Ditto, Mac. The great innovator/experimentor of his time and few since can be mentioned in the same breath.

P.O. Ackley was one of the best gunsmiths in the USA, and a very knowlegable man! I have his two part handbook, and it is as valid today as it was when written! His AI rounds were simply amazing! They turned some of the rifles that were thought to be weak, into viable rifles, that performed all out of perportion, to their size, and supposed strenth. The 3-30 AI is one example. It turned a little 30-30 win, in a 1894 lever rifle into a 308, where performance was concerened, with less bolt trust!

At the risk of ageing myself, I've been reading his articles from the time he started, and miss hell out of him since he died!

Mac-I read him since he started.I was a boy at time.His
greatest contribution is to show folks how easy wildcatting is, and how much the brass case helps in containing pressure
that is put against the bolt face.His work also helped to get good gunsmithing schools going.It is a shame he didn't
have the greater variety of powders we have today.Ed.

I was parker in a previous life..

i then took on a conservative reloading elthic...

and got a chrono

jeffe

I have all his writtings and I knew him personally...One thing he always said and that was the only successful Ackley Improved rounds of all his wildcats were the 250 Savage, 257 Roberts and the 7x57 and they gained an honest 300 FPS..the rest he claimed as dismal failures...He was an honest man and painted no false pictures.....My testing over the years satisfied he knew from whence he came on the wildcatting business.

Also beware of Ackleys max loads and he tells you in his books exactly how they got max loads in those days...They loaded until something bad happened then backed off a couple of grains and called it max...and that is apparant by viewing his loads....

I have done that many times myself, load until you get a smeared primer, sticky case, extractor indent, whatever comes first and sometimes thats a primer that falls out of the case, an extractor blowing off and a stuck bolt...thats about all we had to work with in those days, we were wildcatters in the glory days and lived on the edge.

Ackley was a tireless experimenter and we need to give him due credit for that. I am not convinced that he knew how to build a high end rifle though. I owned a 22-250 that he built and it worked, but it was no great piece of art. I would say that the work on it was average or a little below average.

I second what Atkinson says about Ackley. He was the best we had, IMHO, and he called a spade a spade......regardless of whose "spade" it was. He was as quick to brand one of his own cartridges a flop as anyone else's design, and as Ray points out, Ackley thought MOST of his own "AI" designs were worthless. And he said so publically.

Ackley worshipped EFFICIENCY in cartridge design and as a result considered the vast majority of the belted magnums as barrel-eating, powder-wasting disasters of no appreciable value.


We lost a giant when Ackley passed on.

How long ago did he pass on?

Karl.

P.O.Ackley was a very interesting man.I believe their was very little in the gun world he didn't try or experament with. He did the gunsmith column in Gun & Ammo for year's.
In the late 60's I was buying my blueing salt's from Herter's when I didn't Rust blue. I read in his column that he made his own blueing salt's. I wrote to him asking what his formula was not expecting an answer.He wrote back giving me the formula and wished me good luck. I used that formula for about 20 year's until I moved to where I live today.It doesn't work well with my water here.
Like Elmer Keith and Jack O I wish he was still with us.
Ron

I think Ackley was wrong on the idea an improved case shape greatly lessons bolt thrust..........

i assume you are just being humorous...

if not, take a look at the JPL and effecient rocket cone design.....


jeffe

Jeffe, I wasn't being humerous.

What , pray tell is JPL , and what does a rocket cone have to do with cartridge case shape ?

sure thing..
jpl is the jet propulsion labs, of nasa. To a point, the narrower nozzle increases thrust, with a broader nozzle being, for same fuel, less effeicent in making thrust (sorry, my hands are hurting from being in the shop most of the day)

at least, this is how i rationalize it for the SAME round...

jeffe

SDGunslinger - I suspect Ackley would wish to clarify some things about his thoughts on the subject improved cases design of "bolt thrust." I am mindful of his experiments with a Winchester 94 in 30/30 where he cut the locking lugs OFF the action and then fired it. As I recall there was not enough bolt thrust to even open the action! And the 30/30 can hardly be considered an Improved design.

Ackley's writings and experiments were an EVOLVING thing. Obviously he wasn't born knowning all he did about gunsmithing and cartridge design. He learned and grew as he went along...and his writing must surely reflect this growth over his life. Also, I think we should keep in mind that MANY of the so called "Ackley Improved" case designs were creations he would NEVER have made and knew before he cut the chamber they were going to be flops....but he was hired by people to "build me this" or "build me that" and "building things" was what he did. Left to his own devices I'm sure half the "Ackley Cartridges" would never have seen the light of day. And he certainly made no bones in his books about pointing out these cartridges shortcomings.
------------------------

I never was fortunate enough to encounter Ackley face to face but I did write to him with some questions a few times and once asked him for permission to use some of his data in a project I was writing.

