Reloading the .257 Weatherby

I’m a big time Weatherby fan, and I make no apologies for that. I met Roy Weatherby in person and I shoot and hunt with Weatherby rifles.  I believe in the company and their cartridges.  Your mileage may vary, but that won’t change my opinion.  One Weatherby chambering I always wanted but didn’t own yet was the .257 Weatherby.  It’s the fastest .25-caliber cartridge there is.  The heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wanted a rifle chambered for the .257 Roy.

A .257 Roy Ruger No. 1

I’m also a big Ruger fan, and in particular, I’m an admirer of their No. 1 single-shot rifles.   When Ruger offered a limited run of No. 1s chambered in .257 Weatherby Magnum, for me it was a no-brainer:  I had to get one.  I found the one I wanted, it had great wood, and I pulled the trigger.

Chambering Challenges

The only problem?   This was not a marriage made in Heaven.  My Ruger did not want to chamber the ammo I had loaded for it.  I first purchased a box of .257 Weatherby brass manufactured by Hornady and loaded it in several different flavors.  Wow, was that ever disappointing.  The rounds just wouldn’t chamber easily and closing the action was difficult.  And on the ones that would allow the action to close, accuracy was dismal.   I thought I had screwed up by reloading the brass directly without running the brass through the resizing die first, so when I got home I resized the brass.  It was still tough to chamber.  I measured the brass and it seemed to me it was right at the max dimensions.  I called Hornady to complain.  They were nice.  They sent me three empty new cases.

Hornady versus Weatherby Brass

On my next trip to the components store, I picked up four boxes of new Weatherby (not Hornady) brass.  It chambered in the Ruger easily.  I loaded up some ammo and I was off to the range again.  Yep, I reasoned, it must have been that Hornady brass.  The .25-caliber bullets I used, though, were not designed for the very high velocities the .257 Weatherby attains, and they were disintegrating in flight.   Accuracy, as you might imagine, was atrocious.  Then I got busy on other things and the Ruger sat in the safe for a year.  You know how that goes…sometimes life gets in the way of having fun.

Earlier this week, I decided to load up a bunch of .257 Weatherby Magnum ammo and work on finding the secret sauce for an accurate load.  I resized all my brass (both the Weatherby and the Hornady brass), tumbled it until the stuff glistened, and then tried to chamber it.   Son of a gun, the Hornady brass still wouldn’t allow the action to close.   Damn, I thought.  I probably spent $50 for that box of brass.  I made a mental note to call Hornady and get my money back.

Then I tried the Weatherby brass that had chambered easily in the rifle when the brass was new (but was now once-fired and resized). To my great surprise, the Weatherby brass wouldn’t chamber, either.  Just like with the Hornady brass, the Ruger’s action wouldn’t close on any of the resized and polished brass (Hornady or Weatherby).

Hmmm.  What could be causing this?  I wondered if the Ruger had an undersized chamber.  That would account for both brands of brass not chambering.   That would get messy. I’d have to send the rifle back to Ruger to have the chamber recut, and hope they didn’t ding up the stock or anything else in the process.   But the Weatherby brass had initially chambered easily in the Ruger.  The rifle’s chamber hadn’t shrunk.   Maybe it wasn’t the rifle.

Then I thought maybe it was the resizing die.  Yeah, that could be it.  If the resizing die was cut too deep, the brass would be too long after resizing, and that would result exactly in what I was experiencing:  The resized brass wouldn’t chamber.   Hmmm.  Yeah, that could be it.

RCBS Tech Support to the Rescue

My next step was to call RCBS, the reloading die manufacturer.   I found the number on their website, I called and waited on the customer service line and in a few minutes I was speaking with a guy named Bill.  I explained my problem to him and my belief that the resizing die might have been cut too deep.

“We get two or three calls a day on the .257 Weatherby Magnum cartridge,” Bill said.  “Tell me how you set up your dies.”

So I did.  I explained that I ran the press ram all the way up, screwed the resizing die all the way in until it touched the shell holder, turned the resizing die just a little bit more to assure intimate contact between the die and the shell holder, and then locked everything down.

“That’s where it’s happening,”  Bill said.   “For the .257 Weatherby, when the die contacts the shell holder, withdraw the ram and turn the die in another 90 degrees.  Then lock it down.”

“Geez,” I said.   “Won’t that break the press?”

“What kind of a press are you using?” Bill asked.

“One of yours,” I answered.   “A Rockchucker.  I’ve been reloading ammo on that press for 50 years.”

“You’d have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wheaties to break that press,” Bill said.   “Trust me on this.  We hear this a lot on all the Weatherby cartridges, especially the .257 Weatherby.  And the 6.5 Creedmoor, too.  Go another 90 degrees in on the resizing die.  Call me if that doesn’t work, but I know it will.   You can’t break that press.”

So I did as Bill advised:  Intimate contact between the shell holder and the resizing die, another 90 degrees in on the resizing die, and then lock everything down.   I resized a single .257 Hornady brass case and then tried the empty case in the Ruger No. 1.   Son of a gun (to use an apt metaphor), the Ruger’s action closed effortlessly.  I tried several more cases with the same result.  Wow, now that’s real expertise and great customer service.  The boys at RCBS know their business.  As it turns out, so do the folks at Hornady. There was nothing wrong with their brass; I just didn’t know the secret handshake to resize it properly.

That night, I loaded 70 rounds of .257 Weatherby Magnum, all with the 100-grain Sierra jacketed softpoint bullet, and I’m headed to the range later this week to test for accuracy.  I’ve got rounds loaded with IMR 4320, IMR 4064, IMR 7828SSC, and H-1000 propellant at both the low and higher ends (but not the max) of the charge spectrum.  I’ll report on what works best in a subsequent blog.

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Read the first blog on the .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1.  And hey, you might want to read our other Tales of the Gun stories!  Interested in other Weatherby stories specifically?  Here’s one on a Mark V in .30 06.  And another on a 7mm Weatherby and meeting Roy Weatherby!   How about a Remington 700 chambered in 7mm Weatherby?  And one more…our story on three rifles chambered in the mighty .300 Weatherby Magnum!

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