Heirarchy of Lapua .22 for bullseye

Been shooting matches with SK Pistol Match or Pistol Match Special. Also have a secret cache of Flatnose that I love. (My average is now a bit under 280).

If I were going to try some Lapua, I am having trouble understanding the hierarchy of their .22 pistol loads and costs. X-Act, Midas, Center-X, OSP, King? If I look on ammoseek, it seems that King is the cheapest, so I am super confused.

What would you recommend I try, or should I just stick with the SK since I'm not shooting 295's? Does the Lapua have the SK pistol snot all over it too?

I use Eley for practice, have a ton of Action 40g from when it was 3.25 at Killoughs and CMP bulk too.

(Shooting a Pardini SP if that matters)

All of my competitive 22 pistols shoot X ring or better with CCI SV. I share that because cheaper ammunition can hold X ring. The premium ammunition does shoot better and has softer recoil. I do use for the bigger matches. But CCI SV is capable of shooting 300-30X. So your ammunition is not holding you back using the SK. So buy what you can afford and know that it’s probably going to hold X ring with no problem. 
Jon

(Sample size 1)
SK Pistol Match, dry case noticably oily bullet, length 0.979"
Eley Club, very lightly waxed, .984"
Lapua Pistol OSP, dry case noticably oily bullet, .972"
Lapua Midas +, dry case lightly oiled bullet, .974"
Lapua Center-X, dry case bullet heavily oiled/waxed, .972"

Those three Lapuas appear to use the same bullet. The SK pistol match appears identical until we get to the very tip, where the SK is smoothly rounded and the Lapuas taper in at an angle.

So yes, these sampled Lapuas have similar oiling/waxing (hard to tell quite which it is) to the SK pistol match. My understanding is that they're made by the same firm, possibly in the same facility.

At the beginning of Covid Midway was selling Lapua IIRC for ~60% off and so I bought quite a bit ...

I plan to chrono these from my Pardini. The SK and Eley have markedly different levels of felt recoil (SK soft); curious to see how much variance is in the Lapua both within a box and between lines. I've been told the Midas+ is a rifle round. I saw two finalists were shooting OSP in the "2020" Olympics Mens rapidfire 25m, for whatever that's worth.

AFAIK, all the Lapua ammo is coming out of the SK plant in (formerly East) Germany. I have an old white box marked Lapua, East Germany.

I have some older Midas in gold boxes that is labeled Finland. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if some lower grade stuff of similar vintage is Finland or EG.

I haven't shot enough of my newer Midas + to know whether it's as good as the gold box is/was. It made what I thought was a good lot of Tenex EPS look like decent practice ammo.

Mike,
It is MY opinion that an expert ( like us)would not be able to take advantage of the difference in accuracy 
between a good ammo and the best ammo.
If the ammo shoots a 1/2 inch group from a ransom rest in a given pistol instead of 1/4 inch 
that 1/4 inch change in impact may be just enough to get ME in the ten ring instead of a nine.
If it goes bang and functions the pistol it works for me.
I have shot personal best scores with not high quality ammo.
These are my thoughts and others will chime in for sure.

G

Gary Collette wrote:Mike,
It is MY opinion that an expert ( like us)would not be able to take advantage of the difference in accuracy 
between a good ammo and the best ammo.
If the ammo shoots a 1/2 inch group from a ransom rest in a given pistol instead of 1/4 inch 
that 1/4 inch change in impact may be just enough to get ME in the ten ring instead of a nine.
If it goes bang and functions the pistol it works for me.
I have shot personal best scores with not high quality ammo.
These are my thoughts and others will chime in for sure.

G

Hi Gary,

I agree. I shot my three best scores (294 and a 291 at 50' and a 100 slow at 50') with my Eley practice ammo that I bought for $3.25/box of 50.

But there is also the mental side, and if I think I'll shoot better with "better" ammo, maybe I will.

I am willing to spend some money to find out.

Anyway, still hoping someone can tell me the "Good Better Best" of Lapua.

