Anyone seen anything interesting on the 280 Ross case?
It's such an obvious choice for the non-belted Win Mag cartridge, I'm surprised it hasn't surfaced.
Capacity is noticeably larger, but base dia is only a nominal .02" larger than the Winnie at belt, so conversion issues would be nonexistent.
At 2.6632" case length, it's begging to be improved, and loaded with 175 grainers, COL of 3.6 or so.
If the brass could take it, the shoulder dia could be blwon out from a mere .4220" to something more like .512" or so (same taper as Win Mag) and be bigger at the shoulder than the Winnie is at the base. You could give it a "real" neck and it would still give better performance than Winchester's offering. (Read: lower pressures, OR higher bullet speeds.)

I dare say a .375" version would beat the H&H by a margin....

Surprised I haven't heard more about this case.

There was an old gent in town who was moving all his customised Ross rifles a little while ago and he had some neat things. A 458 Win Mag Ross, a 375-280 Ross, a 338-280 Ross, and a couple of improved/necked up/down Ross rifles based on the 303 British. I wish I would have had more time to check them out. I agree, the 280 Ross case (like the 8 X 68S) just begs for improvement. - Dan

I have never seen any wildcats built on the .280 Ross,however thousands upon thousands of
wildcats have been built over the years.

I would expect most wildcats on the Ross case
to have been built in Canada between WW1 and WW2.

The price and availibility of the Ross case has been such as to discourage wildcatting.

WC

Hello All,

Who would want to bet against the possibility that both the 6.5x68 and the 8x68 started life as blown out Ross cases? Gerlach was busy with Ross cases in the 30's claiming all sorts of hyper-velocities - small jump for Schuler to blow them out.

I had beem formimg Ross cases from 300 H&H - didn't like the unsupported brass ahead of the belt. Then in 1974 or so returned from a hunt in South West Africa with an 8x68 case (memento of the kudu that it had bagged - shovelled it through the Ross die and reformed it - an almost perfect Ross case.

As a result when I bought my only new rifle I chose it in 8x68 and ordered about 300 RWS cases with it - with the Ross in mind.

The thought that it might have started life as a Ross case only occured to me much later.

cheers edi