Reloading - Bullet selection vs Barrel Twist
I recently bought a Browning X-Bolt Varmint Stalker 22-250 Rem. Prior to this I had already started assembling what I would need to reload for this rifle. (I plan ahead - mostly, which is the reason for this post).
As part of my preparation I bought 500 Hornady 22 Cal .224 53 Gr V-Max boat tails. Now you can imagine my displeasure as I sit down to begin reloading only to read the caveat in the Hornady 9th Edition manual. These bullets will not stabilize in barrels slower than 1:14. Of course my new Browning is in fact a 1:14 twist.
At this point I am feeling rather ticked at myself and figure the only solution is to learn something from this. So I set about going to read more about how bullet stabilization is measured and applied. In a nutshell it is simply a function of speed and twist to yield sufficient revolution of the bullet as it leaves the barrel. A bullets stability is a function of its caliber and overall length (I am summarizing so please don't think that these are the only factors).
More reading can be done here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling...llet_stability
So, now that I have a better idea of what the factors are, I found two links to help with this.
http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmstab-5.1.cgi
and
http://www.bergerbullets.com/litz/TwistRuleAlt.php
If you are reloading and having issues with accuracy and consistency it may be worth some effort to run the numbers and see if the issue isn't related to twist ratio.
In my case I managed to resolve the problem for the most part by adding speed. With a 39.1 Gr load of CFE 223, these bullets leave the barrel at +3950 fps (I have a chronograph).
They are not as accurate as cheap Remington bulk 55 Gr SP but not as bad as I would have thought.