CZ 527 impressions and 22 Hornet reloading questions

I tend to write my posts in long-form. I figure most people are here to "talk shop" anyway and have the patience for an essay-type post, but not everyone. I've put the questions in a special section below.

So anyway, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I decided to go with a CZ 527 Lux in 22 Hornet. I was only partly right.

For context, I had a post here where I asked for scope recommendations, and here where I started my quest for a cheap bullet.

CZ 527 Impressions
I've had a love-hate relationship with the gun since getting it last week.

The hate:
The bolt feels "sticky" sometimes. I had to get rid of the sling swivels because I hated them. Filled in the holes in the stock with ground-down unfired 22LR brass (actually worked pretty well). I did not appreciate that the scope ring mounts are a proprietary size, so I have not been able to mount my scope yet (in a few days, hopefully...). The single set trigger seems to "warm up" such that a good 12-oz pull turns into a dangerous 6-oz pull after a dozen or so rounds. The iron sights feel too narrow and precise to use in poor lighting conditions, or when the target is lit better than the gun, as is the case in my local indoor range.

The love:
When the single-set trigger is doing what I want, it's awesome. The normal trigger pull is great. The gun seems to be very accurate (but not too sure yet because, again, no scope yet). The iron sights are by far the most precise I've used yet. In proper lighting they're my favorite thus far. Stock feels really good in the hands and when firing. Rifle is very "handy" overall and if the bolt were smoother and 22 Hornet brass easier to find on the ground I'd want to use it for some action shooting. Recoil is of course minimal but still enough there to not get the "big bore itch" as when shooting 22 LR.

Reloading Background and Goals
That leads me to the hand load questions. This is my first time working with any rifle caliber, and I knew going into this that I was jumping into the deep end. Still, I want to quickly get to an acceptable level of "throughput" to shoot high volume. I will gladly fiddle and experiment and spend the appropriate time on each round to achieve the best accuracy when shooting for groups.

On that note, I have two main goals with the hand-loading:
High-volume Load: should be cheap (bullet), relatively quick to load on the turret press, get at least 2 MOA accuracy. With some luck, I can get a version of this to go 1500 FPS or so, because it would be very nice to shoot the cheap 22 LR steel targets without destroying them. That's a "stretch goal", though. One step at a time.
Accurate Load: Should be a reasonable price per round and not require excessive care to reload, but 30 seconds of case prep and measuring powder charge on a scale is expected. Sub-MOA accuracy.

As I mentioned I'm trying to get the high-volume load going first. Arguably this is more challenging but because I typically only get out to my range on the weekends it's more important early on that I'm able to shoot 50 to 100 rounds to get some trigger time than it is to have the perfect performance.

Current Setup
I'm using a Lee Classic turret press with Lee Collet dies and a factory crimp die. I have a rifle charging die coming in to use the Auto-Disk powder measure (obviously this is for the high-volume load only).

Bullet Choices
As mentioned in the other thread, I wanted to find a cheap bullet, but I got some mid-range ones for comparison, too. Here's what I saw with 12 grains of Lil' Gun. All prices include shipping for 500-1000 as of the time I looked it up:
42-gr Frangible ($0.08 ea), meant as a 55-gr FMJBT replacement, didn't stabilize. Keyholed at 25 yards.
34-gr Midway Dogtown ($0.15 ea) shot well, but stubby and no cannelure. I found it hard to load. Price is more like $0.13 in practice because it's from Midway and you always need something there anyway, so shipping only kind of counts.
36-gr Barnes Varmint Grenade ($0.17 ea) didn't stabilize. Also keyholed at 25 yards. Lead-free sucks for 22 Hornet, apparently. Just another reason to be glad I don't live in California.
40-gr Hornady V-Max ($0.17 ea) shot well, possibly the best of the bunch, but the bullet is too long. It won't fit in the magazine if seated to any reasonable depth, and the CZ 527 isn't very conducive to single-loading because the feed ramp is so far back from the chamber, which is squared off. Has a boat tail so it's very easy to load.
40-gr Nosler ($0.15~0.18 ea) also shot well, but it's just a little longer than I'd like. Still fits in the magazine. Don't know yet if it's more accurate than the Dogtowns. Has a slightly rounded base so it's easier to load.
40-gr JHP Armscor for 22 TCM ($0.085 ea) I haven't tried yet. It's next on my list to try. Not intended for 22 Hornet velocities, but the price is right, and the shape and weight imply it'll stabilize where the other cheap bullets wouldn't. Still a flat base, though.


Questions

1. Do I need an expander die? When I seat bullets, they tend to fall out or the seating die nicks the bullet while centering it. The bullets that work for me do not tend to have a boat tail. I may have got spoiled with .357 magnum and other pistol rounds in that it's really easy to seat bullets (charge-through expander, and crimp is more important than neck tension)
2. How much neck tension should I have? Seems like I might be close to maxing out how narrow the collet die can make the neck, but the bullet can still fairly easily be pushed further in. This happens even when a crimp is applied (with the crimp die I'm also at about 75% of max strength, I think).
3. Does this high-volume setup make sense? If I add an expander I'm at 5 dies, and it's only a 4-die turret. Because the brass is a little hard to work with I'm hoping to avoid putting it in and taking it out of the shellholder multiple times, but maybe that's the only solution?
4. (Rifle question) Anything I can do to smooth out the action? If I'm pushing from directly behind the bolt (choked up on the handle) it's pretty good, but that's impractical with a scope there. Anything I can do to smooth it out? Will it just work itself in? Stripping a round off the magazine seems harder to do than I was expecting as well. Is this just the price I pay for controlled feed?
5. Any advice or ideas on bullet selection (above) or getting down to the 1500 FPS range for potential 22 LR target shooting at 100 yards?

