To hold me over until I can spend the bucks on the big bore that I really want (.458 Lott), I have decided to build a 'cheap' big bore (416 Taylor on a Savage). I was considering lopping 2" off the Adams & Bennet barrel and making it a nice, handy 22" barreled rifle. I know that by doing this I can pretty much kiss 2400fps with a 400 grainer goodbye, but I think that 2300 is still attainable. Price and time is not an issue....a gunsmith buddy will be helping me out. Any reason why I shouldn't do this???

Next thing....will the cheesy, ugly wood thats on the rifle now withstand the recoil without crossbolt(s) and bedding? If not....how about a laminated stock from Boyds or Richards Micro-Fit?

Also,....I plan on reloading for this thing but I was informed by someone, somewhere that A-Square makes ammo for the .416 Taylor....but I can't find a website for them....anybody got it?

Any other tips, techniques or pitfalls I need to look out for during this process or with the round itself?

Thanks Again All.....

About the barrel length. Cut it to 24" & try it.
You can always cut more off but you can't put any back on.

It depends on what you like. I would not worry about the slight loss in velocity, you can walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or jurrasic park with a 40cal/400gr/at 2150fps. You might have to rebed or re stock, call Savage and ask if they do anything different on their big bores. www.superiorammo.com loads 416 Taylor.

TXPO, typing in 416 Taylor on my main page brought up various places to purchase loaded ammo for it although it aint cheap! $60 to $128. I did find properly headstamped brass also but can't remember where.

In the limited shooting that I have done with mine so far weighing in at around 8 pounds I have found the recoil to be managable off the bench and down right fun to shoot off hand with the Sharp Shooters Supply stock but I do believe that I'll save the factory 110 wood stock for those special occasions when one of those "Manly" aquaintances says "let me show ya how ta shooot dat thang"

TXPO,
The taylor shouldn't need crossbolts, with a good bedding job, and most of them have pillars in the action already.

The 24" barrel is pretty handy, and if you don't alter then "normal" LOP, it will still be handy. You need the 24" to get over 2300, with sane pressure.. but, it's way easier to shoot it and then cut it down, than to cut it and then try to stretch it!!

The brass you can get from quaility cart, head stamped. I had a discussion a couple months ago on here, and that brass is within a grain or 2 of water of reformed 458 winchester brass, which is CHEAP and you can order that from midway.

if you want to make the felt recoil better, ifin you head down this way, get a pach f990 (says 470mgobo, Rob, and others) or a kickeez 1.25" pad, in the 302 series (it just looks better)

jeffe

When I built mine, I split the difference and went with 23"......works well and the gun has excellent balance.

Lee Martin
www.singleactions.com

I did the same thing as Lee, I couldn't make up my mind either. I went with 23". Mine is not finished so I can't report velocities. 24" is probably the way to go, thinking back on it. But, we'll see.
Doug

My Taylor has a 22 1/2" Adams and Bennet barrel. This barrel was trimmed a little to fit the available New England Custom Guns barrel band front ramp.
In a previous post, I explained that my .416 Taylor has a long neck....I make brass out of .300Win Mag. I fire form it in the long neck chamber. Brass length is 2.6". Otherwise, the chamber dimensions are identical to the standard .416 Taylor.
This modification allows 410 Woodleigh Weldcores to be seated to the base of the neck and crimped in the crimp groove. OAL cartridge is 3.420. I had to modify the magazine box a little to get loaded rounds to fit correctly. After lots of shooting, I discovered that crimping is not necessary in my rifle as long as there is a tight neck/bullet fit. The 400 gr Hornadays are seated out with the cannelure ahead of the neck.
The long neck modification gives me 80 gr of water capacity in the case (because the bullets are not seated down deep in the case). I have been using H4350 extreme for about 2275 fps with this shorter barrel. RX15 Works a little better and I get 2300 fps. Both loads are with 400-410gr bullets. I like to keep things mild, so some of you guys might be getting more velocity.
Anyway, this is a great cartridge. It will kill anything on this planet with the proper bullet.
Happy shooting,
The Bearman out in Montana Territory

My Taylor on a VZ-24 has a 25-inch Pac-Nor barrel. It is mounted in a Bell and Carlson Medalist stock, which comes with a Decelerator pad and an aluminum bedding block that extends from the wrist into the forend. Might check to see if B&C makes their Medalist for the Savage. Wich I could give more chrono data but I am out of Hornady 400s right now and only have a handful of rounds through the rifle.

You might also look into Bell & Carlson's MAXX line of stocks. I believe they come with a decelerating pad and aluminum bedding block. They are made for the Savage.

