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1253 E. Vilas Road, P.O. Box 235
Medford, OR 97501
MRPC Membership = $50/year
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BULLSEYE PISTOL Monday 7:30pm Practice
  • Director: Dave McFadden.
    Email: DMcFadden@AvistaCorp.com

  • Scheduled practice: Monday nights, indoor range, 7:30pm

  • NRA Rules: www.BullsEyePistol.com web site has the full set of rules for registered matches. Ideally, a person would use them for their own practice. We shoot the 50-ft indoor 900-point, 9-target course (National Match Slow/Timed/Rapid plus individual 2-target stages of each = 9 targets, possible 100 per target = 900 perfect score).

  • Firearms: any safe target pistol or revolver. Most commonly used is 22 LR target-style auto-loader, .38 Revolver or auto, .45 ACP auto.

  • Sights: any for practice (competition matches limit to open iron sights or red-dot scopes)

  • Ammunition: 90 rounds for full practice match, or 30 for National Match portion only. Any non-magnum load centerfire, or any rimfire.

  • Required Equipment: Hearing protector

  • Optional Accessories: 15x to 25x spotting scope, extra magazines


Fire from a standing position, 50 ft range. Slow fire stage is 10 rounds in 10 minutes, timed fire is two five-shot strings, 20 seconds each, and rapid fire is two five-shot strings, 10 seconds each.

Use .22 rimfire pistol with open or red dot sights (most commonly selected are target autoloaders), or any other caliber or style of pistol for practices. Commonly used calibers are 38 revolvers and 45 autoloaders such as the 1911 Colt or similar. The 2700 match, which consist of three 900 matches with one each fired with 22 rimfire, 38/9mm or similar centerfire, and .45 Service pistol, is the major event for competition. Because of time and cost, most people do not practice the 3-gun series on Monday nights! But there isn't any problem if you want to. Just shoot one 900 with everyone else, then stay and shoot the other two 900's after they leave!

Monday night practice matches are relaxed, with any kind of handgun or sights permitted, subject to the limitations on use of magnums. Targets are furnished and included in the $1 (member) or $2 (non-member) range fee. Bring a staple gun, push pins, or clothes pins to hold the target on the cardboard backers (furnished but you are welcome to bring your own, if you like).

Bullseye Target Nine targets are shot starting with all the slow fire targets: Slow fire 10 shots stage 1, Slow fire 10 shots stage 2, Slow Fire 10 shots National Match Course. All 10 rounds are fired without interruption for slow fire. Then one timed fire target is shot, stopping at 5 rounds and commencing again for the second five at the same target, followed by one rapid fire (again, atwo five round strings). Finally, two timed fire and two rapid fire targets are shot, stopping at 5 rounds and commencing again for the second five at the same target. The perfect score would be 900 (300 for the National Match of one slow, one timed, and one rapid, plus 600 for the total of the Slow, Timed, and Rapid fire individual 2-target matches). Hits in the smallest ring inside the 10-ring (called the X ring) are used to break ties, as in 750-5x versus 750-8x: the latter wins).

The slow-fire targets have smaller "black" score areas than the rapid-fire and timed-fire targets. For this reason, the slow fire is usually a lower score than timed or rapid. Beginners with a reasonably accurate pistol can typically shoot scores of 400-500 (out of possible 900). With 22 rimfire pistols, the most accurate shooting is normally done with standard velocity "target" 22 long rifle ammunition rather than the high velocity or hollow point ammo sold in bulk.

But even an experienced 800+ shooter may have practices where a shifting grip, poor trigger control, mental or physical fatigue causes shots that not only miss the black, but sometimes miss the scoring rings completely! You don't need to worry about anyone looking down their noses at your beginning targets, because everyone has been there and revisits from time to time! Trying to help other shooters shoot better scores is part of the sport.

