New CZ 457 American

[JAS]

Hi All,

TESTING IS COMPLETE. PLEASE SEE MY POST ON 6/4/2020.

New here. Ever since I was a young kid I've always wanted a .22 magnum rifle and finally checked that box three months ago.  I now own a beautiful CZ 457 American in .22 Mag.  I had a Nikon Monarch 3 in 4x16 - 40 laying around so I mounted it on the new rifle using Talley rings. That plus a bubble level which you can see mounted in front of the turrets. 

Then immediately the ranges closed because of the virus!!! The ranges are finally open so off I went to give the rifle a try.  I am very impressed with its accuracy!!  I've posted an image of a 15 shot group @ 50 yards below, shot from the bench. That group was made with Hornady 22 WMR 30 gr V-MAX ammunition. So far the rifle seems to prefer the lighter pills.

LOVE the rifle!

Best,

JAS

[david s]

Shoots as good as it looks. The 22 magnum isn't known as a target cartridge just try and find magnum match ammo, looks like you found it's sweet spot.

[JAS]

Shoots as good as it looks. The 22 magnum isn't known as a target cartridge just try and find magnum match ammo, looks like you found it's sweet spot.

Thanks David, I appreciate the feedback. 

Most people will wonder, why 15 shot groups? Well, I've been at this long enough (shooting since age 8 - retirement age this year) to know better than to make accuracy judgements from 3 and 5 shot groups. I could show people .25 MOA and smaller 5 shot groups with this rifle at 50 yards. Are they representative? No. In statistics and probability they call that "cherry picking". Those size groups are not representative, neither of the firearm/ammunition combination nor the shooter's ability. I could see exceptions to the 15 shot rule if paying a dollar or more a round though!

Larger samples are always better. That has to be weighted by the shooters ability to "do their part". The larger the sample the larger the chance that shooter errors will creep into the sample. That's not a bad thing though. It just tells you how good you and your rifle work - together! And, it's not a good idea to "aggregate" 5 shot groups because that doesn't take impact point variability of the measured group vs other groups into account. I shot other 15 shot groups the same day that clearly show this. Nothing to do with the rifle or ammo, it was all me! Will be glad to post them. They are classics  .
 
Talking about ability, as I've gotten older my ability has diminished considerably. I consider myself able to "do my part" nowadays at about 65 to 75 percent of the time. In this particular group I did my job. In my case 15 rounds is a good number because I can only do my part for so long these days. So, for me and my new rifle I'm looking at 1 MOA if I do my part. That's good enough for me at age 65!

For an in depth look at group sizes look at the link below. It's a recent article (2019) at the NRA-SSUSA website and quite informative. Tyros like us have known this for years....

https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2019/9/25/accuracy-testing-shortcomings-of-the-five-shot-group/

Thanks again,

JAS

[david s]

You know what they say, "If you want a perfect group only fire one shot". I'm also to the point where it's more an indicator of my ability that day than the capability of the rifle with regards to groups. The last target group I saved was fired with my CZ Varmint in 17 Hornet. When the rifle was purchased in 2013 I could only locate two 25 round boxes of ammo and no empty brass. The two boxes of ammo were different lot numbers and one box gave consistent 3/8 " groups the other lot number gave 3/16" groups. I saved one of the smaller groups so that I couldn't lie to myself about how good my hand loads were. My reloads (mostly on reformed 22 Hornet brass) are in the larger 3/8 inch class instead of the smaller saved target. So I'm still trying to improve my reloads.

[JAS]

You know what they say, "If you want a perfect group only fire one shot".....

Nice shooting David!

Ain't that the whole unabashed truth right there! By the by, that was an outstanding group you posted. Speaks volumes to your ability. Not mentioning the rifle's accuracy except to say that the more I learn about CZ rifles the more I'm leaning into the premise that CZ rifles are more accurate than most all of us.

Back to our ability, the same day I shot the group I posted above I shot other 15 shot group with different ammunition. The one I'm posting below was shot with Federal 30gr. V-Shok (a Speer HP bullet).

This is a classic user error group that would have never been noticed using 3-5 shot groups. By shooting a 15 shot group I now know that the Federal V-Shok round is actually quite accurate, I just didn't do my part. For whatever reason, I was alternating between two different rifle to human interfaces which resulted in an ugly ~2MOA group. But thanks to shooting 15 rounds the aforementioned reason is obviously true, it was me ALL the way, not the rifle or the ammo.  Two very distinct groupings in the image, that tells the whole story. I was perfectly doing exactly two different things every other shot!

