about a year ago, i picked up a 1965ish remington 700 in .264 mag. it's one of the ones with a 23 1/2" "blued" stainless barrel. i bought it mainly to tinker with and as a foray into reloading(i always seem to find myself doing things the hard way).
i gave the rifle a good cleaning(sprayed wipe-out down the barrel and ran a patch down it twice a day, it took a week to get the copper out), and shot some factory ammo through it, which gave acceptable accuracy off a crude rest. so, i decided it would be worth trying to start reloading for it.
i decided to go with 140gr accubonds, seated at 3.260" called for in the reloading manual, and my reloads were OK, certainly minute of deer accurate. then i decided to play with seating depth. that's when things get a bit weird. as i figured, seating out to the SAAMI max (3.340") jammed the bullet into the lands and i'd have to tap it out with a cleaning rod. i thought the 3.260" OAL would be a conservative figure, leaving some freebore. wrong! without crimping, a cartridge loaded at that length was sticking into the lands, and ejecting it would leave the bullet stuck! it wasn't until i hit about 3.1something(if i'm not mistaken) that i would be off the lands.
i understand that the .264 mag has its quirks, one being that it was originally designed for a 2-diameter bullet(so that the same chamber size would work for both 100 and 140 grain bullets), but those are long gone now. i have a ton of length available to me in the magazine box, even more than SAAMI max that i could seat those bullets waaay out there. would it be worth trying to find a gunsmith to ream out the rifling so that i could seat bullets further out, or would i be better off just cutting my losses and rebarreling the gun to something with a faster twist and more length(like 26")?
