Some years ago, I bought a custom .22 K-Hornet on a BSA Martini action with a Winchester Model 43 barrel. It came with a small supply of K-Hornet brass of indeterminate age. I shot a few rounds, then sent the rifle off to have new iron sights fitted. Events overtook me, and the rifle sat in the vault for several years. Recently, I pulled it out, loaded some new Winchester Hornet brass to blow out and started researching loads.

There is little new reloading data for the K-Hornet. The Sierra manual has some, which helped. Beyond that, however, I was left with Phil Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading (3rd ed., 2nd rev., 1953), some Lyman manuals from the 1940s and '50s and a couple of Speer manuals from the same era.

It is amazing to me that the ballistic experimenters from the 1930s emerged with their fingers and eyes intact. I have found in the past that some of the published loading data from that era are far hotter than I care to play with. I used some of Sharpe's .22-250 loads at one point and found myself with stuck bolts, pierced primers and one blown primer--and that was with one of his midrange loads.

I put it down to an overly tight chamber (this was a modern rifle, set up for maximum accuracy) and left it at that. After that experience, however, I never take Sharpe at face value: I check, cross-check and check again.

The K-Hornet is reputedly the first instance of a wildcatter blowing out a case to create a new cartridge. Lysle Kilbourn, a New York gunsmith and contributor to the Lyman manuals, put the "K" in K-Hornet, so one would think the data in Lyman books from the early '50s would be firsthand and rock-solid.

But there are a number of problems with the K-Hornet, a legacy of its parent case. First is bore diameter. Early Hornets were created with barrels of either .223 or .224 diameter, but some were even larger or smaller. I slugged my rifle's bore and found it to be .2225, so I stuck with jacketed .223s from Sierra. For blowing out the cases, I used .224-diameter lead bullets.

Then there is standardization. Kilbourn defined the K-Hornet, but, as Sharpe points out in an obscure corner of his 726-page tome on reloading, it was a loose definition.

At this point, I should mention that Sharpe's book went through three editions, and the third edition had several revisions. Instead of updating sections, Sharpe added supplements with their own indexes and page numbering. In the edition I have, data and vital information relating to the Hornet and K-Hornet are contained in three separate sections with no master index reference. It is easy to overlook critical information--and I did.

Regarding standardization, Sharpe mentions that Kilbourn changed his dimensions a few times and points out how important it is to be sure loads are tailored to your specific chamber. With this in mind, I started with Sharpe's loads and checked and rechecked them against Lyman, Speer and Sierra figures to arrive at what I considered modest, midrange starting loads.