Because the cost of bulk 22 ammo is so low, it is worth experimenting to see if your pistol will shoot reasonably well with it when you are first learning. Later, when your skill begins to develop, you will want better ammo to go with a target grade of handgun. But you can still learn and do reasonably well with "plinking" grade pistols and low cost ammunition. When your scores have leveled out (usually in the 650-750 range) and you can't seem to place the groups any closer to the bullseye, it is time to move up to better ammunition and perhaps a pistol with closer to 2-1/4 pound trigger pull, crisper release without pre-travel and over-travel, and certainly to trade in the standard fixed sights for adjustable target sights or a red-dot LED sight (not a laser projected dot, but a floating red dot in what looks like a telescopic sight but does not magnify the image).

Lower cost pistols typically will cycle more reliably with bulk ammunition than the closer-tolerance target grade pistols, because the lower cost ammo usually has greater size tolerances. Some brands of 22 ammo have oversized cases or diameters of bullet, which may not be enough to affect the operation of a loosely chambered hunting or plinking grade pistol. But the tight tolerance chamber of the target gun might cause the oversized case to stick or fail to feed. This is an instance where getting a better gun will sometimes require purchasing more expensive ammunition. Some guns will only feed reliably with a certain shape of bullet, in addition to the tolerance concern. All 22 ammunition is not alike, as you will find out as you move up to more precisely made target pistols.

Other than malfunctions caused by oversize tolerances or improper distribution of priming compound, most standard velocity and some high velocity 22 rimfire ammunition seems to be adequate for people shooting up to the 750-800 score levels. Expert pistol shooters who can maintain higher scores may find that there are enough "flyers" or rounds that do not have the same velocity or point of impact, even when everything else is perfect, to let them improve their scores.

For them, the only answer is to test a wide variety of brands and loads to find the best for their particular gun, and perhaps to limit themselves to top quality competition loads offered by various ammunition firms. Three reasonably priced brands which seem to give good results are the CCI standard velocity target solids, the Remington standard velocity target solids, and the Blazer high velocity solids.

In case lots, you can get prices of around $1 for 50 round box. Some of the competition-grade 22 ammo is priced from $2 to $5 for a box, and the difference in accuracy may not be enough to affect scores below about 850. (If you are shooting better than that, then probably you are already using higher priced ammo or would notice some difference if you did.)

For the Monday night practices, just about any ammunition that will work well in your gun is fine. Standard velocity recoils less and usually puts the bullets closer to the same point of impact (more consistently) than high velocity loads. The bulk ammo usually is hollow point high velocity type and may not let you shoot quite as good a score, but until your scores are at least in the 650-750 range, the main problems to overcome will be your trigger release control, grip consistency, sight alignment, and other human factors.

Anyone is welcome to come to the Monday night practices. Show up before 7:30 and someone will help get you started, regardless of the caliber, type of gun and ammo that you bring. Make sure you have hearing protection, and figure on bringing at least 100 rounds (two boxes of 22 LR) since we fire 90 round courses, and you need a few spares in case of malfunction or bad priming (more common that you might think!).

Revolvers can be used, but they require more skill in trigger control during the timed and rapid fire stages (since you only have 2 seconds per shot during rapid fire, you may find youself having to shoot double action rather than cocking the hammer for a single-action smooth release of the trigger). The most you have to fire before reloading is 5 rounds, so a typical 6-shot revolver works OK in that regard. In slow fire, hardly anyone uses the full allocated time, and as soon as the last person puts down their weapon and stands back from the line, the stage is declared "over" and a new target is put up, sometimes with only half the allocated time being used.

Bring your "plinker" or "kit gun" if you don't have a target pistol, and see how you do with it. If you are not satisfied with it, try one of the lower cost target pistols such as the Ruger Mark II or the new Mark III, or the 22/45 Ruger pistol. With the exception of the trigger, these can be excellent target guns, and even the trigger can be improved somewhat by a competent gunsmith and an after-market hammer and sear, and adjustable over-travel trigger. The long linkage from trigger to sear adds some drag and friction from normal powder fouling getting between it and the frame.

Pistols like the High Standard Citation or Smith and Wesson Model 41 have an inherently more direct trigger system that can be adjusted for less creep and over travel. The trigger pull on a 22 needs to be at least 2 lbs. The Rugers can safely achieve this (measurements on several turned up from 2-1/4 to 3 lbs, which is just fine, but they all had some pre-travel and a less "crisp" release than more expensive guns).

