Since the rifle I am getting is a Ruger compact 77 with a 16.5 inch barrel, what powder would be best suited for a .264 bore and a length of 16.5 inches?

Too slow a burn rate and powder will burn outside of the barrel needlessly.

Just trying to get my thoughts together before I start investing in components.

Thanks

Jim

Faster burning powders should lose less velocity in the short barrel. Try to stay with the faster powders listed in reloading manuals.
Since the 260 reloading information is a bit scarce I have been using 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser information. The two cases have almost identical shape and powder capacity. I haven't found a load yet that wasn't interchangable.

Several folks are shooting the 260 in the 15" encore pistol, so you might want to post on the single shot forum.

Asside from that, I just don't buy the argument that shorter tubes require faster powders. The benefits are mimimal, if at all. Load for accuracy, you are going to have muzzle blast from a 16 1/2" tube, just the nature of the beast.

The "faster powders" bit is pure myth and unfortunately keeps getting repeated. Those with actual experience will tell you that the same powders that work best in a rifle will usually give you best performance in a 14-15" pistol or slightly longer carbine barrel. In a 26" VLS in .260, one of the most accurate loads was 46 grains H4350 under the 120 grain Ballistic Tip. It was also the fastest at 2975 fps. In a 14" XP, this same load, with only the seating depth modified, clocked 2693 fps and was superbly accurate. It was also the fastest of all my 120 grain bullet loads. The same has held true in other situations, but I chose to use this one for reference.

My experience bears out Shiner's statements. The fastest load in a long barrel (26 inches) is the fastest in the short barrels (10-12 inches and everything in between) 99% of the time. Further, my experience with the 6.5x55 Swedish round in the 29 inch rifle and 16 inch carbine barrels bears this out. The .260 Rem and 6.5x55 Swede are virtually ballistic twins.

In the 6.5x55, the 140 grain bullets seem to be the best all-rounders witht the 120s often being preferred for game in the 100-200 pound class such as Whitetail deer.

I think those are cute little rifles and I hope that you enjoy yours for quite a while.

Thanks all for the replies. I appreciate the info.

I hope to see how well this combination works on deer in North Alabama this year.

Jim B.

Hmmm.. so you all think I am full of poop on going to faster burning powder for the shorter barrel.
Could be, I have been full of it in the past from time to time.
I am using my experience from a 22-250 Ack Imp rifle to base the comment on.
The present barrel is 27" lg. and burns Reloader 25 just fine. The previous barrel was only 22" lg. and gives a way higher velocity spread using the same load. It did shoot Reloader 19, a faster powder) just fine. In fact, since the barrels are interchangable I can switch them out and compare the same exact load. About a month back I took my once formed brass and played around to verify that the brass would work just fine in either barrel. It did. Since it fit just fine I took both barrels to the range and ran a couple of loads across the chronograph with both barrels in order to verify velocity loss between the barrels under the same conditions. The same thing as previously observed happened. The Reloader 25 load showed in excess of 100 fps velocity spread in the shorter barrel but only 47 fps spread in the longer barrel. The reloader 19 gave nearly identical velocity spread for both barrels at 23 & 17 fps spread. You can see why I don't care too much for Reloader 25 even in the longer barrel.
Presumably you wouldn't see much vertical stringing at 300 yards and closer, so perhaps the velocity variation isn't too important to people who don't shoot "way out there".

Bruce-
Your "problem" is quite evident: you are using a powder far too slow for optimum performance in that case. Re-25 is just out of place here. Thus, the comparison just doesn't hold water and isn't a fair one when one considers the .260 .