I called to order bullets from Hawk. Their product line looks really good, but I can’t deny I was disappointed when I was told it would take two weeks for Hawk to ship .45-70 flat nose and .416 spitzers. I think that level of service works okay for companies during the early stages, but sooner or later someone will decide an instant shipment of decent bullets from MidwayUSA, beats great bullets that aren’t available when you need them. Darwin has a way of balancing things out. Of course I may just be full of crap and nobody minds waiting but me. The notion of wrapping soft lead in a soft jacket, and allowing the customer the option of selecting jacket thickness to suit a given velocity range is excellent of not great thinking.
I’ve been poking around the .450 Marlin issue. I’ve read the data and the reviews, and I just can’t see this edge over the .45-70. I don’t care who is reviewing, or how glowing the articles are; less powder, lower pressure, shorter barrel, all equal lower velocity. I really hate it when PR departments write the early white papers and defy the laws of physics. I was wondering about this heavy casehead and web, I was wondering about the extra couple of brake ports and I was wondering why, with all of these pressure considerations, the .450 loads were all reported at about the same level as decent .45-70 loads.
So I called Marlin, well not Mr. Marlin, but I did speak to a customer service person who told me the 1895M is a stronger gun than the 1895G; she actually sounded a little defensive that I asked…and I was being nice, especially after waiting on hold for 20 minutes, listening to a recording tell me over and over how valuable of a customer I was. I did wonder why a major manufacturer would heat treat two guns differently, when chambered for such similar cartridges, knowing handload manuals all offer jacked up loads for the .45-70 Guide Gun that approach .450 level performance. Wasn’t the whole concept of the .450 Marlin to move shooters away from heavily loading the .45-70 in the guide gun? You know, I’m happy with my 1895G, and I don’t think there is anything except a lot of cost associated with the .450 Marlin. If I’m already max’d out with compressed loads in the .45-70, how would I stuff more powder in the smaller .450 Marlin case?
Today marked the 5th week anniversary of my e-mail to RCBS, asking basic questions about changing over from the Ammo Master to the Pro 2000 – “Is there anything that I can carry over from one press to the other, or do I toss it all and start all over again on this huge investment?” Well, the bad news is RCBS never responded, but the good news is Speer did respond regarding an entirely different question relating to their bullets. Speer told me I could use the forward cannelure on the 350 grain .458 flat nose bullet to get the overall length down to 2.580” and clear the ejection port on my Marlin. Speer didn’t recommend this approach, but I already knew using the rear cannelure would result in an overall cartridge length of 2.700”, and the lever wouldn’t pull a loaded case far enough out of the barrel to even come close to ejecting. Then I began to wonder how “Shooting Times” got all of those 350 grain Speer bullets to work through all of those .450 Marlin tests from the rear cannelure. I needed a screw driver and a small hammer to unstick the very first round from the gun. I’m sure I’ll be working it all out on a Hornady L-N-L press.
I tried to buy a fancy walnut blank from a sawmill in Oregon. I asked the proprietor who could fit a nice stock, and I was told me to call a guy in Montana. The guy in Montana told me to not buy wood from the guy in Oregon who referred me to him. That just didn’t sound right, so I insisted on using wood from Oregon and the stock guy in Montana, but the guy in Montana said, “Just make sure to tell him you need dry wood that can be worked right away”. I thought there might be a subtle clue in all of that. Three days into a conversation with the guy in Oregon left me with a massive choice of some very pretty, but very wet lumber. So I asked as sincerely as possible, how long wood it take (stop me if you’ve heard this before) this wood to go from 17% moisture content to at least 10% moisture content if I store it at 5% relative humidity and 75 ºF but, three days later, the Oregon guy is still telling me how pretty the wood is, the price has gone from $200 to $450 then $750 and I was already having nightmares of warped barrel channels, splits and checkering tears….. I passed. One day I hope to have a good stock. Personally, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen and I’m going to spend the rest of my days owning incredible ugly rifles with stocks that look like the back of a Sears washing machine.
I’m trying to put together a custom cartridge and die set on a long action; Weatherby or Remington. So I read, in gruesome detail, everything I could on the Clymer site. I thought through a preliminary specification on the rough and finishing tools, and sent them an e-mail asking them what else they needed for then to provide a quote. A week has gone buy and I’m still waiting for even a “Hey, how the hell are you doing” response. Maybe that e-mail is stuck is queue behind the RCBS response. I know this isn’t a big task, I’m just apparently asking the wrong people. Somewhere, at some distant time vector, Clymer will make the reamers, RCBS will cut the dies and the guy in Montana will find some dry wood and I’ll have one heck of a gun, as long as it’s not in .458 caliber, because I still won’t have bullets.
To all of this I can only say, I’ve still got one deal left with Lock Stock & Barrel and a new Hornady Lock-N-Load powder measure, and an oversize metering kit. If all else fails, and LSB comes through, I’ll just load up a bunch of rounds for the .338-378 and .416 and head on up to the range.
Wildcats
If you ever want to get a food fight going, have someone suggest a wildcat for use as a big game hunting cartridge. I’d just about guarantee, almost every owner of a .30-06 or .308, especially those .308 guys, will run up your drain pipe demanding to know how you could suggest such an unreliable piece of equipment for hunting. My rhetorical question is, “Where would you buy ammo if you got to the hunting location and discovered you had forgotten to bring it with you?” Let me see….went to a distant hunting location and forgot ammo…what’s the word I’m thinking of ?
The truth of the matter is, almost every cartridge derived from the .30-06, or .308, or .375 H&H, or .378 Weatherby were wildcats at one time or another, and remained so until they received acceptance as the .25-06, .243, 7mm-08, 7mm magnum, .300 magnum, .338-378, etc, etc. Not only have wildcats spawned many factory cartridges, they also spawned many gun companies. Now it sounds like I’m writing about salmon. Weatherby built his famous brand, first on cartridges derived from the .375 H&H. The Dakota brand produces cartridges based on the .404 Jeffery. Heavy Express offers a collection of thumpers based on the .348 Winchester. Almost all of the super duper .308 and .338 magnums these days are based on the .416 Rigby.
What were early experimental efforts, could have never been conducted by a factory. Perhaps a gun or two in engineering, but would a factory tool for a cartridge concept that was completely untested in the market place? Factories have expensive overhead, high demands on capital and human resources that can’t spend too much time on projects that won’t yield earnings for investors. A firearms enthusiast, on the other hand, can spend personal money like there’s no tomorrow, even if the end result is an experimental cartridge and rifle that tosses bullets within 50 fps of the closest factory round. Individuals will always be able to explore these initial propositions much more easily than a factory, while not being under pressure for success with each effort.
The factory guys can sit back and watch it all develop, then pick and choose from the best with the knowledge their actions will represent a minimal financial risk. I’m not suggesting this is a negative aspect of the process, I would suggest it is a practical part of the development process. The benefit to the individual sportsman comes when the wildcat becomes a standard product and drops to an affordable level for the masses. Gone are the one of a kind perfected reamers, custom loading dies and well worked over custom firearms. In stead there will be a shiny new Remington 700, chambered for the .260 Remington, waiting to be picked up at the local gun store by anyone with $600 in their pocket.
Sure hope some of this stuff shows up……
Thanks
Joe
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