Handloading the .223 Remington with inexpensive cast lead alloy bullets to duplicate the trajectory of the .22 magnum saves money over the price of .22 WMR cartridges. Years ago I used to think I was daft to cast these little .22-caliber bullets the size of small vitamin pills when jacketed bullets cost about 5¢ apiece. But the outlay for these jacketed bullets has doubled and even tripled during the last couple of years. The price tag of .22 WMR (and .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire) cartridges has also gone through the roof with costs of 19 to 36¢ per shot.

So my .22-caliber moulds are back at work again casting bullets. A breakdown of the cost of a .223 cartridge loaded with a cast bullet is approximately 2 to 4¢ for propellant, 3¢ for a primer, 2¢ for a gas check and 1¢ for lead alloy, or about 10¢ per shot. That’s half to a third the cost of .22 WMR cartridges. The fun and fulfillment of handloading the cartridges is an added bonus.

The .22 WMR shooting 34-grain bullets at 2,120 fps has a trajectory of about an inch high at 50 yards, right on aim at 100 yards, 5 inches low at 150 yards and 17 inches low at 200 yards. Forty-grain bullets from the .22 WMR with a muzzle velocity of 1,910 fps drop a few more inches at 150 and 200 yards. These trajectories can be matched with a 55-grain cast bullet with a muzzle velocity of about 2,000 fps. Cranking the velocity of the 55-grain cast bullet up to 2,200 fps nearly matches the flatter trajectory of the .17 HMR.

Picking Propellant

Relatively fast burning pistol-type powders usually produce good accuracy with cast bullets at up to 2,000 fps in .223. Unique is a favorite. Seven grains of this bulky powder fill three-quarters of a .223 case, generate speeds of nearly 2,000 fps and shoot great. With the RCBS- 55-SP bullet and 7.0 grains of Unique, groups are as tight as .59 inch at 100 yards. I don’t think I’ve ever shot a group much larger than an inch after years of shooting this load in several .223 rifles. However, pressures rapidly increase to over 35,000 CUP with Unique when velocities are stepped up over 2,000. Eight grains of Unique bumped the RCBS bullet to 2,093 fps, and group size enlarged to 1.48 inches.

I started using Accurate 5744 only a year or so ago, but it’s rapidly becoming a preferred cast bullet propellant. It is a slower-burning powder than Unique. Pressures are about 20,000 psi with 12.0 grains of 5744 and the Lyman 225646 55-grain cast bullet in the .223. That load shot a 1.05-inch group at 100 yards, with four of the bullets in .61 inch.

Other good powders with cast bullets include Varget, TAC and X-Terminator. These powders, however, do require charge weights about twice as heavy as Unique to reach 2,000 fps with a .22-caliber cast bullet. That’s a significant increase in cost if you’re pinching pennies.

The .223 doesn’t burn much of any of these powders with cast bullets. Some amounts are similar to those loaded in the .357 S&W Magnum. So I tried a small pistol primer with several powders to find if the primers provided enough gas to ignite these powders and at the same time reduce pressure and turbulence to produce more even speeds. That was the case, at least somewhat, with Unique. Winchester Small Pistol primers have an extreme velocity spread of 55 fps compared to 68 fps for Winchester Small Rifle primers. As Table I shows, small rifle primers produced a narrower velocity spread with other powders and lead alloy 55-grain bullets in the .223.

                                                                                                                    Lead Alloys

What bullet speed you should choose depends on the lead alloy of the bullets. Bullets cast of common wheelweights are sufficiently hard for speeds up to 2,000 fps. Above that speed accuracy begins to suffer because the higher pressure and velocity distorts the bullet. Because wheelweights contain a slight amount of arsenic, they can be heat treated to harden them to withstand velocities up to 2,400 fps or so. However, I would rather have a tooth pulled than heat treat bullets. The process seems to take forever to size the bullets, heat them for a time in an oven, quench them in water and finally run them through a slightly larger sizer die to seat a gas check and lubricate them. Most of my cast-bullet shooting in the .223 is limited to 2,000 fps. I mould bullets with wheelweights because the lead alloy is inexpensive and readily available. What little lead fouling is left in the bore by these bulletsbis easily removed with a brush and solvent. I took an easier approach and cast all the bullets listed in the load table out of harder Linotype. Linotype is much harder than wheelweights, which provides good accuracy up to about 2,400 fps. However, that accuracy also depends on the amount of pressure generated by the powder used. I used to seat cast bullets in the .223 so they were snug against the rifling. But several times after shooting 100 or so rounds at ground squirrels, lubrication and powder fouling accumulated in the beginning of the rifling. When a loaded cartridge was pulled out of the chamber, the bullet remained stuck in the rifling. To keep that from happening, I now seat the bullets back from contacting the rifling lands. You would think I would just take a minute and clean the bore, but there are ground squirrels to be shot.

In the Field

In case a coyote runs past at long range, I keep a Remington Model 700 SPS .223 sighted in to hit 2 inches above aim at 100 yards with Nosler 50-grain Ballistic Tips for a muzzle velocity of 3,332 fps. With that scope setting, 55-grain bullets cast from an RCBS-55-SP mould with 7.0 grains of Unique hit right on aim at 100 yards. At 50 yards the cast bullets hit about .75 inch high, 2 inches low at 125 yards and drop off 4.5 inches at 150 yards. So I can knock off a ground squirrel by aiming right where I want to hit it out to 125 yards. At 150 yards I can roll one perched on its mound by aiming at its little bitty eye. The best part is that I can see all the action because the cast-bullet load generates about one foot-pound of recoil in the Remington .223. The 55-grain cast bullets have slowed to 1,300 fps at 150 yards. The explosive effect of the bullets on the little gophers is still fairly spectacular. At that speed the bullets probably are not expanding. More likely, the bullets are tumbling on impact. Whatever the reason, the cast bullets certainly wreck the little varmints just as much or more than bullets fired from a .17 or .22 magnum rimfire. Handloading the .223 with cast bullets not only saves some money compared to buying .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire ammunition, but it also provides improved bullet performance. That’s a big part of what handloading is all about.