I am having a 400 built. all is going well but the gun smith called me today and said the dummy cartridges is sent him would not chamber.


We are using the petrov chamber reamer. The max over all length for the 30-06 parent cartridge is 3.340. The dummy rounds are with Hornady 400 solids loaded to 3.340 col. They work fine through the action but are too long for the throat.

what should I do? Shorten col until they chamber or have him lengthen the throat until the ammo chamber with the long length so I can get max powder capacity?

What lengths are you running your 400 grain bullets at?

Thanks for any advice.

I would have him throat it.

Thanks

Like Lee said simply adjust the throat.

I found when I built my 400PDK that the various 400gr bullets shape had a big impact on throat requirements.

Yep, you are seating way out beyond the cannelure of the Hornady .410"/400gr FMJ, if you are getting 3.340" COL with the 400 Whelen Petrov of 2003.

You would be close to 3.150" COL if you seated to cannelure and crimped it.

Lengthening the parallel-sided free-bore will work just fine.

The 400 Whelen Petrov of 2003 has only 0.188" length of parallel-sided free-bore.

For my pet variation on that, my "400 Whelen Petrov Berry of 2013" has 0.300" length of parallel-sided free-bore.
Worked like a charm.

That Hornady bullet you are using is OK, but the Woodleigh .411"/400-grainer has a longer nose forward of cannelure and the ogive there will not interfere with your throat like the bullet you are using.



Lengthening your throat would be the best fix.
Shortening the brass is a bummer, IMHO.

Lessee, some review of 400 Whelen lore:

Here is your chamber reamer. The 400 Whelen Petrov of 2003 and the JGS "G&H" reamers are the same:






Michael Petrov's chamber cast came from a 1940s G&H 400 Whelen rifle. PT&G (Dave Kiff) uses the same specs on his reamer as does JGS.
They are both correct for the Petrov version.
Here is some of my doodling on the drawing of the chamber cast to elucidate:

I run my 400 grain bullets at 3.340 but I agree. Have it throated. Does a case with no bullet chamber?

quote:

Originally posted by mart:
I run my 400 grain bullets at 3.340 but I agree. Have it throated. Does a case with no bullet chamber?

That brings up the issue of using the Quality Cartridge brass with 400 Whelen headstamp.
It may have a donut on the end of it, too thick in the case wall as made, may need turning (or reaming after fire-forming) to fit the chamber.

However, if the Hornady bullet is seated to 3.340" COL, that will certainly make for an explanation, even with perfect brass.

My solution to all bullet issues, once brass is perfected:








Above throating easily allows something like this in a Winchester M70 Classic action:



The 3.4" box of a 270 Winchester rifle was lengthened to 3.6" for my second 400 Whelen.
My first one was done on a Ruger M77 hawkeye with 3.4" box and used the Petrov-dimensioned reamer.

Here are some .416-caliber Barnes TSX and Hornady RNSP 400-grainers sized down to .411" diameter.
The possibilities are many for bullets useable.
CH4D canneluring tool can add a cannelure wherever you like:

Here is the brass problem you can run into with Quality cartridge brass, make sure this is not what is happening:



External donut on the QualCart brass is visible to naked eye (last quarter inch of neck is too fat in outside diameter) when brass is sized and trimmed and dummy-loaded with a bullet:



Donut visible inside the basic cylindrical brass as it came from Qualcart 2.588" long, before trimming or sizing:



Here is a case that Rusty McGee outside-neck-turned to get rid of the donut:



We decided that was too much trouble.
Rusty sent all the brass back to Peter Cardona at Quality Cartridge and he re-worked it to thin the neck walls at the end of the basic cylindrical brass.
We got it back after several months wait and it works fine with no dramas now.

If you fear ruining the accuracy of your 400 Whelen by lengthening the throat, don't worry if the gunsmith is competent.
My long-throated 400 Whelen shot this 3-shot group at 100 yards with a .410-caliber/210-grain handgun bullet with COL of less than 3.0".
Long jump to the lands and worked fine:

But then, come to think of it, what brass length are you using to make your dummy rounds loaded to 3.340" COL?

The minimum chamber length of your rifle is 2.501".

Prudent hand loading practices and factory ammo specs usually are for max brass OAL to be about 0.010" to 0.012" shorter than chamber minimum.

So your brass should be 2.490" maximum length, trim to 2.480".