Thanks in advance for any answers or feedback!

@joneb sadly I don't have one, but I'm fine with buying a universal expander or similar if that's the right move, I just don't have space for it on the press....

@ROAshooter Not sure if you're surprised, suspicious, or just confused as to how that would work. Anyway I pulled the bullet from two 22LRs, cleaned out the priming compound, ground it down to basically just the rim, and glued it into the hole. It fills it up with brass so it looks halfway decent. Any number of more conventional methods would've worked but this is a very non-permanent solution because I can just pop them out later if I want to put the sling mounts back in.

@GooseGestapo My attraction to the frangible was that they were very cheap. The Barnes lead-free was just because it was a readily available bullet in the right weight range. I didn't think much about the length being a problem, but now I know better.

No hunting for me (at this point), I mostly want to plink, and also shoot paper for groups or very precise plinking (the two different loads for those two different goals).

I would love to get some of those "blems" if they pop up. They seem like just the ticket.

I'm not loading on a progressive, but a turret. Especially with the collet dies, I would agree that it makes no sense to try to run Hornet through a progressive. A turret press theoretically just saves me the time of putting brass in the shell holder a bunch of times, and given how "fiddly" the brass is, I would definitely appreciate it.

When you chamfer (but don't flare) your cases, do you find the bullet likes to fall off or get nicked up when seating? I wonder if I can just guide it into the die but sand down the sharp edges inside the seating die to prevent damaging the bullet.... The collet die set may be creating this problem for me, either due to the neck sizing or the different bullet seater.

@dh1633pm Did your CZs have smooth bolts right from the start or did they take some time to work in? I would say mine is getting a little better after about 80 rounds through it, but it's a little hard / too early to tell.
@TLARbb I hope so. It's encouraging to hear someone's had a similar experience. I'll try the thumb trick. I just tonight mounted the scope and I'm sure that'll change how I run the bolt anyway.

@JesseHeywood Because it's the collet die doing neck-sizing only I don't think it's giving me any expansion at all, and maybe that's part of my problem.
I truly appreciate you going the extra mile to help me out on bullet selection. Hope your TCM turns out to be loads of fun. =)

@surveyor Whoa, you're right! It's really getting into Hornet velocities. This is very encouraging. The TCM bullet may be just the ticket after all...!

If I can solve the seating problem I should be well on my way.

P.S. - Looking into the Lee Auto Drum powder measure. Seems like it might be more accurate/consistent than the Auto Disk for the high-volume load. Plus the charge is infinitely adjustable.

EDIT - I just loaded up about 25 rounds with the Dogtown bullet (toughest to seat) and had better luck:
For seating, I basically just balanced the bullet on top of the neck -- nothing was really holding it there. That said, it was definitely easier than the first reload, so either I got some practice or the brass is just wearing in. It leads me to believe that chamfering alone wasn't enough and I should try some steel wool on the inside to smooth it out for a nice platform. If I can get it another 20% easier than it is now I think it'll be good enough for the high-volume setup on the turret press (without an expander, because I don't have room for it).
Also, I went ahead and pretty much maxed out the collet neck sizer and added a little more crimp on the factory crimp die, and now the bullets are holding their seating depth well enough. I felt more confident doing this after I re-read the instructions where it suggests that you may need to actually modify the die's mandrel slightly to get strong neck tension in certain cases. With that in mind it doesn't seem so unreasonable to be maxing out the unmodified die.

@oldfortyfiveauto Do you mean half way when pushing the bolt forward or do you mean after it's forward and I'm half way through locking it? It seems pretty smooth when locking and when cocking before extraction. It's about 25% away from fully rearward that I tend to get resistance. It's around the same position where I'd be picking up a round, but I get it just as often even if there's no magazine.

Thanks for the additional info, guys. Indeed I might need to get some experience under my belt with the collet dies before they do what I need them to.

Also, I just ran some factory PPU 22 Hornet yesterday and then measured the brass after cleaning. The Hornady brass I have has a 0.008" wall, while the PPU has a 0.010" wall! That's a huge difference. I'm guessing the PPU brass will be really hard to seat if I keep the collet set where I had it for reloading the Hornady. I'll definitely have to keep the brass separated. Probably just won't use the Hornady at all any more. About 40% of them had a dangerously loose primer pocket and so I didn't even reload them the first time.

I'm going to try the chamfer + steel wool for the next batch, and I've got some of the Armscor 22 TCM bullets to try now, so we'll see how that goes.

Overall, things are looking up....

The bolt is improving quite a bit with use. I'm through about 200 rounds total at this point (it'd be a lot more if not for the rain around here lately), and it's now quite smooth on the way in. Still catches a little on the way out and I haven't figured out a good, consistent way to capture the brass as it ejects. Thinking of building a little brass catcher for this and similar rifles when I'm at my own shooting bench (probably not worth setting up anywhere else).

I'm not ready to give full reports yet, but I've got 1 MOA groups off a not-super-stable set of improvised rests with a couple of different loads. Generally speaking the Noslers are still the most consistent, Dogtowns have been doing very well even with powder measured via Auto Disk, and the Armscor TCM bullets have been just as good as the Dogtowns (which is very good news if it holds true longer term). Hornady 40 gr VMax are still doing well but have to be single loaded and I haven't confirmed if it's safe to single load via the chamber with the CZ 527 so for now I'm single loading into the magazine. All 4 bullets mentioned printed a sub-MOA group on the decent-but-not-great set of rests.

I currently like the standard trigger pull more than the set trigger. As I mentioned before I don't feel comfortable lightening the set trigger more than a few ounces below the standard pull because it seems to "warm up" and get lighter to the point of being dangerous. Might play with it some more later.

If you're interested in this thread for the cheap bullet results, stay tuned. The TCM looks really promising.