Someone thoughtfully left a few rounds of 300 WSM fired brass at the range the other day, and I couldn't resist playing around with them . I am sure that this has been done several times before, but if it had not I would have to call them 375 and 416 SFM (Short Fat Mbogo ). I seated the bullets to function through a relatively short action (375 at 3.00" for a 300 grain solid seated to the base of the neck, and 416 at 3.12" for a 400 grain solid seated to the base of the shoulder). They look so neat that I might just have to continue the project.

Jim

Necks look a little short. My Lazzeroni Hellcat is the short Patriot necked up to .375 and my OAL is shorter than 2.80" and I can get almost 2600fps with the 300gr Nosler Partition in a 23" barrel...case life is good as I have annealed some of the brass twice and I anneal every 5th load. I would expect the 375WSM to at least approach 2500fps with the 300gr bullet and if you've read Kevin Robertson you know he likes his hunters to load the 375 H&H down to around 2450fps for buff.

Bill,

My post was mostly in fun, but your response got me thinking so I ran a check on Quickload. The 375 with 300 grain solids and RL 15 calculates to about 2550 fps, assuming an equal max pressure to the parent cartridge. The 416 with 400 grain AGS solids calculates as 2350 fps (Barnes monolithic not in data base, and I have not gotten around to adding it yet). Can you say short action equivalent of 375 H&H and 404 Jeffery factory loads boys and girls ? Now what would be a good short action to play with...... hum......? Sounds more interesting all the time .

Jim

mbogo375, that looks like a very cool project. Keep us posted and good luck.

The 416 sounds like a good little thumper, but does anyone else think 577/450 martini when they see that sucker?

Now those do look interesting. A question comes to mind though. If you built a rifle that suits that OAL would you crimp? Sean

I don't crimp mine but I have smoothed and reduced my expander ball to increase bullet pull.

Above is a .416 HESAM which is pretty much the same as what Mbogo suggests. (Actually, it is based on a .348 Winchester, rim turned off, blown out and necked up to .416 with an O.A.L. of 2.8"). The others are a .450 N.E., a 9.3x62 and a .404 Jeffery for comparison. Mast made a run of properly stamped brass.

The test bed rifle for Heavy Express, Inc., now defunct, was mine. The reloading data lists a 400 grain Hawk at 2300 f.p.s. out of a 22" barrel. I've loaded it to 2250 fps with Hornady solids and softs with a good dose (1/2 grain under max) of 2520 with no pressure signs and the brass has lasted 12 reloadings.

The thing is very accurate, no recoil with the only problem being the Ruger 77 Mk II only allows 2 down in the magazine.

If anyone cares???

How about a Mexican Mauser? Large ring, M-98, short acton?

mbogo375.....when I was working up loads for the original Lazzeroni 9.53 Hellcat I talked to Mic McPherson quite a bit with respect to trying to find a good load and we found that QuikLoad consistently predicted higher velocities than I was able to obtain. Mic thought it might be because the ratio of case diameter to neck diameter was much different than the typical case used to develop QuikLoad.

Lar45,
That might be a possibility (I don't have one to measure). I tried them in a standard '98 box the other day and they fit with room to spare. Looks like you can only get two down however. The Winchester 70 chambered for one of the short mags would seem to be a logical choice. If I can find a used one at a reasonable price I might give it a try.

Bill,

It seems that Quickload, like most ballistic programs, doesn't handle some types of cartridges (large or small capacity, or straight walled) as well as middle of the road bottle-necked cartridges. On the other side of the coin, if the calculated velocity reads high then I would expect that calculated pressures also read higher than the actual pressure. Quickload suggests adding an arbitrary increase in case capacity to more closely approximate pressures and velocities on large capacity straight-wall cases like the old nitro express cartridges (They give an example of the 416 Rem needing to use an increase over the actual capacity of 7% to better predict pressure and velocity).

Jim

mexican large ring, from the 1920s (26 model?) in an intermediate large ring.. will hold 30-06... the 1910 and 1936 max out at 3.2

jim
try the 416 jamison for the basic.

jeffe

[ 07-24-2003, 06:23: Message edited by: jeffeosso ]

They'd probably hold enough powder to get the bullet out of the muzzle?? Perhaps??