked" to the inside of the casings. I went through all 300 cases with the small screwdriver and found that most were clean of the old powder but maybe 20% still had some old powder clinging to the casing. My question is "Do you think they would shoot OK if there are still a few random grains of the old powder that my scraping effort didn't extract?". I would prefer to save the primer so I don't want to solvent clean the casings if I don't have to..

 

[wvbuckbuster]

If you mean by random grains referring to the kernels a couple wouldn't hurt. If there is in fact couple of grains of powder which would be several kernels, then I wouldn't load those cases. Clean and make sure there's none left. If you didn't, I would remove the decapping pin or raise the stem in the resizing die then size again to get the neck tension back after having pulled the bullets. This way you won't deprime the case and can still use them. You did the right thing by scraping those different cases. Sounds like your father made cases for the 22-250 from 30-06 military cases.

 

[Todd NE WY]

Given the different case head stamps and possible powder left overs I would scrap the cases and start with new. Brass is cheap enough to not risk it.
Todd

 

[mjcmichigan]

Sorry, I would advise don’t shoot. Have had too many experiences with ammo made by others that wasn’t well marked. For instance
A box of 270 Winchester that was labeled 130gn Nosler partitions, but the box had 130’s, 150’s and a grand slam bullet.
Had like 7-8 boxes of these handloads.
Crimped so hard I broke a kinetic bullet puller disassembling them.
Also, boxes said 60 grains of H4831 for both 130’s and 140’s and 150’s. If that’s right, there are some hot loads.

Now to caked powder… that could be a sign of moisture. I had a flood and thought I recovered much of the loaded ammo.
But the federal fusion 300WSM all left extractor marks on the case, and velocity per my Garmin showed 300 fps spread … all same lot purchased ammo.

So bottom line, you’ve seen problems up close, powders mixed in small quantities, chambering issues. Grouping issues. Safer to do over. I’d disassemble or dispose of the old loads. I’d also buy some new brass. Starline is generally good enough for reliable loading and much better than the mass market name brands (Remington/Winchester). If you want really good brass, Lapua has very consistent necks.

250 Sav and 22-250 relationship.
22-250 is a necked down Savage 250-3000.
Could be the 250 Sav’s are necked down,?but if not chambering, are they 22-250’s or 250 Sav’s?

Many 22-250’s are a 1:12 twist.
Mine shoots 40 grain VMax in clover leaves, but anything over 50, not so well, more like 1.5+”.

If you’d like some recipes,?I can tell you what worked best in my single shot 26” bull barrel savage. Seems TAC, Benchmark, and a couple other powders worked well in that gun. (It’s in my reloading log)

 

[clearwater]

Making the brass from 06 is doable, but you have to turn the necks since on 22-250 brass you are making the neck out of the brass body of the 06 and making the neck thick. That's one potential problem that would lead to high pressure, difficulty chambering and inconsistent performance.

If a lot of liquid lube is used when sizing, (like when trying to squeeze a lot of brass down near 22 caliber) it can get in the case and cause the powder to clot, maybe even misfire if not cleaned well before priming and loading.

Pull the bullets for reuse. Maybe decap and reuse the primers if you feel confident in being safe doing so. Get new brass and powder.

 

[RossRR]

Thank you to all for some sound advice. The ones that wouldn't chamber were the ones with the government lot code stamping on the head. I'll be tossing all of those casings. The ones with "250 SAV" chambered just fine. I've decided to disassemble everything and, in addition to the gov't casings, I will toss the old powder. I also noted that the gov't head stamp loads were all crimped so tightly that there is a crimp ring imprinted into the copper jacket of the bullets so I will be throwing all those bullets away (about 300). That leaves around 400 with a "22-250" or "250 SAV" head stamp. Out of curiosity, I took a box of 100 or the "250 SAV" cases that I'd pulled the bullets and dumped the powder from and used my small screw driver to scrape the inside of those cases. Doing so I accumulated 155 gr. of powder or an average of 1.5 gr per casing...a significant amount of powder. I then went through all 100 again and tried to scrape again and this time I was getting only 0-10 granules of powder from each casing. Based on this, I am going to try ten with 37 gr. of H380 behind a 55 gr spire pt. bullet and see how they shoot. I know the consensus was to toss the casings, but 400 casings with primers are between $200 and $450 depending on where the casings are purchased (from my scan of internet pricing); if I can even find some in inventory. I looked at four suppliers and they all said "out of stock".