Looking for ideas here...an old friend insisted on building me a gun, so I supplied him with a nice commercial Mauser action and a Douglas bbl. A few weeks later I had a very nice, light .35 Whelen with a 21" bbl, Steyr iron sights, and the sexiest classic stock you've ever seen. Fits like a glove, and points like a dream. Grabbed a box of Remington 200 gr. factory loads, headed for the range, and stuck the first three into .75". No elaborate break in, no nuthin'! After I got my eyeballs back into my head and the grin off my face, I shot two more groups the same size.

Since then, I've tried every load you can think of. 4350. 4064. RL15. Hornadys. Noslers. Two or three kinds of primers. Neck sized, full length sized, polished, trimmed, weighed, tinkered, and sprinkled with Holy water. You name it. Best I can do is 1.25"! (I've been loading for twenty years, so I'm not a novice...)

Grab the Rem. factory loads? .75", no sweat, any day of the week.

My question is....what in hell do those guys use? Magic dust? Hocus pocus over the powder can?

Grrrrrrr....talk about frustrating! Anyone else have an experience like this? I HATE it when that happens!

Are the aftermarket bullets you've tried heavier that the factory?

I've got a Whelen in an FN(Mauser) action with a 23" Douglas premium barrel. After much thought, I went with a 1:12 rifling pitch because I knew I would be shooting heavier bullets - 225-250's. I get excellent accuracy with virtually every bullet brand I've tried.

Perhaps you have a slower pitch(1:16???) in your new barrel and the lighter, 200 gr bullets stabilize while the heavier bullets don't?

Also,have you played around with bullet seating depth?

Mauser98 -

Hmmm...good thought! I've tried 200 gr. Hornadys (both round nose and spitzer), and did best of all with the 200 spitzers seated to the crimping groove. I'd heard such good things about Nosler 225 BT's that I've spent most of my efforts trying to work something up around them. This barrel may be a bit long in the throat..I can seat the 225s out until run out of magazine length, and still be about .025 shy of hitting the lands. I'll have to check the pitch. Thanks!

Same thing with me with a regular factory rifle. Turns out I was trying to load too long. This gun had excessive throat length. I was loading my bullets out as far as my magizine would let me. So one day I decided to match the length of my factory cartridges. I went from 3.7" COL to a factory length of 3.5" and also crimped. Got subMOA groups. This worked for me.

So your barrel really likes the 200 gr. Remington bullet . Why not just load some of those if you want to duplicate the groups. ?

The 225 gr ballistic tip is a very long bullet . It may be your twist is not well suited to that particular slug .

The Speer 250 and the Nosler partition and Sierra 225 s are all very accurate in my Whelen .

Well All I have to say is that's weird??????

I have a factory Rem. Classic 35 Whelen, it has a long throat COL 3.6, 1:16 twist and it shoots everything to <1" from 180 gr-310gr. I know its not supose to shoot the 310's but it does? To top it off with the long thrioat I get better than average velocities, close to the improved version.

I did find to get the best accuracy I needed to load it to the max and some times over max. Then it really started to group.

Tumbleweed,

I've got the same exact problem with my Ruger Special Edition Whelen! The best 3 shot group I've gotten with the Federal Premium 225gr TBBC's I could cover with a penny. That's with the factory unbedded boat-paddle stock and factory 7 lb trigger. I just slapped a Leupold 6x36 fixed scope on it with the factory rings.

Now to the reloads. First problem that I had was that it would misfire 4 out of 10 times. Off to Ruger to get it fixed. I made it very clear to them not to rebarrell or anything drastic. Just check the headspace and most likely it was a weak firing pin spring and/or out of spec firing pin. They replaced both the firing pin and spring. Now it works like a charm.

Back to the reloads. My best groups looked like an improved cylinder choke on a shotgun. I did chrono the Federals and they are moving along at about 2675 fps. My groups are getting tighter as I get the velocity up, but I am going to check to OAL against the Federals like Bigcountry suggested. Dang you guys are handy!

FYI. I went to Africa at the end of September and my Whelen was my plainsgame rifle. It worked beautifully on a Kudu, Eland, Impala, Warthog, and a Blesbok. Of course, I took several boxes of the Federal TBBC's. I did replace the trigger with a Timney. It was the best move I made.

I will second (third) the seating depth. I had a similar problem with my 7600, and the Sierra folks suggested to seat that sucker in there, to 3.25. Especially boat tail bullets do not have much grip if you seat them long!

3031 and 225 grain Sierra's give me more than 2600 fps, an ES of under 50, and 1.5" accuracy (as good as I can shoot with a 3x scope).

The only other thing I can suggest to try is annealing in an attempt to improve neck tension. FWIW, Dutch.

I have exactly the same problem with two 338 WM rifles. One is a custom pre64 M70 fitted with a Kreiger bbl, the other is a Belgian BAR. I have been unable to get great accuracy or precision with handloads from either rifle.

Both rifles shoot about 2" groups at 300 yards with Remington 250 Core Lokt factory ammo.

Would love to know what's going on.

In the meantime, I'll gratefully buy the Core Lokts.

In my earlier post, I said I had gotten excellent accuracy from virtually every bullet brand I tried. I checked my log book and there were actually two brands/style that I couldn't get to shoot. One was the 250 gr Barnes X and the other was the 225 gr Nosler Ballistic Tip. With the Noslers I ran into the same issue you did with seating depth been controlled by mag length.

I've attained my best combination of accuracy/velocity with 59-61 gr of RL15 behind a 225 gr Nosler Partition or 58 gr of RL15 behind a 250 gr Hornady spitzer. I use CCI LR primers and reformed .30-06 brass of any brand.

Not with my Whelen, but I have had the same problem trying to duplicate the accuracy of factory Norma 150gr ammo in my 7x64. I have tried every suitable powder I have on the bench with 150's and nothing comes close. One thing for sure, the Norma ammo really flattens the primers. Must be pretty hot stuff. Cobalt

Try the X bullets @ 0.50 from the lands. If they group better then try them -.005 shorter. Also see if you might find a 180 grain X bullet. Good luck. Packrat.

Huh. This is really weird. It may be contagious or even radioactive. May I suggest an mutually beneficial solution? Send me your address, I'll send FFL+shipping, you send rifle. Your life is back to normal, my .35 has company, you can buy a new rifle that doesn't pout, I get to shoot more tiny groups with big bullets. A win-win all the way around.

FWIW, MY .35 shoots little wads with about anything I put in it, .221" being small in my book. Haven't tried paper patching a 7mm Scirrocco yet however...

The symptoms above sound like twist issues to me.

[ 11-21-2002, 17:12: Message edited by: DigitalDan ]