P&G make the 340 without freebore option?

If you decide to neck down a 155mm artillery shell to 22 caliber you simply have to give them the dimensions and they will make a reamer for it. With whatever throat is on the drawing. Well maybe that's a bit extreme, but I imagine for the right price they would still do it.

I've had them make many of my strange request and for your money, they will grind anything.
But, you realize you can't use book load data any more fort it.

On top of what Tom said, factory 340 ammunition may exhibit some high pressure signs with a short throated barrel. When Roy Weatherby designed it he was looking for the maximum velocities that he he could get out of his line cartridges. To do that he had to overbore the cases to what was back then considered, unrealistic back then. Even with the huge over bores he had to move away from the then standard 22 and 24 inch barrels and go with 26 inch tubes to make use of the added propellant. With all that pressures became a problem he then added the 5/8ths throat to give the bullets a jump on the lands and grooves to keep initial pressures down to something livable. A lot of thinking and a lot of compromising had to be made to make those guns preform at the advertised velocities. Any time you deviate for those specifications you have to remember that you will be taking a step backwards. The 340 Wby was never designed for hunting varmints. It was designed to shoot minute of moose. 1-1/2 inches at 100 yards is minute of moose and is generally acceptable for something that pukes half of it's food out on to the ground when you shoot it.

What would 338 WM have for throat? 1/4"?

.2148 at two degrees of throat angle.

From their site

 Cartridge Throat length (free bore) 
.224 Weatherby Magnum .162 
.240 Weatherby Magnum .169 
.257 Weatherby Magnum .378 
.270 Weatherby Magnum .378 
7MM Weatherby Magnum .378 
.300 Weatherby Magnum .361 
.340 Weatherby Magnum .373 
.375 Weatherby Magnum .373 
.378 Weatherby Magnum .756 
.416 Weatherby Magnum .239 
.460 Weatherby Magnum .756 
.30-378 Weatherby Magnum .361 
.338-378 Weatherby Magnum .361 
  

http://www.weatherby.com/support/faqs.html

quote:

The 340 Wby was never designed for hunting varmints. It was designed to shoot minute of moose. 1-1/2 inches at 100 yards is minute of moose and is generally acceptable for something that pukes half of it's food out on to the ground when you shoot it.

For most big game hunting a 2 inch rifle is plenty. It is easy minutes of moose past 500 yards a moose's kill zone is huge.

It is easy to get spoiled when one has a couple of super accurate rifles.

a little story I was out on the range with a accurate 30-06 and a accurate 223. I fired a group with each at dots next to each other.

As I look through by spotting scope I said to my self what is the heck is wrong with my 06 the group is huge.

Well the 223 group but five shots into 3/8th of an inch the 06 put 5 180 full power loads into 3/4th of and inch.

Next to each other 06 group was huge. But in reality I have made many one shot kills on pop cans at 500 yards with the 06. I also use it on several heads of big game.

I also killed a couple dozen deer with my 99sav.

That doesn't shoot near as well.

I really like carrying and hunting with the 99.

That is more imported then carrying a rifle that shoots well under an inch but does not carry as nice nor has the history of the 99.

Standard is 1/2" 3 group at 100 yards.

Ted Gaillard barrel achieves!

quote:

Originally posted by ar corey:
Ted Gaillard barrel achieves!

I haven't bought one of Teds barrels for a while and no one has brought me one in about a year. I used to install about 10 or 15 per year. Quite a lot considering this is Canada.
One of my regulars told me he had spoken to Ted and he was told that Ted wasn't making barrels any longer. Or possibly the truth of the matter is that he only makes them for friends or selected people?

Any rumors or truths to the affect?

No matter what we shoot, or how accurate it is, the standard is one shot, one kill.

quote:

Originally posted by ar corey:
Standard is 1/2" 3 group at 100 yards.

Ted Gaillard barrel achieves!

Standard for what and for who.

Virtually every scoped rifle I have has, at one time or another, fired a half inch group but I don't expect my own hunting rifles to do so. Gratifying if it happens but certainly not necessary.
Early Weatherby rifles featured long, oversized throats and reamers were often ground this way. Later on, throat lengths were reduced somewhat and diameters were closer to bullet diameter.
In my experience, the freebore did not make for higher velocity. Instead, it reduced pressure and altered the pressure curve. Generally speaking, velocity dropped right along with the pressure. You could add more powder, to regain the lost velocity, and the pressure would be right back where it started. Regards, Bill

Well Billy, Weatherby was actually messing with that stuff about 45 years to early. When I was 16 or so I had Ronnie Proppe build me a 30 Wolfe on an old Sako that I had. It was basically a 378 Weatherby shortened by .200 inch and necked down to 30 caliber. It was a horrible thing to work with. Forming cases was a nightmare and getting a load that would out-do the 300 Weatherby velocities was next to impossible. Howard Wolfe had a pet duplex load for it using a shovel full of 5010 and 5 grains of Bullseye under a light kapoke to get the BBQ started. Getting 5010 in Canada was almost impossible and I finally got Wayland to track me down a case of 205 Norma which actually did work a bit better. Other than 205 and H4831 there was no way to fuel the stupid thing. Later, when I was working at Custom Gun, I talked to Fred at Weatherby when I started playing with the 30x378. He informed me that he and Roy had tinkered with the 30x378 as a possible alternative to the blown out 300 H&H but had run into exactly the same problems that I had with the Wolfe. I think part of the logic of the long throats was to deal with trying to make hot powders work in a drastically over bored case with pistons that were MUCH to small. Whatever the logic, the long throats only gave marginal increases. But the increases were good enough that Weatherby used them for quite a long while.

yeah, I made 270 and 300 Weatherby rifles with short throats, medium throats, long throats, tapered throats, deep throats (that one sucked), and with various diameters. The results were always fairly predictable. Same thing with every other cartridge I worked with. A longer throat dropped the velocity and the addition of powder got it back once the same pressure was reached. With some combinations, I could get a slight velocity increase but never more than 1% or so. Of course, I was unable to accurately measure pressures and was relying upon case head expansion. When the head expanded, I didn't know what the pressure was but I did know it was too hot. Regards, Bill