Here's my musings. Winchester owns the company that made the nailgun cartridge that the 17wsm is based from. If they already make the "base cartridge" (which maybe they neckdown, maybe they don't) then Winchester would not need to produce it themself, just get in the empties and fill'm up. My guess is (and I maybe totally wrong here) I doubt that a "nailgun" cartridge would be made to the same exacting standards as a cartridge that is purpose built. ? ? ?
Last edited by Downunderimfire; 12-15-2013 at 12:37 AM.
I had thought about buying one of these but after reading this I will stick with my model 93 22 wmr. It only reaches to 150 efficiently but boy does it group. It has a heavy fluted barrel and is as accurate as any gun I have ever shot. Clover leafs at 50 yards and 1/2"-3/4" at 100.
Anything longer than that justifies the 6.5 creedmore model 12 LRP.
I have weighed ammo as well and still cannot get groups to print consistent. Shoot 3 rounds that are 1.5'' , let barrel cool, shoot 3 more and the spread will be 3" at 100yds. What I can't under stand is the few folks with Bmags that shoot well right out of the box, without weighing ammo ? How can that be with ammo that is so inconsistent in weight. I have shot 350rds and at this point I believe it is the pencil thin barrel harmonics that is causing some of the inconsistent accuracy.Originally Posted by syvairgunner
I want to try one of those rubber thingy's for harmonic dampening, they just slide onto the barrel just to see if it helps.
bflee, what ammo are you shooting?
Hornady 30 grain vmax. My rifle loves them. The bad thing is I can't find them anymore. I got several boxes when I bought the rifle and have had to buy CCI since then. They are not as accurate in my gun. I have found that the win heaters shoot about as well in the 30 gr. but they have primer issues with the 93 design. Most of the time about 7 out of 10 will shoot. I just hate pulling the trigger and hearing a click!
Well after several test sessions with my Bmag I still have not improved the accuracy at all. Most of the tests involved attempts to reduce barrel harmonics using rubber grommets and barrel supports. Again 50yd groups are mostly under an inch with the occasional flyer, 100yds forget it ! either ammo weight, weighed ammo, bench rested etc. I guess it is , what it is......a disappointment of a rifle.
After 400rds there is no rhyme or reason to the inconsistent groupings.
I agree with the people saying don't put all the blame on the rifle. I have not gotten into reloading yet but I just got a new powder scale, an RCBS Rangemaster 750. I don't know whether it's a good or bad quality scale since I have never had one before. I just wanted to weigh these .17wsm cartridges and see for myself if they are as bad as I have read. After setting it up and calibrating it, I started weighing 20gr. cartridges from a new box. I quit after a little more than half the box. The weights were from 63.2grn to 65.1grn and I weighed them more than once and calibrated the scales each time I started over. Anybody care to comment on this? And yes, I probably don't know what the H*** I'm doing.
A follow up on my previous post on weighing rounds and accuracy. After talking with a rimfire bench rest shooter and learning they measure the height of the rim along with the weight of the rounds I measured rim height and shot rounds that weighed the same and had the same rim height. Result: Did not make any difference on accuracy.
Went shooting yesterday and tried the 3 "O" Ring set up and again I can't say it made much difference. Started at 50 yards to make sure the rifle was sighted in then moved out to 75 with the thought of ending up at 100 yards. We stopped at 75 yards and gave up because of the randomness of the groupings. Happened to have my two air rifles with me and moved the target back to 50 yards and shot better groups with the air rifles.
After giving up on the range we moved to ground squirrel eradication duties on the ranch and by the end of the day we were at about 70% on squirrels out to about 125 yrds. So it may not shoot tight groups on paper but in the real world the odds are against the squirrels. This was with 67.3 and 67.4 weighted 25 grain rounds and gusting winds up to 15 MPH. To me the bottom line is it is what it is and a bench target rifle it is not.
