Straight Case

The OLD handgun cartridges...

By "old", I mean cartridges which started out as blackpowder rounds. In other words, 38 Special, most of the 32 rimmed stuff (EXCEPT the H&R & the .327 Federal), ALL of the short (and weak) 38's, and most everything the Colt Single Action Army was chambered for. Gawd, I'd have to fire up the Wayback Machine to list all of those, because I believe Colt had a rule then: if they thought they could sell 2000 revolvers in a particular caliber, they would tool up for it.

As the era of black powder began to wane (although not knowing it yet), some manufacturers began to experiment with bottleneck rounds. The rounds built for the Winchester Model 1873 are a good example: 32-20 and 44-40. The whole idea of bottleneck rounds in ANY form is to put more push behind the bullet. In black powder days, that push was important, since black powder is very anemic compared to modern (or even original) smokeless powder. The SAAMI max pressures for black powder run around 12,000 CUP, where hotter large cartridges like the 44 Remington Magnum run closer to 50,000 CUP.

It all translates to energy, or that measurement of the whack the bullet imparts to what it hits. In the 44 Russian, an originally-blackpowder round, which we will look at in detail below, the max energy is just under 300 pounds/feet at max SAMMI pressure of 10,000 CUP (with smokeless powder). In the 44 Remington Magnum, the max energy is closer to 1800 pounds/feet, a sixfold increase, even though the cartridge capacity is maybe 25% more than 44 Russian.

I have been shooting .44 guns for about 8 years. I have a Marlin Model 1894 in 44 Magnum, a Colt Anaconda revolver in that caliber, and a pocket 5-shot Charter Arms Bulldog revolver in 44 Special, the blackpowder precursor to 44 Magnum. The 44 Special has a SAAMI max of 14,000 CUP, so all I get out of the snub-nose Bulldog is 1,000 feet per second at best, but that is okay for short-range defensive duty, and the Bulldog's bark is worse than it's bite. If ever called upon to be in a multi-enemy shootout, I plan to yell "forty-four" before I fire the first round. The enemy WILL believe I am shooting at least a 44 Magnum, maybe even a Cassul at them. They will hesitate, which gives me the advantage.

The 44 Russian. 

One of the issues which keeps me from shooting my Anaconda more is it's savage recoil. I am a lightly-built dude with my wrists being only 6 7/8" at the forearm end. I also have small hands, taking the smallest work gloves made for men, or medium women's gloves. I can just barely grip the Anaconda's Hogue-style grip with one hand, and I never shoot it that way. I can and have shot 60 rounds of full-power 44 Magnum through it in one range session (Cap'n Jim will remember that!), but I had leather gloves on which were taped to my wrists! Okay, the smarties say, why don't you just carry and practice with 44 Special? I did that until I got the Charter Bulldog. The Anaconda is a HUGE revolver, weighing 47 ounces. Add the ammo, and it's almost 4 1/2 pounds. The Bulldog weighs 20 1/2 ounces, and is almost an inch narrower. It conceals nicely. I carry the Anaconda open when I carry it. I have decided to drop back 3/4 of a century and load some 44 Russian ammo to practice with. I came up with this:

Bullet: 200-gr LFN, 5.0-gr Green Dot, LPP. Performance: 836 fps, 2" groups at 15 yards out of a Bulldog!

These will make shooting the Anaconda about equal to shooting an old S&W K-22: 22LR out of a heavy old 38 revolver. They will make shooting the Bulldog. about like shooting 38 out of a heavy old revolver.

And, of course, it is one of the missions of Straight Case to promote shooting the old firearms/loads which figured so prominently in our Nation's history...

Advanced gunny bleg

Very advanced. You might have to be a serious benchrest shooter to answer this.

Problem: I have acquired a rifle in the caliber of .300 Savage. Highly advanced for it's 1921 day of introduction, the 300 Savage had the approximate power of the .30-06 Springfield, but was built into a shorter case. Chuck Hawks says that much later, in the 1950's, the .308 Winchester, then the 7.62X51 NATO was developed from the 300 Savage, and of course we know of the provenance of the .308 Winchester.

Here's my personal problem: time has passed this caliber by. Once the most popular non-military deer AND elk caliber in the Northwest woods (Northwest hunters are cheap bastards, and used a lot of milsurp rifles to hunt with), it is still available, but there is little in the way of new cases to be reloaded, and the ammo itself commands a high price, almost $30/box. Hulls are over $25 for 50, and they are VERY hard to find.

I just completed some study, both in the SAAMI charts and by detailed measurement with a dial caliper, and it seems to me that the body of the 300 Savage cartridge case is virtually identical to the .308 WIN from the base to the start of the bottleneck. The only difference below the bottleneck is that the rim-cannelure (is that called the rebate or the extraction-channel?) is much wider in the .308 WIN than it is in the 300 Savage. I would guess that the 300 Savage, being designed for bolt or lever guns only, would not need as wide an extraction-channel as the .308 WIN, which was designed with semi-auto and full-auto battle rifles and MMGs in mind.

