I have a Rem. 700 in 30-06. I Seat 180 gr. Hornady's to .020" off the lands. Only .222 of the bullet is in the case. I have read that at least a bullet width should be minimum that is seated,(.308").

This gun is mainly hunting/plinking rifle, has approx. 1500 rds. thru it. Still shoots MOA.

My questions;

Can the barrel be cut from the breech to shorten the chamber and still function properly?

If so, is that cost effective, or am I better off getting a new barrel?

Or do nothing and blast away?

If it shoots ok, just shoot it and forget it; .222 is enough to keep the bllets from falling out. but if youy really wanted, the barrel can be faced off, counterbore and chamber deepened, with a shorter throat. Yes, it would cost some money to do that, and you will lose a couple of threads as there is a relief where the recoil lug sits and you cant thred that. and the barrel shoulder will be faced off a bit too. about an hours work. Just shoot it.

Yes it can be done, on some rifles, as you say. It used to be done in France where rifles "capable of chambering military cartridges" were prohibited.

So you had two odd very French solutions and one stolen from the Germans.

One was to use parent case of a wider base diameter than the original military cartridge and ream OUT the chamber.

Thus the 7.62mm x 54R Russian Moisin rifle was made to take a .348 Winchester necked down to 7.62mm.

The second was to take off the barrel and turn it back one full turn (to keep the iron sights in alingment) and so produce a SHORT chamber which was then re-chambered to be lengthened back so that it was about 1/10" shorter than the factory specification for regular 30.06 or .303 British.

Thus the 30.06 COURT (.30-06 SHORT) and the .303 SPORTING (.303 British SPORTING)

Both effectively short chambers that would then no longer accept the parent full length factory round.

The third solution, stolen from the Germans, was to lengthen the chamber. This involved the minimum of work and was what was done in Germany after WWI when sporting 8x57 Mauser rifles were re-chambered to 8x60 cartridge.

My own advice is that it isn't worth it.

And in fact a 154 grain bullet in an 8x57 Mauser also has very little (if seated to factory specification) inside the case neck.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
If it shoots ok, just shoot it and forget it; .222 is enough to keep the bllets from falling out. but if youy really wanted, the barrel can be faced off, counterbore and chamber deepened, with a shorter throat. Yes, it would cost some money to do that, and you will lose a couple of threads as there is a relief where the recoil lug sits and you cant thred that. and the barrel shoulder will be faced off a bit too. about an hours work. Just shoot it.

He said the rifle was a Rem 700, it don't have a thread relief groove but he would have to pick up the thread and run it further, the other info is right on though.

Oops; you are right; on some of these the threads go all the way to the shoulder and some have no threads where the recoil lug sits. I wasn't thinking when I wrote that. As for all the chamber shortening info; good, but he still wants a standard 30-06.
Anyway, OP, forget all this and shoot.

Then blast away it is. I'll worry about this when the bullets start falling out.

quote:

I'll worry about this when the bullets start falling out

I believe if it isn't broken don't fix it.

I'm glad you decided to just go ahead and shoot it. With the light recoil of a .30-'06, it likely will never pop a bullet out on you. If it does, just buff the expander ball on your sizing die down about .001" and you'll get more case neck tension holding the bullet which may help solve that. (Or you could try a different brand of 180 grain bullets, such as Sierra. Different makes of bullets have different ogive shapes, which varies how deep they go into the barrel before making contact with the throat.)

The reason I'm glad you've decided to leave the barrel dimensions alone is that setting the barrel back and re-chambering may leave a little bit of "gaposis" between the outside of the barrel and the inside of the forend.

I don't like small amounts of clearance on my hunting rifles for a couple of reasons...(1) it essentially changes the bedding a tad which may affect accuracy God only knows how much, and (2) in the hunting field it allows more space for all kinds of crap and moisture to get into where it may cause bad poop to happen.

(Not to mention, I really don't care for the look of it. Rather than look as if the barrel was intentionally free-floated, it often just looks like sloppy stocking.)

The bullets will never come out regardless of how shallow they are seated; ; inertia will make the whole cartridge move forward. Not just the bullet. That only is a factor in double rifles and revolvers.

Or.....you can check your chamber neck length, with a Sinclair Chamber Neck Gage. Chances are that it is 0.030" to 0.060" longer than a "standard" 30-06 case neck.

Then just form some new cases from a longer "parent" case. Of course, then strict case segregation would then be required.

I once made some 243 cases from '06 brass.....they looked like 6mm rem. brass when completed. But.....I could then reach the lands of my Rem Mod 7 S/S with 55BT's.

A bit of work.....yes. But I enjoyed it.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

edit: Here's a pic of a 17-222 "long neck" case I made, some years ago. Yes.....the rounds actually fired.

There may be nothing or little gained by seating the bullets that long.
Try one caliber deep seating. If it still shoots ok I would forget it.

BTW in your rifle I would forget shooting boat tail bullets with that long seating. The boat tail will make the case neck grip on the bullet even shorter.

You might try Sierra tangent ogive bullets. They will touch the rifling without being seating so far out like the Hornady secant ogive bullets.