In timed and rapid fire, a recorded set of range commands announces the name of the stage, and the time to completion, as in "Shooters, you may handle your guns. This will be the second timed fire stage of the timed fire match: two five-shot strings, twenty seconds each. With five rounds, LOAD!"

Then, after a few seconds pause, "Is the line ready? Ready on the right? Ready on the left? All ready on the firing line? Commence fire!"

As soon as "you may handle your guns" is heard, shooters pick up the handguns and prepare to insert the magazine or to close the cylinder on a revolver. When the command "LOAD" is heard, shooters insert the magazine and chamber a round, or close the cylinder on their revolvers.

At this point, you have a round chambered and the gun in your hand, with your finger OUT of the trigger guard, and the gun pointed downrange but resting with your arm extended on the table in front of you. When you hear the command "Ready on the right" or "Ready on the left", you normally would raise your arm and acquire the target, and then move your finger inside the trigger guard. When you hear "all ready on the firing line", you should begin to get a pattern of the natural movement of the gun so that as the sights move across the bullseye, you can begin to take up slack on the trigger and hold it as they move past and start back. It is almost impossible to hold a rock-solid sight picture with a 2-4 lb pistol extended at the end of the arm, so the next best thing is to learn to time the natural weaving of the arm so that as the sights move past the center of the target, a little more pressure is applied to the trigger and held.

At the command "Commence fire!" the sight picture should be settling down to that normal moving pattern, and you should be ready to surprise yourself when the trigger finally releases just as the sights move back across the bullseye again. If the actual firing moment is a slight surprise, then it indicates that you were concentrating on your breathing, your sight pattern, the slow increase of pressure on the trigger, and maintaining the same consistent grip on the gun to the point where you didn't "jerk" the trigger, and the firing of the gun interrupted your concentration rather than being the object of it.

In slow fire stages, you fire ten rounds, and have ten minutes to do it. Hardly anyone needs that much time, but you can take it all. Some shooters break this up into two five shot strings because their guns are designed to work with less than a 10-shot magazine, and the slow fire then is more like the timed and rapid fire stages in regard to loading. But when you hear "Commence fire!", you have the full time for all ten rounds. There is no break after each string of five shots.

In timed and rapid fire, you will get 20 seconds for 5 rounds, or 10 seconds for 5 rounds respectively. After each five shot string, you will hear "Cease fire!" and then "Make your weapon safe: slides back, magazines out, guns on the table." At this point, everyone keeps their hearing protection on. The next command is a question, "Are there any alibis?"

An alibi is a malfunction of the gun or ammo that prevents you from firing the entire five shot string. If you have an alibi, hold up your arm and say "Alibi!" so everyone can hear and see you. If your gun is clear and you can load another five rounds, then this just indicates to the other shooters that after the second string of five, you'll want to fire however many rounds you could not shoot in the first string. However, you must disregard your highest scoring hit, or one of them if there are several equal high scoring hits. This is because you have an unfair advantage in being able to take more time for your alibi shots.

But before you shoot any alibi shots, it is time for the second string of five rounds. You hear next "Shooters, you may handle your guns. This will be the second string of the timed fire match: five rounds in twenty seconds. With five rounds, load." Normally you have enough time to put five cartridges in a magazine during this time, but it is better if you have two magazines and fill them both after each target is taken down and replaced.

Then you hear "Is the line ready? The line is ready. Ready on the left. Ready on the right. All ready on the firing line. Commence fire!" This is announced in a slow cadence so you have time to get ready, check your grip, pull back the slide and chamber the first round, take a deep breath and let part of it out, and acquire a sight picture. Usually the gun is held with an extended arm resting on the bench top (with the gun pointed downrange), finger out of the trigger guard, until you hear "ready on the right" or "ready on the left". It is up to you, but you normally don't want to hold the gun up any longer than it takes to make it stable and get a good sight picture.