If I had shot just a 5 shot group I would have discarded the ammo. Now I know that this ammo is very accurate. I just didn't "do my part"

Best,

JAS

[eastman]

You know what they say, "If you want a perfect group only fire one shot".

and draw in the "point of aim" after firing to make sure it matches the point of impact   

[JAS]

Went out today to continue testing WMR ammunition.  I'm still having problems finding a good 40 grain round so that testing continues. The recoil impulse on the rifle with the 40 GR rounds feels quite different from that of the smaller 30 grain rounds and I'm getting vertical strings.

I did find another 30 grain load that works. The CCI 30 GR Polytip. Will be buying a brick of that too.

The first image below is 20 rounds with one flier.  The second image is 5 rounds to verify how tight I could make that a 5-shot group. I works very well!

Best,

JAS

20 shots 1 flier - 50 yards CCI 30 GR  Polytip



5 shots - 50 yards CCI 30 GR  Polytip

[david s]

I'm not familiar with the 457 rifles, my 452 Lux has a forend screw and tension there can be adjusted. If the 40 grained bullets are a priority you might try some positive forend pressure (I'm assuming your rifle is free floated) and see if it settles down. Of course that's going to effects how the 30 grain loads are shooting.

[skin]

Jas, out of my cz 512, Fiocchi 40gr hp shoot fantastic at 50 and 100 yds.

[JAS]

I'm not familiar with the 457 rifles, my 452 Lux has a forend screw and tension there can be adjusted. If the 40 grained bullets are a priority you might try some positive forend pressure (I'm assuming your rifle is free floated) and see if it settles down. Of course that's going to effects how the 30 grain loads are shooting.

The American doesn't have that feature but you got me thinking. SO, I went and checked the action bolts and the front one was only like 10 in/lbs!  It had come loose. It's possible that the extra recoil of the 40 grain rounds were moving the barrel slightly in the vertical because of that.

Now, action bolts torque specs are all over the map on the net. I finally found a video on CZ's YouTube site about changing stocks - 457 specific.  The guy torqued the bolts to 31 in/lbs. I used 30 for margin of error.  Back to the range next week to check on things. Will update soon.

Here's the video:

https://youtu.be/scLMxR8SXmo

Thanks!

JAS

[JAS]

Hi All,

The load testing for my new 457 American in .22 Magnum is complete. The tightening of the action bolts mentioned above did not have much of an effect on the 40 Grain rounds. Those shoot 2 MOA on average.  A pleasant surprise was the CCI A22 Gamepoint "Savage" round. It's a 35 Grain PSP (pointed soft point) that turned out to be very accurate. The pictures of the final results are below. Of the 40 Grain rounds the more accurate ones, if you can call them that, were also all PSP rounds.

Over the course of three days/weeks I shot over 250 rounds of 12 different kinds and brands of ammunition. All shot at 50 yards and in controlled conditions where wind was not a factor. I believe I have a really good grasp of the accuracy of the rifle and of the rounds as well. Other rounds in the 30 grain category, like the Federal TNT HP round were quite accurate, but not consistent enough to beat the 30 Grain winners.

CCI 40 Grain Gamepoint. A PSP type bullet. All other 40 Grain loads were within a couple of 1/100s inches of this group. The three shots at the top could be called fliers, but this is a consistent behavior across a multitude of 40 Grain loads tested.




The CCI A22 .22 Magnum 35 Grain PSP.  A very powerful round @ 2100 FPS, which can stay supersonic to ~240 yards. By far more than any other round tested. The fifteen shot group shot @ 50 yards measured .51 inches, including a called flier. So the most potent round is also tied in the top three accuracy wise with this rifle. Excellent round!




The top two rounds in the 30 Grain category were the Hornady and CCI V-MAX rounds. It was pretty much an identical performance which is not surprising because both of them use the same bullet and both from very reputable manufacturers. Although I shot a better 5-shot group with the CCI round, The Hornady would have edged in front had not for me pulling the fifth shot with the Hornady ever so slightly to the right. I called that one and had it not been for that the Hornady would have taken the top honors. That group is below. You can see the fifth shot on the right.  I used the Ballistic X app for the first time in that image which showed a .011 larger group than the calipers. 11/100s is not an issue but calipers are better.





So there it is. The top three rounds tested on this 457 American in .22 Magnum were:

Hornady 22 WMR 30 Grain V-MAX
CCI 30 Grain V-Max 22 WMR
CCI 35 Grain Gamepoint 22 WMR

They are all capable of TRUE .5 MOA performance, consistently. Any of those three will work great but I have to give the gold medal to the CCI 35 Grain A22.  It's the most powerful cartridge of the lot with great accuracy performance and was a very pleasant surprise. This 35 Grain round can more than take the place of the 40 Grain rounds in terms of both accuracy and terminal performance.

Hope this helped some of you!

All the Best,

JAS

[Big mike k]

Nice lookin gun


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[AustinPower]

Hi Jas, can you tell me what size rings those are from Talley?
Thanks!

[Lock-n-load]

Awesome!