winter project gun: 338-06 A2

[Geezerbiker]

Dang, that looks nice. I always thought the .338-06 was an under appreciated round...

Anyway I hope among the next pix you post of this rifle include the deer you harvested with it.

Tony

 

[stagpanther]

Dang, that looks nice. I always thought the .338-06 was an under appreciated round...

Anyway I hope among the next pix you post of this rifle include the deer you harvested with it.

Tony

Thanks geezerbiker--unfortunately other essential parts are being delayed by the shippers, there's always at least one that says "yep, in stock out the door as fast as we can" that ends up taking weeks to ship. I need dies and brass and decided the best route was to neck up 30-06 brass.

The felt recoil of the 30-06 family cartridges IMO is "reasonable" and appreciably lighter than the next step up magnum alternatives. The 338-06 (like the whelen) makes a compelling argument for itself once I started looking at all the ballistics/velocity/trajectory numbers.

 

[Geezerbiker]

You should be able fire form some .30-06 cases. I'd use the Ed Harris load of 13g of red dot behind a 150 bullet. Even with the bullet rattling down the bore, it should generate enough pressure to form the cases. Do you have any .30 caliber cast bullets to try?

I just did some checking and if you were able to fire form some cases, you could use .338 Win mag dies to neck size and seat the bullets. That is if you had or could borrow a set... The .338 Win mag is only .006" longer than the .338-06 but has a fatter case.

Tony

 

[stagpanther]

I'm not sweating it--except maybe finding 30-06 brass--which is pretty tough right now. My 35 whelen is dialed in ready to go into the woods if needs be.

I just assembled everything except the base, rings and scope are still missing--all up weight right now is just over 8 lbs (that nearly 5 lb barrel is a big part of that weight). This is going to be hefty rifle!

Holy beezlebub! loaded ammo is up to $4.00 a cartridge!

 

[Geezerbiker]

Would you be interested in some new old stock nickle plated Remington '06 cases? I bought 500 of them about 35 years ago and I haven't used half of them yet...

If not, I think I have some once fired '06 cases that I could let you have enough to get you started. PM me and we can talk more.

I was thinking that if you seated a lead bullet long then wrapped it in Teflon plumbing tape it would be sufficient to center the case in the chamber and seal well enough to help with the fire forming. It might even shoot straight.

When I first got my .45-70 I didn't have any bullets for it but I had a lot of bullets I had cast for my M1911. I was looking into paper patching when someone on a forum asked if one could patch with Teflon tape. I figured the only way to find out was to try it and the results were very good to say the least. After that I bought a 12 pack of wide Teflon tape so in case I ever wanted to to it again, I'd be ready.

Tony

 

[stagpanther]

Very kind of you! I've PM'd you. : )

 

[stagpanther]

I was visiting a LGS today and they just so happened to have a DNZ gamereaper for the axis--one of my favorite integral 1 piece mounts--so I bought one and popped it on. I've noticed on another thread that people are big on redfields--I bought 2 of them last year when EA Brown had them on sale for $129 as I recall, so I popped one of those on too. Now all I need is the brass and dies which for all I know are circling the earth on the international space station.

I've arrived at that crux moment "yeah, it looks Purdy, but can it shoot?"

 

[stagpanther]

Well, every now and then I get lucky, I ordered a pair of back-up dies from Midway on Friday--regular ground shipping--and they were delivered today!! My Redding dies are MIA from Midsouth. I don't have any 30-06 brass, but necking down 35 whelen doesn't seem to cause any issues with growing the brass length or impeding a good bullet seating. Impatience being what it is, I'll make a few cartridges and see how she shoots.

 

[stagpanther]

so far so good

These are the very first 4 shots down the barrel at 234 yds. I didn't bother working the brass to trim or equalize them--they were a mix from different manufacturers anyway. I just wanted to see if the gun would go bang OK. I chose a random mid-range load of 210 gr sciroccos driven by 52 grs. of A2520. The upper flyer was the first shot--but the next three grouped just over .5" CTC, so things are looking promising.

Did I mention I really like .338 projectiles?

 

[Crankylove]

Impatience being what it is, I'll make a few cartridges and see how she shoots.

Still waiting for my .338 Federal dies and brass.

Build had been going for about 4 years now.

I wanted ammo to shoot as soon as my barrel nut came in (which it did today).