Bell and Carlson DuraMaxx stocks have a Decellerator and aluminum bedding PILLARS not a bedding block like the Medalist, which seems strange. Maybe it has something to do with the way the trigger mounted. $119.95 not a bad price and a nice looking stock. Check it out.

www.bellandcarlson.com/

Bill, what did you have to do with the mag well, follower, feed rails, feed ramp, etc. to get this cartridge to feed properly? Thanks. -Fred

quote:

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Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
My Taylor on a VZ-24 has a 25-inch Pac-Nor barrel. It is mounted in a Bell and Carlson Medalist stock, which comes with a Decelerator pad and an aluminum bedding block that extends from the wrist into the forend. Might check to see if B&C makes their Medalist for the Savage. Wich I could give more chrono data but I am out of Hornady 400s right now and only have a handful of rounds through the rifle.

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Fred: Sorry that I can't say much about the details of getting the VZ-24 to feed, as my gunsmith did all the work. But he told me the rails and magazine needed relatively little tweaking. I haven't figured out how to post pix, but could send you a scan of my rifle if you like.
Bill

Bill,

I'd like to see a pic of your rifle

Fred

I am completing a .416 on a Brno 98 action which is a duplicate of the VZ24. I was amazed at how little work was needed to make it feed. This is a new commercial version of a 98 military action. It has a pretty rough oxide type of finish, which made the internals a little rough working. Basically, I used a Dremel with a fine oval stone and a split dowel with sandpaper. I polished the underside and inner edges of the feed rails with the stone and the bolt race and feed ramp with the dowel/sandpaper. It now feeds great. I removed just a slight amount of the inner rail and sidewall below the rail by this polishing. I also had to smooth out some rough places at the very back of the magazine box to ensure that the rear of the cartridge popped up into place. This only happened when loading a single round into the magazine. The belt and head were dragging just slightly on the rough spots.

The only other area of concern is that with the 350 Magtips, the flat nose will sometimes catch on the inner ring if you try to ease a round in. It doesn't happen if you cycle the bolt normally. It can still be forced closed even when it catches, so I suspect it is just barely catching the lip. If I remove the barrel again before completion, I may put a slight chamfer on the edge. I am anxious to try some 400 solids and some Barnes X bullets. I believe this is a glitsch due to the flat point design.

I have three nice VZ24's right now, and I suspect that, as smooth as they are due to use, they might feed with no work at allAll the work I did was really due to a rough finish.. I am planning to convert one of them to .458 and may do another .416.

FWIW, my 375 Taylor sports a 21" barrel. This is what I wanted and I like it. No scope on this unit - A Williams peep and brite orange fiber optic bead in front. I can do 2,500 fps with the 300 grain Partition quite easily. From the velocity standpoint, you're only talking about 30 fps per inch. Shorter barrels have less vibration and catch a lot less brush. Hey, it's not your dick we're talking about, so it o.k. to say you've got a short one!!! LMAO!!!!

I did some quick calculations concerning barrel length to see what effect it had on the ultimate destination,i.e., the thing we're shooting at. While one inch and 30 fps doesn't mean doodly squat in a 22 cal with a 55 gr bullet, it does have a slightly larger effect with a 400 gr bullet.

Using several loading manuals with pages and pages of data, I picked a page out of the Hodgdon #27 manual with data for a BC of .40, 2300 to 2450 fps ( a little extrapolating going on there with the 50 fps number) using the expected difference in velociy between a 21" bbl and a 25" bbl (personally I like 26" to 28" and don't have any problems with the branches) as being 4" x 30 fps = 120 fps total, which is, by the way without getting into a very long discussion, just about the difference between, say a standard and a magnum version of a medium rifle caliber, just for argument sake.

You can use any bullet weight here I might add. 2300 fps has a bullet enegy, Ft-Lb per Grain of bullet weight of 11.74 x 400 gr bullet, which translates into 4696 Ft-Lbs of mighty killing power. Of course, quite enough to do in everything on the face of the planet now and for the quite distant past. Running that up to 2420 fps, another 4 inches, gives approx 13.01 Ft-Lb of Energy per Grain (here is where the extrapolation came in, I didn't use any computer program for the exact (what IS exact) number) which is, again, 13.01 x 400 gr bullet = 5203 Ft-Lbs - 4696 Ft-Lbs = 507 Ft-Lbs of additional whack'um and sack'um. That is about like shooting them with your shorty AND a 357 mag with a 160 gr bullet at the same time or two 30-06, 180 grainers at around 2600 fps

Now I built my 416 Taylor with a cheap 24" Adams and Bennet barrel mostly as an experiment in future barrel swapping on the Savage 110 action but with the thought in mind as to getting the MAXIMUM killing power out of it. If I had wanted a lesser beast I could have used the 400 Whelen or a .308 length case necked up to 416 for even less velocity, just like cutting off the barrel an inch at a time. Or I could have picked one of the .375 or .35 size toys, but that seems to be the wrong way to go if I want KILLING power. Now if I ever want to go to the Dark continent or hunt the big bears I will go up to the REALLY big stuff and quit pissing around with pop-guns.

There is a very good chance I will rechamber this barrel to 416 Rem Mag after I get the Taylor data developed just to see how much of a difference the 0.350" longer case will produce, and if the interest is still there, maybe go to a Pac-Nor 28" barrel for even more number crunching. "Why", do you ask? "Because" is my answer.