When you bring up the gun, the front sight or red dot can pass upward through the center of the target, and then down again to get the right side to side alignment. Some people like to have the gun go off just as the sight drops past the center of the target, others as it rises close to the black, and some prefer to hold the gun as close to the same height as they can and let the sight drift back and forth, tightening the trigger every time the sight swings across the center until finally, the gun is fired just as the sight is starting to make another pass across the center. In rapid fire, the up and down drift is exaggerated by recoil, so it may be easier to fire as the sight drops across center (recoil will tend to raise even a 22 with a target velocity round so the front sight is above the black and needs to come down again).

After the second string of five round has been fired, and the guns are put on the table again, the question "Are there any alibis?" is again asked, and at this point anyone who had malfunctions of the gun or ammo in either of the two five shot strings calls out "Alibi!" and indicates clearly that he intends to fire an "alibi" string. After making sure that everyone on the firing line has recognized and heard this, and has indicated it by keeping their ear protection in place, and by stepping back from the line, the person or persons who have malfunctions can shoot as many rounds as needed to make up for the malfunction (that is, if the first round failed to fire, you may have to fire five shots, and if the second to the last caused a jam, you may have to fire only two shots).

Usually, the person firing the alibi round indicates completion by removing the magazine (or opening the cylinder on a revolver), pulling back the slide, and placing the gun on the table, then checking to see if everyone else has done the same. It is a good idea to call out "Clear!" to indicate that you are done, although if the number of shooters is small and they are obviously watching, it isn't necessary (a sanctioned match requires more formal procedure than the practice sessions, though, so it is always good to follow procedure as if a match were taking place just for the practice).

The range master or other designated person in charge, usually a director, will say "Go forward and put up a timed fire target" or whatever the next target needs to be. No one should go forward of the firing line until it has clearly been stated that the line is safe. Sometimes if there are only two or three people on the line, and they are all experienced with each other's habits and safety, everyone will just nod to each other, take off their hearing protection, and perhaps say "OK" or indicate that they are ready to change targets, because everyone can see the other guns on the table. The main thing is never to take it for granted that everyone has quit shooting: If a new shooter is on the line, using official procedure is best. At the very least, it is hard on the ears for someone to fire off one more round just as you go forward with your hearing protection off!

Bullseye pistol shooting is a sport of concentration and consistency. With open sights, it is also a sport for the sharp-eyed, but the newer red-dot LED sights make it practical for shooters with less than youthful vision to compete. The drawback of red-dot sights is that they add more "top-heavy" weight to your pistol and may tend to exaggerate the normal tremors and recoil. They are not "telescopic", since you see the same size target as with iron sights, but they impose a red dot that eliminates parallax, so you don't have to focus on both a front and a rear sight while seeing enough of the target (fuzzy as it may be) to center the sight picture. You can focus on the target alone, and the red dot will still appear sharply on it. The sights do not change your grip and trigger release, but they compensate for poor vision. If you have good vision, then the red-dot sight may not be any advantage over target iron sights.

Note that the laser beam projection sights used for combat are not very useful here and are not the same as a red-dot sight. Because of the precision required to place the bullet close to the center of the target, the alignment of a projected dot (or the image through a telescopic sight) would bounce around a great deal more than an unmagnified one. It would be like taking hand-held long focal length lens images with a camera: the shaking that you don't notice with a normal or wide angle lens is almost enough to make you ill. You have no bench rest devices, no sling, no prone position to minimize this movement with the one-hand grip on a handgun, and the 10-ring is too small to allow much movement.

Scoring the target is done by counting the score indicated in the various rings where the bullet makes a hole. A hole that touches the line for the next higher ring gets that higher score. Any hole that is outside the rings is a miss and gives a zero score. Since most people will soon develop enough skill to get the majority of their bullets into the black area of the target, is it faster to count the losses than to add the gains.

That is, if your bullet hits in the 10 ring, you add nothing. If you miss entirely or count only 9 holes, you add 10. Any other holes are scored by adding the difference between that score ring and 10. So for instance, if you had four 10's, three 8's, two 7's and one 6, you would just ignore the four 10's, add 2 for each of the 8's (six), 3 for each of the 7's (six), and 4 for the 6 (four), which lets you add 6 + 6 + 4 = 16 lost points out of a possible 100. That is 84.

