Eutectic
Active Member
Soon after the 14" .30-30 bull barrel showed up I ordered one..... This was the early 8 groove 1 in 10" left twist. I mounted it up after scoping it with a 2.5 x 8 Leupold pistol scope. Two different factory loads and several jacketed handloads told the same story..... 2" groups at 100yds! Heck! I got a 10" .22 LR T/C barrel that will beat that!
I slugged the barrel...... A tight .308 groove along with a very tight .2998" bore. Barrel was uniform over rifled length... Humm? Should shoot I thought. So I did a chamber neck/throat pound cast....... I said a couple bad words as I looked and measured! The chamber had a 2.088" length to the mouth not even including headspace! THEN the bore started. The place a throat should have been was like a de-burred hole! Only thing I could figure was a simple chambering job for them....
I ordered a throating reamer. I throated it to leave about .100" of free-bore. Another pound cast showed a 100" long .3098" length and a gentle lead into the lands.... Jacketed immediately dropped to 1" 100 yard groups with some even better!
About this time Chevron sent me to the gulf coast of Texas to help oversee the construction of a new Polyethylene unit. I soon found out that contractors like to invite us Chevron boys to hunt deer on their leases. Nice....
I had bought a bunch of Remington bullets from Midway at a sale price..... 150gr Core-Lokts. Some expansion tests showed them pretty stout so I HP'd them to 145gr. I even machined a point forming die to form the into a semi pointed shape. These smacked those little whitetails where I was hunting! (A picture of the bullet mod is attached.) Not only that they shot better than I could hold.... like 1/2"!
A hydroblasting outfit had a nice kid (well young guy) managing them. He took a liking to me and invited me to his father's ranch over towards Rock Springs. Texas. He picked me up at my house and I was treated like royalty! About halfway there he found out I was using a handgun... He was nervous about his father because of this and wounding the Whitetails on his ranch. I said not to worry about me worry about somebody else. Well, his Dad and I got along. He said the closest stand to feeder he had was 85 yards... and mostly does were in the area. I said great because I wanted meat and had two doe tags. That mod CLHP hammered them. Good enough that the Texans called me "Pistol Pete" after that hunt! They do to this day if I talk to one of them!
I know, I know, this is a cast bullet site! Well.... that Contender wouldn't shoot any deer load I developed with a full power gascheck load. Maybe 1 1/2" sometimes but always fliers. Then I tried it a couple years ago with a sized down .32-20 gascheck and it did fair... So shorter was better. I've even thought about some .38-55 brass from Starline.... I could make a case go to the end of that D E E P chamber that way! But Starline has thin necks on them because of a .38-55 issue... Could still be an issue....
I was daydreaming about grouse hunting and that T/C long chamber popped into my head. Along with it was Ben's groups with those fast pistol powders..
I had some soft Lee 90gr SWC cast up... So I sized them to .3098" so I could seat them out to the rifling. A husky 1/8" is all that's in the case! I started with Unique and it did OK on my 70 yard target. I was using Winchester LR primers which was plenty hot for 4grs of Unique. My Contender doesn't like 'deep' primers so pistol primers were out..... I looked for Titegroup and was out. Ball type powders can usually be tolerant of hot primers. I did have Titewad..... Well I laughed out loud.... "Ben likes fast... This is fast! Faster than Bullseye even!" So I loaded up some with 3.8grs of Titewad ........ Well, if you do your part off the bench these will all touch each other at 70 yards! They are right at (just over) the speed of sound and I would guess 1185fps and be close.... I quit using Titewad going to American Select in 12ga and still have probably 5lbs of Titewad..... That'a a ton of Blue Grouse at 3.8grs a pop!!
Pete
I slugged the barrel...... A tight .308 groove along with a very tight .2998" bore. Barrel was uniform over rifled length... Humm? Should shoot I thought. So I did a chamber neck/throat pound cast....... I said a couple bad words as I looked and measured! The chamber had a 2.088" length to the mouth not even including headspace! THEN the bore started. The place a throat should have been was like a de-burred hole! Only thing I could figure was a simple chambering job for them....
I ordered a throating reamer. I throated it to leave about .100" of free-bore. Another pound cast showed a 100" long .3098" length and a gentle lead into the lands.... Jacketed immediately dropped to 1" 100 yard groups with some even better!
About this time Chevron sent me to the gulf coast of Texas to help oversee the construction of a new Polyethylene unit. I soon found out that contractors like to invite us Chevron boys to hunt deer on their leases. Nice....
I had bought a bunch of Remington bullets from Midway at a sale price..... 150gr Core-Lokts. Some expansion tests showed them pretty stout so I HP'd them to 145gr. I even machined a point forming die to form the into a semi pointed shape. These smacked those little whitetails where I was hunting! (A picture of the bullet mod is attached.) Not only that they shot better than I could hold.... like 1/2"!
A hydroblasting outfit had a nice kid (well young guy) managing them. He took a liking to me and invited me to his father's ranch over towards Rock Springs. Texas. He picked me up at my house and I was treated like royalty! About halfway there he found out I was using a handgun... He was nervous about his father because of this and wounding the Whitetails on his ranch. I said not to worry about me worry about somebody else. Well, his Dad and I got along. He said the closest stand to feeder he had was 85 yards... and mostly does were in the area. I said great because I wanted meat and had two doe tags. That mod CLHP hammered them. Good enough that the Texans called me "Pistol Pete" after that hunt! They do to this day if I talk to one of them!
I know, I know, this is a cast bullet site! Well.... that Contender wouldn't shoot any deer load I developed with a full power gascheck load. Maybe 1 1/2" sometimes but always fliers. Then I tried it a couple years ago with a sized down .32-20 gascheck and it did fair... So shorter was better. I've even thought about some .38-55 brass from Starline.... I could make a case go to the end of that D E E P chamber that way! But Starline has thin necks on them because of a .38-55 issue... Could still be an issue....
I was daydreaming about grouse hunting and that T/C long chamber popped into my head. Along with it was Ben's groups with those fast pistol powders..
I had some soft Lee 90gr SWC cast up... So I sized them to .3098" so I could seat them out to the rifling. A husky 1/8" is all that's in the case! I started with Unique and it did OK on my 70 yard target. I was using Winchester LR primers which was plenty hot for 4grs of Unique. My Contender doesn't like 'deep' primers so pistol primers were out..... I looked for Titegroup and was out. Ball type powders can usually be tolerant of hot primers. I did have Titewad..... Well I laughed out loud.... "Ben likes fast... This is fast! Faster than Bullseye even!" So I loaded up some with 3.8grs of Titewad ........ Well, if you do your part off the bench these will all touch each other at 70 yards!
They are right at (just over) the speed of sound and I would guess 1185fps and be close.... I quit using Titewad going to American Select in 12ga and still have probably 5lbs of Titewad..... That'a a ton of Blue Grouse at 3.8grs a pop!!Pete