If you made your dummies 2.500" long in the brass,
something as simple and advisable as trimming to 2.480" may be all that is necessary.

With the 400 Whelen Berry of 2013, I made my chamber a wee bit longer, to 2.509", and i push it to the ragged edge of prudence, using 2.500" or longer brass.

The "400 Whelen-B" chamber is .008" longer than the 400 Whelen Petrov.
I also used a slightly tighter neck-1 (.438" instead of .441") and same neck-2 diameter (.437") in the 400 Whelen-B chamber as in the 400 Whelen Petrov.

Believe it or not, this gives the 400 Whelen-B a more positive shoulder than the 400 Whelen Petrov by .003" difference in step at shoulder-neck step-down.

That may be a fly speck in the pepper, I agree.
Both versions use the same reloading dies and headspace gages. No dramas.

Lest we forget, here is the 1923 version of the brass case that Townsend Whelen used.
It used a .409"-diameter bullet and brass was short, for ease of using fire-formed 30-06 brass to match the short chamber, most likely:

Thanks for the responses. I will have have the gun smith check the neck diameter on the Dummy rounds and make sure that a case with out bullet will chamber and will have him extend the throat to accommodate the 400 grainers at max length.

What is the proper throating die?

quote:

Originally posted by els:
Thanks for the responses. I will have have the gun smith check the neck diameter on the Dummy rounds and make sure that a case with out bullet will chamber and will have him extend the throat to accommodate the 400 grainers at max length.

What is the proper throating die?

Good check list above, except you did not mention the length of brass used in those dummy rounds.

Nor have you said what make of brass you are using.

Those two bits of info could help the discussion here.

Throating Reamer to lengthen the parallel-sided free-bore: .412" diameter with 1.5-degree (1*30') leade angle.

John Barsness says the most important accuracy factor in our handloads is the bullet.
No matter how we fiddle with the brass runout, neck thickness, COL, throats, primers and primer pockets, powders, etc.,
you have to have a good bullet to see any returns on all the rest.
And of course the twist rate has to be right for the bullet too.



Here is another little test to show that the long throat (0.300" length of parallel-sided free-bore in the 400 Whelen-B) is not an accuracy problem.
After 5 shots at 100 yards to get on paper and foul the barrel, using the GSC-USA .411"/317-grain HV,
I got lucky with the next 3 shots at 100 yards, so I moved on to the windage adjustment on another aiming point, for one-hole-preservation here:








I was even riding the ragged edge of safety with 2.504"-2.505" brass length in my 2.509" chamber length.


No pressure signs with the above, but I will probably just stick with a 2.500" max brass length, in my 2.509" minimum chamber length (400 Whelen-B).

400 Whelen-Petrov chamber length is 2.501" minimum.
What is the best maximum brass length for that?

I'm using Quality Cart cases.
cases trimmed to 2.485 +/- .001
Thank you for all the advice especially for the throatig reamer and the case problems

I suppose that the dough nut in the case neck could cause chambering interference

2.501" minimum chamber length for your 400 Whelen-Petrov >>> 2.490" as a prudent brass maximum length for handloading.
Therefore your initial trim-to-length of 2.485" is excellent.
After the initial fire-forming, you can keep them all trimmed to maximum length of 2.490".
That is what I am doing with my 400 Whelen-Petrov nowadays.

Thanks I will. I think that we have every thing ironed out now. Just have about another month or so for rifle to be finished.

one last question. I have read the 400 discussions until I am dizzy. What load would you recommend for a fire forming/ test load using the 400 Hornady FMJ bullet.

My go to load for 400 grain bullets is 58 grains of H4895, but that's in my rifle after working up from 54 grains. I'd start at 54 grains of H4895 and go up from there. The will definitely fill out the shoulder just fine and if you are using a chronograph it will give you a good idea where you are velocity wise. My rifle churns up 2150 with 58 grain and a 400 grain Woodleigh. The Hornady is 2130 and the Hawk 2170 the last time I checked them over the chronograph.

That's exactly what I needed. We are looking for a test fire load for the rifle just to check function and chamber smoothness etc.
Thanks
Mart.

ONe of my pet peeves is a common mistake in the gunworld today..So many guns have long magazines and short throats or even visa versa..IMO a good gunsmith or manufacturer should make the throat fit the magazine or the magazine fit the throat, and damn few do that.

The ols Brno mod. 21 an 22 always did that, they knew how to build a rifle for sure.