It may seem more complex than adding the score directly, but as your scores get better, it is actually much faster to count the lost points. If you usually shoot better than 850, it means you will only have to add up about 15 points average on a target, instead of adding up 85 points to get to the same score. It soon becomes second nature to think of a 90 point score as 10 points off, or 80 points as 20 off. But it's all up to you. The score is just to see how you are improving and to judge if some new technique helped or not.

During actual formal match competition, more strict rules may apply. In some cases there are 3-gun matches where you must fire 22 LR, 38 or 9mm pistol and 45 ACP, and in some there are centerfire or rimfire only rules. In the formal matches, one hand grip only is allowed (not two-handed as in combat-type shooting). There are restrictions on barrel length (10 inch maximum) and artificial support aids such as reinforced gloves, etc.

But in the Monday night practices, you are welcome to use whatever you want. Bear in mind that if you are practicing for later competition, anything you have learned in practice should apply to the match, or you will be at a disadvantage to competitors who have been practicing under the same rules as the match uses.

Many shooters enjoy the practice matches with no intention of going further in competition, and for them, it is fun to see how their scores compare to those shot using more restricted rules. Sometimes it is enlightening to see that longer barrels, telescopic sights, and even certain kinds of artificial support aids may not make much difference compared to the proper technique and consistent practices of bullseye shooting.

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Tips for getting in the black:

Imagine you are looking at a clock face. Your shots are landing at various hour positions around the face, and the reasons relate to the hour. Usually they will be in this relationship for a right-handed shooter:

  • 12:00 (High) means your wrist is breaking upward as you fire. Keep the wrist straight and pull straight back on the trigger.
  • 1:30 (High and right) means you are anticipating recoil.
  • 3:00 (Right) means you are squeezing the thumb or have your finger too far into the trigger. Use your finger tip instead of the center of the trigger finger.
  • 4:30 (Low and right) means you are tightening your grip as you pull the trigger.
  • 6:00 (Low) means you could be breaking the wrist downward, pushing the gun forward, or drooping your head.
  • 7:00 (Low and sligtly left) means you may be jerking or slapping the trigger.
  • 8:00 (Low and more left) means you may be tightening your fingers on the grip.
  • 9:00 (Left) means you may be using too little finger on the trigger: try pressing with more finger in the trigger guard (further from the tip).
  • 10:30 (High and left) means ou may be pushing to anticipate recoil or not following through after the trigger release.
The grips can be a big factor for some shooters. If your hands slip or don't come to the same position each time you shoot, it is hard to adjust the sights so that the gun will move exactly the same way when you pull the trigger...you may be right on for a couple of shots, and then way off for the next shot, just because the gun recoils left or right to a different degree when your grip changes. Sometimes a fitted or finger grooved grip will help, but often it is a matter of getting into the habit of a consistent and exact way of grasping the grip. Some shooters use the other hand to push the gun more firmly into the shooting hand, and "seat" it.

Often the problem is concentration, either lack of it or applying it to one thing exclusively and letting something else drift to different levels or positions. For example, if a person believes that their grip is inconsistent, they may concentrate so hard on trying to keep the same feel that they forget about the smooth straight back trigger pull. Or they may be working so hard on the right amount of trigger pressure and perfectly staight pull that they forget about stance, breath control, or proper grip tension.

