Here's February's gun of the month, the 338/375 Ruger Striker.
This one is one of my earlier Savage Striker builds. It started as a factory gun in 300 WSM that I got in a trade a couple years ago here on HuntWa. I shot it for a while as a 300 WSM but quickly decided that I needed something more substantial. After talking to a friend up in Alaska about a 338 WSM Striker that he had just finished I decided that I had to one up him.
I initially considered the 330 Dakota but the cost of brass and dies turned me away from that one. After playing around with a few different parent cases and shoulder configurations I ended up going with just a 375 Ruger case necked down. This meant that all I had to do to form brass was run a 375 case into a 338 RCM die and I was done. Bullets are seated with a 338 RCM die and a 375 Ruger die is used when I need to full length size the brass. I designed the reamer dimensions around a 225 Accubond seated to the top of the shoulder. It worked out that this was the perfect length to run as a repeater from a Savage long action.
Here's a 30-06, 338 Win Mag and a 338/375 Ruger with a 250 SMK
With the reamer ordered I called Benchmark Barrels about having the barrel made. I didn't really now what to expect recoil wise from the gun so we went with a straight taper to .75" at the muzzle. It ended up being a pretty good compromise between weight and shootability. After some research and a few more phone calls I picked up a 3 port Muscle Brake from Center Shot rifles at the recommendation of Jim See. He thought the 4 port would have been too big and unnecessary for the chambering. With the brake ordered I sent everything off to Benchmark to have them put the whole thing together. I have to say that there were a few bumps along the way while having the barrel made and it took about 10 months on a 3 month time estimate. The finished project had to be worth it or this would have been my last dealing with Benchmark. When it finally showed up I forgot all about any issue I had.
I originally had a 3-12x Burris pistol scope there, but that went down after about 25 shots. From there I decided that I had reached the limits of what handgun scopes had to offer so I went with a VX3-L 3.5-10x50. The glass on even the best pistol scopes is mediocre at best when compared to even mid range rifle scopes. I'll admit that it took a little while to get the hang of shooting the rifle scope on the pistol but after a couple shots I realized that I could shoot at 10x with almost a full field of view and never come close to getting scoped.
First load work was done using 338 Win Mag data as a base line and then working up. I'd start at a max charge for the Win Mag and work up from there. That took too long so I switched to running 330 Dakota data. This was the ticket. The Ruger case holds almost exactly the same as the Dakota case. First loads were with a 200 gr bullet to keep recoil down while I got used to the gun. The next step up was the 250gr SMK to see how well the gun could shoot. With 76.5gr of H4350 I can get the 250 SMK to 2670 from the 18" barrel and I get 12 firings on each case if I anneal them every 3 shots. I can shoot them as fast as 2800 fps but brass life goes down to about 4 firings. At 2670fps I can get .3 MOA groups all day long, I don't know what more I need. That matches the 338 Win Mag from a rifle but in a SP that I can carry in a back pack. That's all I wanted from the project. I've run the 225 gr bullets well into the 2900 fps range with Reloader 17 but after a few unexplained pressure spikes with Re 17 in a few other cartridges I dropped that powder completely. The best I've found so far are H4350 and H100-V. I get a good powder burn in the short barrel with almost no fireball which tells me that I'm burning the powder in the barrel and not in the air.
I have around 700 rounds through the gun so far and it still shoots as well as ever. I've swapped out the 3.5-10x scope for a 4.5-14x50 recently just because I had another use for the 3.5x10. I've only shot this gun out to 900 yards just because I don't have the rings or bases set for long range shooting. This was intended to be mid range hunting gun so it typically gets shot out to about 600 yards and under. I can hit my 10" gong 10 for 10 at 900 yards with it though when I do dial it out that far. That's a lot of click counting though on those standard scope adjustments!