Team Zero is Lapua sponsored. They shoot Center X

TMBK

1. X-Act
2. Pistol OSP / Polar Biathlon / Polar Biathlon Extreme
3. Center-X 
4. Pistol King / Midas +

AP

Just a follow up to my own question....

I bought a brick each of Pistol King and OSP (Olympic Sport Pistol).

All the other cartridges (X-Act, Midas, Center-X and the two Biathlons) are all over 1050 feet per second, so more for rifle than bullseye pistol.

Pistol King is spec'd at 886 in a 4.7" barrel, OSP 869 (my Pardini is a 5" barrel)

See here, page 24:
https://www.lapua.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Lapua_Catalogue_2021_US-Letter_ENG-USA-www.pdf

Anyway, I shot them both and like the OSP much better than the Pistol King.

Both have some waxy liquidy lube on them, but nothing as wet as the SK Pistol Snot.

The OSP could become my favorite match ammo, replacing the SK Pistol Match Special. They're both ridiculously expensive at like 25¢ round, but at least I have determined what I like, and I can keep an eye out for the OSP at a decent price. For now, I do still have cases of ammo and am in no stress..

I think you can send your gun to Lapua USA and they will lot-test it and give you the opportunity to purchase a quantity of the best lot(s). Killough also does that for Eley AFAIK.

That's really the only empirical way to find out. There's more lot-to-lot and gun-to-gun variability in .22 than there is among different lines in a given brand.

(Insert legendary Bill Demarest story here.)

john bickar wrote:I think you can send your gun to Lapua USA and they will lot-test it and give you the opportunity to purchase a quantity of the best lot(s). 

Yes, they offered that. But how can I send my baby away and be without her?

 

Reach out to Lapua and see if you can be present for lot testing. Try and schedule around one of the Cardinal matches.

mikemargolis wrote:The OSP could become my favorite match ammo,

I've found OSP to be a bit on the soft side recoil-wise, which is good for sustained rounds but it makes it a little bit finicky. It also seems to be a bit dirty so I kind of had to keep an eye on things with it. In a Pardini youre probably fine!

Pistol King is similar, a little snappier but not as much as SK Pistol Match. A friend with a model 41 had no luck with it, many FTEs. I got a few boxes as a bonus!

At the ASSA Smallbore National matches I talked to a gentleman sitting behind the Eley vendor table. I asked him about the difference between pistol match and rifle match.

I thought pistol match would have more sensitive primers and have a sharp, defined pressure curve to function semi auto pistols.

I was told, nope. The difference between pistol match and rifle match is in the lube. Pistol match has a thinner vegetable based lube. Rifle match is a beeswax based lube. The rifle lube is thicker and will cause resistance to battery, whereas the vegetable based lube provides less resistance to closure.

I was really hoping the answer was priming compound and pressure curve, and I still want that to be the answer. But I was told otherwise.

At one Regional, a shooter with a President 100 patch on his uniform was wiping the lube off his Eley red box pistol match, and then wiping the ammunition with an oil rag. I guess he had one to many malfunctions with 22llr.

The basic thing is will the match ammunition function your pistol? 

when cheap 22lr shoots like this at 50 yards out of a rifle






I am not worried about its accuracy in a handgun on the standard Bullseye pistol target.Of course I have had those say "that's a rifle target", which the answer is yes. I can't hold that hard with a pistol. But assuming that CCI SV will shoot inside anything I can do with a pistol, the next concern is "will it function the gun"?

I've shot a fair number of 22 target rifles with various brands and grades of ammo. For my purposes, nothing made in the USA, other than the old Federal Match (1000?), or Ultra Match would be 'usable' compared to Eley Match or Tenex, or Lapua Midas. Green Tag was just garbage. Sorry ...

But a pistol? Well, yeah ... my CZ, or the Kidd 10-22 I screwed a Wilson barrel on, shoot pretty good with CCI SV. or whatever I can dig out of my 'scrap bin' of ammo.

Like the smartest man that ever lived once said: "it's all relative".