Too much grip tension can cause involuntary muscle spasm or tremor, but too light a grip may let the gun move too easily with the trigger pressure. A heavier barrel will add some inertia to the equation, so that the gun tends to move a little less but at the same time, it requires more muscle strength, so it can cause tremors to occur sooner and allow less time for a stable sight picture. Some people can shoot better with a relatively light gun, and others find that the heavier gun adds stability. Sometimes a person with a rather unsteady hand can still shoot high scores, because they learn how to control the trigger very well, and let the rapid movement of the sights form a pattern across the bullseye. As the sights swing across center, they learn the best point to squeeze off the shot, almost like leading the bird with a shotgun. All else being equal, a steadier hand and better eye will shoot higher scores, but all things are seldom equal. That is what makes Bullseye interesting.
Rimfire Ammo Misfeeds Related to Diameter
Dave Corbin
After losing far too many timed and rapid fire points to the "best shot" discard because of failures to feed, and going through dozens of brands and versions of different rimfire ammo (some of which mis-fed a lot less than others, but none of which seemed to be 100% in every match), and having my Mark II competition target pistol equipped with different kinds of extractors, special springs and all the other geedunks that pistol shooters hope will make up for either practice or talent, but seldom do, I finally discovered that most of the problem was oversized ammunition.

Using a high-end digital bench mike, I checked box after box of 22 Long Rifle cartridges, and found that most of them (regardless of brand) had variations from cartridge to cartridge, or from box to box, of from .0005 to .002 inches in diameter of the case or the bullet. The cases which measured .225 just above the rim usually would feed, but those larger than .2255 would cause misfeeds rather consistently. The lubrication on waxed bullets in some lots made the bullets oversize by as much as .0025 inches. Those would not enter the tight chamber of my Ruger slabside.

With lower cost pistols, which presumably have somewhat looser tolerances and perhaps larger chambers, the variation may not be a problem. A gun that will "shoot anything" probably has a fairly large chamber. It may or may not affect the accuracy, but it's likely that a closer tolerance chamber will start the bullet more consistently in line with the bore. In any case, in my own guns, I found that the top end models of any brand seem to have smaller chambers than the lower cost models, at least in those I've owned and measured. (I like to measure everything...it's a curse.)

My most accurate pistols generally are the higher end models of a given brand. Sometimes the difference isn't great. But it seems to go along with the smaller chamber idea. Unfortunately, the tighter chamber means that the more accurate guns tend to mis-feed the larger diameter ammo. If you always got .2240 diameter ammo by paying more, the answer would just be spending more for ammo. Unfortunately, some of the more expensive ammo also is over .2240 diameter, so it isn't enough just to spend more if you want to eliminate the mis-feeds. Maybe at the very top end, where you are paying upwards of five to ten bucks for a box of 50 rounds, but I'm not quite ready for that!

A fellow shooter noticed that when he had a lot of feed failures, the bullets were so over-lubricated with wax that they would not fit into his pistol, which was not a Ruger. Some of them wouldn't pass through the plastic grid holes in a 50-shell package. He made a simple tool out of a 5.56mm cartridge, pushing it over the bullet to scrape off the extra wax. Then, the cartridges would feed OK.

After measuring dozens of boxes of rimfire cartridges, I found that the variations sometimes were absent in several boxes and then would show up in up to half the rounds in another box within the same carton. Any cartridge over .2240 diameter, including the case and the bullet, might or might not feed (the stoppages usually were failures to enter the chamber on a second or third shot, but the first round would chamber from releasing the bolt or slide). But when the cartridges were sorted by diameter, and all those of .2240 or smaller were used in a match, there was not a single failure to feed. There were failures to fire (no priming), but never a mis-feed.

I had previously tried some of the low cost bulk ammo and discarded it because it wouldn't feed, and was using a medium cost match ammo instead. But after discovering that the diameter varied so much with all brands of 22 long rifle ammo, I went back to the cheap bulk 22 ammo and measured it. It was slightly larger and more variable than the ammo that was giving me 4-5 misfeeds per 900 point match (up to 5 out of 90 shots).

Since my manufacturing company builds bullet making dies, I asked my die-makers to make a .2240 hand operated, portable sizing tool for .22 LR ammo. The tool used a T-slot shell holder of very close tolerance, so that if the rim was too large or too thick, it wouldn't fit into the tool (and thus the tool would also be a rim gauge for oversize...but wouldn't give me more than a sensory perception of fit if the rim was undersized). The tool was made in the form of a sliding block aligned on two rails with the die holder block. The die, a screw-in bushing with .2240 hole, was honed to exact diameter and a mirror finish.