Ackley always wrote back to me almost immediately, I believe typed by his own hand (long before the age of word processors and spell checkers) and for sure his letters were signed by his own hand. I believe I still have the copies of said letters somewhere in my memorabalia.

I'm not ashamed to say Ackley was my hero and almost single handedly shaped my thoughts on cartridges.

All---Bolt thrust comparisons between regular and improved
cass are not astronomical.Ackley ran tests with regular
30-30 cases with headspace enough so that primers almost
backed out on firing and cases held moderate 30-30 pressures
without blowing.He lengthened firing pin to fire them, pushing them into chhamber, where upon firing they expanded and clung to walls, primer backed out to the bolt and stopped, and cases held. Case head had no bolt support.Now if this was an improved case, it would act the same.So at the slants that are involved in different cases the difference
in bolt thrust from say a 30-30 to improved version, won't be over 10-15%.The slanted case grips walls very strongly,
as we are talking of slants of less than 1 degree.IE
a 30-30 sides are .446 deg, and 30-30 Imp is .370 deg.
For comparison A 300 H&H is .838. 30-06 is
.475 deg. 300 WinMag is .312 deg.In all considerations,
if rifle won't hold regular case bolt thrust for a high pressure reloading exercize, staightening case
isn't going to help.IE the regular case is already taking a lot of the thrust.And in conjunction with bolt keeps it
all together.Ed.

jeffe......JPL.......you young dudes and all your capitollized abreviations kill me.....(haha).



I think your logic is backwards in this case though. The nozzle end of a rifle has the bullet goin' OUT of it(grin). The bolt head end of the case , HOPEFULLY , hasn't got any gas escaping........



hubel.........thanks for the info on the infamous 30/30 test . I can see I'm going to have to get a copy of Ackley's book and read it for myself..........I've seen improved case propenents claim that test proved greatly lessenned bolt thrust for the straight cases , but they never bothered to mention a STANDARD 30/30 case held in the chamber as well ........

sdgunslinger

I agree with you on bolt thrust. However, I think I know how the idea keeps going.

Back in in the early 1970s I did all my reloading with a locally made straight line loader and thus only neck sized. When full length sizing was needed a vice die was used.

Back then at one stage I had a 340 Wby and 375 H&H. What I observed was that the 375 H&H would tighten up much quicker than the 340 and also it was more sudden. In other words there was only a shot or two between "some resistance" to bolt closing and being too hard for general use.

Now the reason is the tapered case but not in terms of bolt thrust. The very tapered H&H case is simply harder to drive into the chamber than the much straighter 340 Wby case. The H&H case is like a nail that has a quick taper to the point and the 340 case is like a nail with a long taper to the point.

Mike

His writing is very intersting to say the least. I do wish he had been a little more diligent in his note-taking or explainging his methodology for the lay readers of the future.
Didn't he have early writing in The earliest Handloader magazines?
I have seen a couple of rifles claimed to be Ackleys that looked very crude. Were these his testing rifles and did he have personal rifles that were of finer quality?
Frank

I have Ackley's books and I agree with his A/I case designs as being better at holding headspace and extending case life--case stretch disappears with these rounds. Whether they yield better ballistics is problematic, but the 25 caliber A/I's seem to be the real deal in that regard.

Where I agree most succinctly with Ackley is his opinion of cartridge efficiency and his distaste for overbore chamberings.

OK jeffe.........I apologize if I mis-judged your age .



Still think you're wrong , though . There is no jet effect at the rear of a rifle chamber , because there is no gas escaping.



Think of a rifle chamber as a pressure vessel . At the peak , there is , say , 60000 psi at every point inside that chamber , reguardless of shape , taper , or particular spot you might check said pressure. Bolt thrust is equal to the area of the rear of the chamber in square inches x 60000 . Makes no difference if it is a .375 H&H or a .375 Weatherby........



Also think of this........if case shape is capable of changing bolt thrust........then you are buying that the cartridge web is somehow able to contain 60000 psi , because there is 60000 psi against the interior base of that case , improved or not .

My father knew enough about P.O. Ackley back in the late 40s to go to him for a larger elk rifle than his 300 Wby. We were living in Mexico at the time, so it was not a trip undertaken casually. My dad ended up with a 35 Ackley Magnum, on an Enfield action that has always shot extremely well. The stock finally split 4 years ago, so now it wears a fiberglass replacement. Kind of short barreled and not built along slender lines, it is a real piece of craftsmanship nonetheless.

In thinking about the honesty and innovativeness of Mr. Ackley, I wish I had known him.