Hunting Washington Forum

Equipment & Gear => Guns and Ammo => Topic started by: BigGoonTuna on December 30, 2016, 09:53:54 AM

Title: Throat lengthening?
Post by: BigGoonTuna on December 30, 2016, 09:53:54 AM: 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")?
Title: Re: Throat lengthening?
Post by: Bill W on December 30, 2016, 10:04:25 AM: I had my original .264 rethroated as it pulled bullets out of the cases. You are correct about the two diameter bullets manufactured for it.
Title: Re: Throat lengthening?
Post by: AWS on December 31, 2016, 09:56:25 AM: If your handy you can rent a throater from 4D and do it yourself. If you don't trust your skills take it to a gunsmith and wait.
Title: Re: Throat lengthening?
Post by: yorketransport on December 31, 2016, 10:29:38 AM: Quote from: AWS on December 31, 2016, 09:56:25 AM
If your handy you can rent a throater from 4D and do it yourself. If you don't trust your skills take it to a gunsmith and wait.

This is the easy way. I have a PTG UniThroater in .338 that I use to cut the throat on all my 338s. It's really easy to do as long as you go slow. If you've comfortable doing the brakes on your own car, you can use a throating tool without messing anything up too bad. Just go slow!
Title: Re: Throat lengthening?
Post by: Bill W on December 31, 2016, 12:44:55 PM: going slow is good. Definitely don't want tool chatter.
Title: Re: Throat lengthening?
Post by: mazama on December 31, 2016, 09:00:34 PM: Freebore is an easy way to create extra case capicaty,ihad a .284win throated and shortened the feed ramp,and also front of magazine cut out,iam able to seat all bullets to base of neck.Long throats is how early weatherbys got high velocity.