So, I took some commercial .308 cases, deprimed and “sized” it in my ‘06 dies, dumped some powder in, and seated some 225’s with my .358 Win seating die, expanding the case mouth while seating the bullet. Not what I’d want to do all the time, and I can’t load these cases again without at least a neck sizer, but, they pass the plunk test in my rifle, cycled fine by hand, and give me at least a few rounds (27) to shoot while I wait for dies and brass.

 

[stagpanther]

Still waiting for my .338 Federal dies and brass.

Build had been going for about 4 years now.

I wanted ammo to shoot as soon as my barrel nut came in (which it did today).

So, I took some commercial .308 cases, deprimed and “sized” it in my ‘06 dies, dumped some powder in, and seated some 225’s with my .358 Win seating die, expanding the case mouth while seating the bullet. Not what I’d want to do all the time, and I can’t load these cases again without at least a neck sizer, but, they pass the plunk test in my rifle, cycled fine by hand, and give me at least a few rounds (27) to shoot while I wait for dies and brass.
__________________
The answer to 1984 is 1776

I'm having trouble following the connection to 358 dies for seating 338 fed bullets. I find 210 gr and under seems to get the best performance out of my 338 fed.

 

[Crankylove]

I'm having trouble following the connection to 358 dies for seating 338 fed bullets. I find 210 gr and under seems to get the best performance out of my 338 fed.

.358 dies were shorter than my ‘06 and .270 dies, wanted the seating stem adjusted as short as possible with the extra force required to seat the bullets in the unexpanded cases.

I plan on running 200-210’s, but was given a box of 225’s my brother had for his .338 Win Mag. They are what I had on hand, so I’ll use them ‘till they are gone.

 

[stagpanther]

.358 dies were shorter than my ‘06 and .270 dies, wanted the seating stem adjusted as short as possible with the extra force required to seat the bullets in the unexpanded cases.

Why the case mouth expanding with a 358 die, that's the part I don't get? Or do you mean it inadvertently widen the mouth when you didn't want it to? I'm obtuse sometimes and just don't read things right.

 

[Crankylove]

Case mouth was expanded by the base of the 225 gr. Boat Tail as I seated it, not by a die. I should have worded that a little clearer.

 

[stagpanther]

Ah--I get it, : )

 

[stagpanther]

Got a cheap hand-engraver and after practicing on a couple of tools, held my breath and cut into the barrel. The barrel metal was soft as butter compared to the hand-tools, took all of about 30 seconds to engrave the caliber into the barrel. I swabbed the cut with sign epoxy in the hopes of slowing down rust.

It looks a little messy, but I'm an artist and I kinda of like the one-off signature look, like I might sign a painting.

 

[stagpanther]

One of the most bizarre shooting days I've ever had. Conditions were overcast right above freezing with light rain and sleet. Distance to target was 209 yds.

Loaded up a ladder of 210 sciroccos driven by AA2520 since my test load looked pretty good. The only difference being I used lapua 30-06 brass necked up instead of 35 whelen necked down. My first group--which was loaded to the same specs as the test group--grouped about 8" and had a standard deviation of around 200 fps! The next 4 charges (increasing in powder charge weight) did more or less the same thing. What was even stranger is that the velocities actually decreased slightly with the increased charge weights. Only the last two maximum charges came together reasonably--in fact very well, but still had an SD of 20 fps or more. I'm mostly perplexed trying to come up with an explanation for the wild results, the only thing I can think of is somehow the cases necked down from 35 whelen were sealing to the chamber better than the ones necked up from 30-06. How that would affect the ignition and pressures I'm not exactly sure. All cartridges fired chambered and extracted easily with no signs of pressure--other than the neck/shoulders fire-forming.

This group was quite good, but since the deviations were significant I can't say the shot on the left was pulled or not--would have been a stellar group had it stayed in with the other 3 shots (which were under .2 MOA). I think I'm going to pull the 3 x 9 redfield and put a better scope on eventually; the crosshairs cover the target dot entirely.

Our deer season opens this weekend--for the past two weeks all I've been doing is working on tuning heavy-hitting magnum rifles and my personal lever gun in 45-70. My shoulder has finally had enough and it's time to take a break.

 

[Tallest]

May I ask what software you're using to dimension/annotate your groups?

 

[stagpanther]

May I ask what software you're using to dimension/annotate your groups?

OnTarget. I'm not sure if it's still available.