Ever one to try a new product (so long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg!) and on the look out for new dynamic, but more importantly, LIGHT bullets for my Sportco Martini Hornet, I read a review of these in Australian Shooter by Tom Tabor.
He used his 22-250 and was very impressed with the effect and while I noticed the super light weight nature of them I didn't think much about it until I saw the price in adverts.
Normally we pay about AUD$50 for a pack of 50 Barnes bullets.
For AUD$20 less I can get a 50 pack of Woodleigh Bullets so you can see why I'd support the local product.
They are, of course, not .224 cal but when the Varmint Grenades got such a good write up and they were AUD$31 for 100 pills I decided I had to try them. :)
I picked them up today and they'll be loaded with 11gr of AR2205 powder & a Rem 7 1/2 BR primer and tested at this Saturday's range meet.
Has anyone else tried these either in a Hornet or another cartridge?
If so how did you find them?

I have not tried them, but Handloader magazine has a write-up this month on them out of a couple of different guns and calibers, including a 15" .22-250 Encore pistol.
 
They show one disentigrating on a grape at about 4000fps, so I'd guess they are pretty frangible. The article goes on to say that they are made of pressed, powdered copper and tin with an open, empty tip cavity. They are shown to go about 6-8" in gellatin, but this is with a very high impact velocity.
They display good accuracy in the article also.
 
The article was glowing, but most articles tend to be.
 
Don't know if that helps you or not. Since you've already bought them, I guess it doesn't much matter now. Let us know what you find.

Fully intend to, mate.
They really do seem the biz, though.
Anything that light with such a drastic frangible design has got to be good on foxes, hares and bunnies.

Kombi, have you ever used bullets made with corn meal or cream of wheat cores? They are very light and discentigrate quickly. If you happen to have a set of bullet making dies for the loading press, it's no problem making them. Also 22 caliber jackets made from fired 22  LR cases make them even more violatile. NEVER use nickel plated 22 cases for bullet jackets tho. These jackets are no trouble to make using a loading press. Bullets of this type won't exit a fox hit with one.  ......Paul H

Where can you get bullet making dies that fit a reloading press?

subsonic, Corbin Mfg. makes bullet making ddies for the loading press.  ..........Paul H

Thanks. I check them out.

And now back to the Varmint Grenades......
Well, I loaded some up and made some pretty fundamental errors.
But first things first there are some things to state about the Varmint Grenade.
Firstly, despite the fact they're only 36gr they significantly longer than the 35gr Vmax I was using before, almost by 40%.
The following pic is poor but shows by how much:
 

 
So while a 11.3gr load of ADI AR2205 fitted with the Vmax it was pretty heavily compressed when I tried seating the Barnes V-Gs.
As such I seated them to where they felt comfortable.
And then the next problem arose.......OAL.
Of course I didn't realise this would be a problem....until reached the range this morning.
The chamber and throat in the Martini Hornet must be right on official OAL because the the breech block would not close.
When that happened I faced ANOTHER problem.
I had CRIMPED 6 of the loads.
So all 6 of them found the bottom of a barrel of water.
Only 3 of the V-G loads were short enough to chamber and when I tried them they were super hot, so much so that they had trouble extracting.
The primers had flattened and it was clear the compressed load was way too hot.
They also shot "minute-of-mastodon" and were barely on paper.
On top of that I shot three 3-shot groups using the Vmaxs with the same load.
One or 2 had issues extracting and all were crimped but each shot a group just over an inch.
Backing off on the charge will probably yield better results with them but they're plenty accurate enough for the small game hunting I'd do with it.
So I won't be pulling apart the other 25 rounds I loaded.
Meanwhile, however, it's back to the drawing board with the Varmint Grenades.
I'll have to play with the the seating until they chamber easily and then work out exactly how much room that leaves in the case.
It'll mean starting at minimum loads....in other words, from scratch.
Serves me right, really, but they should be worth the effort.

Be careful crimping non-lead-core bullets. Frangible "pressed" bullets can fracture where they are crimped, or at least break internally, where only the jacket is holding the front part of the core. I have seen 9mm bullets break off at the case-mouth when taper crimped and the same thing in .38spl with a roll-crimp. I don't know what Barnes has to say about these bullets, but it might be worth a call to them.

Nuff said.
I'll give the crimp a miss when test loading them.
All of my crimped test loads were too long OAL-wise and and have found a watery grave so it's not like I have some unsafe rounds floating around.

Kombi, there is little need to crimp jacketed bullets for normal use in moderate to light recoiling rifles. Single shot rifles don't need crimping at all.   .....Paul H

In those terms, yes, but sometimes it tightens up the groups and improves accuracy.

kombi,
I know this is an old thread but how did you get on?
 
I understand that the Barnes V/G's are too long to be stabilized when combined with the hornets twist rate and slowish velocity, but I could be wrong.
 
Why are you crimping your loads? Does it make any difference? My own experience shows it has no positive effect but each rifle is different.
 
Lastly have you tried small pistol primers? They work well in my CBC Hornet and I'll give them a try in my Sportco when I get it.

Hi All,

     Hmmmmm well in my limited testing using a Lee factory crimp die it turns out that in my rifle with that loading the crimped groups tighter than not crimped ammo. This was in 30-30 in my bolt action. I want to try this with the 308 but I first need to get some new 308 dies, most likely Collect dies this time so will have to buy the crimp die seperately, have them in 30-30, 6.5x55, 7x57 and 303 if memory serves me right.

Quote from: 22hornetkombi,
I know this is an old thread but how did you get on?

Not well, not well at all.
 

Quote from: 22hornetI understand that the Barnes V/G's are too long to be stabilized when combined with the hornets twist rate and slowish velocity, but I could be wrong.

That's pretty much the conclusion I came to.
I would've thought with a decent load that they probably would, being roughly the same length as a 50gr pill but it was not to be.

Quote from: 22hornetWhy are you crimping your loads? Does it make any difference? My own experience shows it has no positive effect but each rifle is different.

Crimping worked well when I was using the 36gr Hornady Vmaxs but it hasn't made any positive improvement with the 40gr Nosler BTs I'm now using.

Quote from: 22hornetLastly have you tried small pistol primers? They work well in my CBC Hornet and I'll give them a try in my Sportco when I get it.

I'll be interested to see how they shoot.
Which powder do you use......AR2205? AR2207? Win 296?