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I agree about the availability of bullets, with Remingtons going .3105, even smaller than the others, but on a forum chock full of Commonwealth and ex-Commonwealth fellows I'm surprised at the surprise some of you express about bore/groove specs on .303's. A agree "common sense" would indicate, even in the absense of accepted specs that the company would bore their rifles to commonly available bullets, except...

.315 is totally common on older .303's. I've owned, shot, modified and played with piles of Lee-Enfields and about half a dozen P-14's, too. Ruger is actually right about that.

The bigger threat to accuracy is not GROOVE depth but rather, BORE diameter. Effects of excessive groove depth are often attributed to poor shooting when in fact they are not to blame.

Can somebody please mike these barrels for both bore and groove depth?

If your barrels are bored .302, .303 or even .304 and have groove depths of .315, I doubt very much that the GROOVE depth alone is to blame for poor shooting charateristics.

If you want real trouble, I have a friend with a 2-groove Savage No.4 MkI* that has a .303 bore, .308 groove depth barrel. Think just a moment about the metal displacement that must occur on a TWO-groove {50%} barrel shooting ".303"/.312 bullets...and then you realize why the bolt face around the firing pin hole is deeply entrenched from blown primers. He found out the hard way why old guns should always be checked over pretty hard after he slugged the barrel. Primer after primer blew, cases cracked...the gun was a time bomb. He removed the case neck expander from his dies and now shoots nothing but .308 diameter bullets, with excellent accuracy and a relief to the gun, and himself! Now, how the living heck did THAT gun get out the door at Savage I'll never know.

I bet poor timber fitting and stocking up is a worse offender than groove depth on these guns when it comes to scattering bullets over the countryside.

And...we also forget that a gun that shoots 5 shots into 2 inches was once considered a good gun. 3 shots even. So...I bet Ruger won't do a whole lot tho they may silently and secretly alter specs of the gun barrels as they have done in the past to future production, that is, if they ever have any interest in slapping together another batch of .303's at all.

If I get time I'll check Reynolds and Skennerton's books and see what original spec was. Off hand I don't recall the exact "scrap-it" dimensions.

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