In reply to:

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Tinker:

Hornady doesn't make a .408" 400 grain.

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400NE,

Interesting you should mention that . I have been working with .416 Hornady softs that I run through a ring sizer for my Rhodda. I have both .412 and .411 sizing rings (as well as a .413 for the initial pass), and this works pretty well with my rifle. I would not be able to do solids with my current setup, but it might be interesting to get a more substantial die set for my Walnut Hill swaging press to try on the new Hornady solids . Before trying that I would want to test just how hard the Hornady solids are compared to the Woodleigh solids.

Going down to .408 might work, but the cores could loosen too much for good accuracy and performance.

Hey, I wanted to be prepared in case Woodleigh ever stopped production of the .411's .

I already have to swage (actually "bump up") bullets for a couple of doubles with oversize bore and groove dimensions, and in one case you would not believe how much improvement there is in "regulation" compared to any currently manufactured commercial bullets.

Jim



Rusty,
I use Woodleigh solids in my doubles. I was just speculating on Mickey's theoretical "what if" question.

I am sure that you have seen the results of Geoff MacDonald's test as reported in Graeme Wright's book. Geoff found that pushing a soft point through a .375 barrel with .090 wall thickness produced no measurable expansion of the outside of the barrel. A steel jacketed solid produced .0005 expansion under the same test conditions. This might be of no real significance under normal conditions, but if you add an undersize bore diameter, and more elastic variety of steel, who knows?

In any case, I am not going to sit up at night worrying about that possibility, and Woodleigh solids will continue to be my first choice.

I shouldn't speculate on this whole issue, but I REALLY would like a chance to see the rifle in question now. I wonder just how much difference there is from when I saw it last. I found the following statement or AR somewhat puzzling:

In reply to:

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I talked to JJ after the rifle was rehinged and he was preparing moderate starting loads to check the rifle's performance. He called me a couple of days later to explain that the loads would not properly chamber even after cleaning with a standard reamer. He had then cast the chambers and found distorations that made him reluctant to even fire the rifle.

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To me that would indicate that the problem was not obvious, else why would JJ have rehinged the rifle without informing Emory first. He apparently did not notice it initially, although I would assume any good gunsmith would do at least a cursory visual safety inspection before working on a rifle. Also, if JJ "cleaned the chamber with a standard reamer", why would the reloads still not chamber? If there was metal distortion into the chamber, it should have been removed by the reamer, thus allowing the loads to chamber assuming that the reamer was run in full depth. I can understand why he would be "reluctant to even fire the rifle" if it had bulged chambers, but this would not preclude chambering a round if a reamer had been run into the chambers after the bulge had occurred . I suppose that it depends on what the definition of "properly chamber" is (to borrow a phrase from a former US president from Arkansas ). Guess I am just not seeing the forest for the trees.

Jim