At first, I was a little worried about holding and pressing on the rim to insert and retract the cartridge. Some of the cartridges slid into the die and out again with almost no force. But the oversize ones took a fair amount of pressure.

I put a hard steel post in front of the die to keep the bullet from being popped out under pressure, and built an 1/8-inch aluminum U-shaped shield over the die area to catch the shrapnel in case of an accidental firing. But in thousands of sizings, none ever went off. The pressure on the rim is distributed over 3/4 of the circumference, and the close tolerance of the slot to the rim prevents the cartridge from entering if any grit or foreign matter is in the area. I was concerned that a bit of foreign matter might create a pressure point on the rim, but this proved not to be possible.

Sizing all my rounds to exactly .2240 produced immediate success. The failure to feed problem completely disappeared. I had nearly 100% feed success in every match using sized ammo. It didn't do anything for the failures to fire, of course, except for those caused by incomplete closure of the breech. Bad priming isn't affected by the diameter. So I still have a few alibi shots, but usually less than two per match with my medium priced ammo, or close to a 1% failure rate. Before, the combo of misfires and misfeeds was as high as 6% with good ammo, and nearly 20% with the cheap ammo.

Now, here is the real payoff: after sizing the cheap, bulk ammo, the failures to feed dropped to near zero, and the failures to fire were only about 4%. That is three or four shots out of a 90 round match, still not great, but far better than it was before sizing! And the size of groups that I could shoot with the cheapest ammo very closely approached the groups I was getting with the high velocity 40 grain medium priced ammo. With standard velocity 40 grain target ammo, the groups shrank somewhat, but not consistently. We're talking about actual one-hand match shooting, not from a rest. So what it meant was that at my level of shooting, I could still practice and improve my groups even with the lower cost bulk ammo, whereas before sizing it, the misfeeds just didn't make it practical to try and shoot that "less than a buck a box" rimfire ammo.

A better shooter would probably find he had to shoot the match ammo to improve his ability any further, because otherwise the cheap ammo, even sized, wouldn't let him see whether his hold and trigger control helped or not. A fellow shooting in the low 800's who still shoots in that range whether or not he uses better ammo still needs to improve his own ability a little before the better ammo would make much difference in his score. And that's me right now. When I was mostly shooting in the 700's the lower cost ammo wouldn't really show up as a very significant part of the variation. If I should ever get into the 850-900 range, then the better ammo will be important because the cheaper stuff doesn't keep them all in the x-ring even from a rest. But until I get closer to that (if ever), sizing the bulk ammo gives me reliable feeding, and enough accuracy to let me keep seeing my own improvement over the variation in the ammo itself.

The bottom line is, ammo makers need to hold closer tolerances on the diameter. But until they do, it seems practical to resize 22 LR ammo. Whether it is safe enough for someone to offer a commercial tool without risking an accidental firing is still open to question. My own experiment brought no problems with it. It seems to be possible to build a safe sizing system for a reloading press, where the entire cartridge was raised up into a tubular shield capable of capturing all the pieces if a shell would explode while being inserted or withdrawn from the die. If the die were designed so that it provided for gas expansion and didn't fit the cartridge like chamber and barrel, then the safety issues could be handled in a way that would make such a tool commercially feasible.

There is a tubular sizing die used by driving the cartridge into it, already on the market. This one scares me. I don't like the idea of pounding a live round into a tube that is a snug fit, like a barrel, using your mallet as the breech! Rimfires must be pretty hard to set off, after all. If no one has managed to shoot themselves or get an eyeful of brass with this tool, then the relatively gentle lever-operated push of a more complex mini-press tool seems a lot safer than I first estimated. Still, if you decide to make a sizer, it would be a good idea to plan for an accidental firing and design around it, so there is no way to build up enough pressure to propel the bullet, and so any brass shrapnel is enclosed safely, and the hot gas deflected in a safe way. If I were going to make a commercial one (no plans to do so), I'd rig up a firing pin and set off a bunch of ammo at various stages of insertion, and go back to the drawing board as many times as it took to design out any potential dangers.