I wonder if the barrels were heat treated correctly, the BMag has one of the flimsiest barrels I have ever had on any rifle. The inconsistency in ammo doesn't help any, I weighed 15(I know, not that many) and shot them, measured the fps with the magnetospeed crony
Series Shot Speed Weight
1 1 2958 ft/sec 63.12 gr
1 2 2972 ft/sec 63.28
1 3 2970 ft/sec 63.46
1 4 2923 ft/sec 63.24
1 5 2953 ft/sec 63.42
1 6 2958 ft/sec 63.30
1 7 2962 ft/sec 63.44
1 8 2963 ft/sec 63.28
1 9 2983 ft/sec 63.44
1 10 2963 ft/sec 63.44
1 11 2927 ft/sec 63.44
1 12 2953 ft/sec 63.08
1 13 2958 ft/sec 63.28
1 14 2999 ft/sec 63.48
1 15 2956 ft/sec 63.48
Poorshot, it isn't a bad scale if it reads the same everytime you put the same weight on it
I weighed a full box of 25g ammo back in the fall and found it to have a wide range of total weights but when I shot the weighed ammo, I would get a few tight groups and a lot of groups that still had a "Flyer" and sometimes two. I kept most of the empty brass from that range session and weighed it, finding that the brass alone has a weight variance that even exceeded the loaded ammo. Now, my B-mag shoots pretty well when compared with many here. With 25g it groups (three shot groups) .0500" at 100yds and 1.300" at 200yds. Five shot groups always open up as the ammo is simply not of a match grade consistency. Frankly I doubt Winchester has the desire (or is it the ability???) to make match grade rimfire ammo. I have a 22lr that is capable of shooting 0.250 (sometime better) 5 shot groups at 50yds with good Lapua or Eley ammo. Loaded with Winchester T22 Match ammo it can barely group under 1" at 50yds. Need I say more? As for the 20g ammo, my B-mag shoots it to a 2" higher POI and larger groups. It does not like them much. With that thin little bbl, it is never going to be a match grade shooter even if we had Eley making the ammo for us.
What it is, is a nice hunter grade rifle with better ballistics than the 17hmr and light weight to boot. I like mine.
Irish
I own (2) CZ 452 American rifles. One in .17 Mach 2 and the other in .17 HMR. Both are very accurate. I remember reading when they first came out that Hornady made the bullets for all the other manufacturers to load. Not sure if this is still true or not.
I also own a Savage.17 WSM B-Mag. Does Hornady manufacture the .17 caliber projectiles for the .17 WSM? If not, could the bullets be of inferior design/construction. Perhaps it's a dumb question but I really want the .17 WSM to shoot. Pictured is the 25 grain .17 WSM bullet, the 20 grain .17WSM bullet and the .17 grain .17 HMR bullet. I damaged them a bit removing them as my inertia bullet puller does not work well on these small bullets. I did notice the .17 WSM bullets are flat based...not a boat tail like the .17 HMR bullet.
This is a great question and one that without some insider telling us, will be difficult to determine. However, I know that Winchester has long had a strategic alliance with Nosler for ballistic tip bullets for some of their larger centerfire products. I would not be surprised to learn that they also supplied the bullets for both the 17WSM and the Winchester brand of the 17HMR. I have usually had slightly better accuracy with Hornady bullets over Nosler but both are very high quality. Another anecdotal observation is that of all the 17HMR ammos available, my Savage 17hmr shoots worst with Winchester 17g ballistic tips. It shoots best with CCI HP's but shoots all of the other ammo better than Winchester. My understanding is that all of the 17hmr ammo is made at CCI except for the Winchester variety. Your theory might be correct. I dunno.
I also own a Savage.17 WSM B-Mag. Does Hornady manufacture the .17 caliber projectiles for the .17 WSM? If not, could the bullets be of inferior design/construction. Perhaps it's a dumb question but I really want the .17 WSM to shoot. Pictured is the 25 grain .17 WSM bullet, the 20 grain .17WSM bullet and the .17 grain .17 HMR bullet. I damaged them a bit removing them as my inertia bullet puller does not work well on these small bullets. I did notice the .17 WSM bullets are flat based...not a boat tail like the .17 HMR bullet.
I recently got a digital scale to use with my reloading and was in process of loading some match grade ammo. I had selected a 50g Nosler bullet for this particular set and had weighed and sorted the cases and decided to weigh the bullets just for grins. I was disappointed to find that the bullet weights ranged from 49.8g to 50.2g. I had always assumed that high grade bullets would be made to more exacting tolerances. As I was writing this, I got curious and went to my loading room and weight another box of Nosler 40g BT's and found them to be better. 90% were exactly 40.0g with only 10% weighing 39.9g. The first box was of the combined technology variety silvertip with the black oxide coating. The 2nd box was std bare ballistic tips. Just for grins, I opened a box of V-max 40g ballistic tips and weighed them. They actually varied more than the Noslers with weights ranging from 40.0 to 40.4. A 1% variance. I have no idea what limits the precision of their production process but if it can only be held to about 4/10ths of a grain regardless of bullet weight, that would be an interesting bit of data if it also held true to the 17's. You would have to pull enough bullets to have a statistical sampling. I for one have no plans to do that. It is not worth wasting too much time on variables we have no control over.
I will add one more observation. Even when using the best CCI ammo, my Savage heavy barrel 17HMR is still slightly less accurate than my B-mag WSM. The 17WSM ammo may not be great but I think most of the accuracy issues we are seeing are more related to some of the B-mag guns than to the ammo.
Irish
I have the same issues with Winchester's 17HMR ammo, shoots the worst out of all the other ammo available from my Savage 93 BTVS.
Only when shooting Winchester 17HMR will my Bmag out shoot my BTVS. Load up some Hornady HMR and it will shoot under .5" at 100yds all day long. Not quite there with my Bmag.
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