Does anyone here shoot .22 LR in high volume? I have a .22 pistol that keyholes intermittently but it currently looks like it only does it with Federal "Automatch" bulk pack from Wal-Mart.
My shooting session of a few hours ago, starting with the gun freshly cleaned and well lubed:
250 rounds Federal Automatch, two failures to extract, three duds, at least seven keyholes at ten yards, very dirty, could feel and hear that these were very inconsistent
150 rounds Armscor 36gr high velocity copper plated hollowpoints, no problems, decent groups at ten yards, a bit dirty, orange sparks (I assume burning propellant) visible spraying out of the ejection port a few times
300 rounds CCI "Mini-Mag" 36gr high velocity copper plated hollowpoints, no problems, good groups at ten yards
Leading was not bad. Almost all the fouling present was propellant residue. Cleaning the bore was the work of less than five minutes with a boresnake and carburetor cleaner. It's going to get wet patches with copper solvent put in the bore to stand a bit and I'll then clean it a bit more, but that never results in more than the smallest, barely visible trace of green on dry patches pushed through afterward.
Is anyone else seeing this kind of problem with Automatch? It seems like the quality has declined badly over the past three years or so. It used to be decent plinking ammo and a well kept secret for the money. But the price kept going up and it got dirtier and dirtier, more and mo