So, the big question is: Can the profile of a .308 WIN case be changed to the 300 Savage profile? Of course, the bottleneck in the 300 Savage is much steeper, it reminds me of Ackley-Improved calibers, and the actual case neck is much longer in .308 WIN, but that is just a matter of using a case trimmer on it. The main thing is changing the angle-profile of the bottleneck.

Can that be done?

If it can be done, there might be a few grains of difference in powder capacity between a re-made .308WIN/300SAV hull, but that can be measured and the powder loads recalculated so as to have the right pressures.

Secondary question: if the change can be made, will it best be made with dies or fire-forming?

Another secondary question: what will the longevity of these changed hulls be? My intent would be to use them with cast-boolit loads, which are much lighter in pressure than high-power jacketed hunting loads.

Some photos:

On the left is the .308 WIN round, a Hornady 168-gr AMAX match round. On the right is the 300 Savage round, a 150-gr Remington Corelokt. This gives you an idea of the cartridge profiles, side-by-side.

Another sXs view:

Well, there you have it, advanced gunnies. All advice welcome. Of course, I also know that I can just start hoarding the scarce 300 Savage ammo, but apparently, it is only made by Remington now, and I just don't like the Core-Loct bullets. Yeah, I have killed deer with them myself, and they did their job, but that little lead protrusion at the tip gets beat up easily, and I figure it causes some inaccuracy. I suppose I could pull the Core-Loct bullets from factory, and reload with my choice, that's always an option as well. I have a large selection of .308 bullets to try out in load development, everything from 110-gr up to 180-gr with several in between.

It's going to be a fun Winter, both at the bench and the range. Speaking of winter, it starts here in the PacNorWest in 2 days, so I need to get my bippy iun gear and put all the summer-living stuff away.

Ammo Alert

Deal Alert:

Lake City XM855 5.56 NATO (.223), in the formerly-rare 62-gr steel core. 1,000 rds bulk for $340.

In my not-so-humble-opinion, this is the most useful of the poodleshooter class of ammo, so, if you are an AR guy, stock up. This is battle ammo, and it may not be allowed on all civilian ranges.

It used to be hard to get, and about a third more expensive or more, but the PeeCee Army's loss is your gain, so stock up before it sells out.

Bug-Out pistol: Radom M57

The Bug-Out pistol is a stow-and forget gun. You can get fancy if you want, but the one thing you DON'T want to do is bug out without at LEAST one powerful pistol on each member of the B/O party.

Here's how you do that for not too much moolah.

First, the gun.

It's a Polish version of the Soviet design for the TT-33 pistol, Tokarev Design Bureau. Tokarev Design used John Moses Browning's 1911 design heavily, but improved the trigger group, and put in a zinger, HOT light round instead of the old, slow bone-crusher 45 ACP. THAT debate is still in progress, 100 years later.

The cartridge (bottleneck round):

I won't say that this is a common cartridge, but it's cheap enough to buy in LARGE quantity. It's HOT!

For under $1000, you can buy FOUR of these, and enough ammo to keep them happy for a LONG time (2500+ rds).

There are military leather hosters, spare magazines and cleaning kits around, too, and even a few (rare) conversion kits for 9X19.

There's your Bug Out pistols, people.

.308 deal

I knew it would happen: sooner or later I would have to talk about a bottleneck round. This may be too good to pass up:

How about reloadable .308 Winchester for 55 cents a round? Gotta buy it by the case at LuckyGunner.com, and there's a coupon code to use to get that good price (Magtech308-$30OFF), but it will total $550 for 1,000 rounds of MagTech (Brazil, I believe) .308, 150-gr FMJ-BT (this looks to be mil-spec, and if it is, it's the ONLY new mil-spec reloadable round produced and available recently.

I have a theory why this is on sale. My guess is that Brazil's Presidente Rousseff, a Marxist who just hosted our (Marxist?) President, has finally quit taking IOUs from Venezuala's Presidente Chavez (Marxist) for the ammo. Chavez, if you will recall, had his agents buying up the world's supply of milsurp 7.62 NATO ammo some 4-5 years back, which drove the price of that milsurp up about triple (I still have some South African that I paid $28 per 140-round battle pack for), and pretty much zeroed out the world's large inventory of it, causing Chavez to have to look around, also. He had to look no farther than Brazil, which has a large international arms company, MagTech, and an obliging (Marxist) Presidente, DeSilva (at the time). Chavez' IOUS are no good anymore, though, and MagTech must have been finally able to get Presidente Rousseff's permission to quit taking them, so now there's a slight surplus of their ammo on the market, and some of it wound up at LuckyGunner.

H/T to Kenn Blanchard, a gunblog I just started reading.