Guns – Page 31 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Big recoil, tiny groups: A Model 700 in 7mm Weatherby

The Remington Classic 700 in 7mm Weatherby Magnum: An unusual, collectible, and as it turns out, extremely accurate rifle.

A short while ago I wrote about my Dad’s left hand 7mm Weatherby Mk V, and how Roy Weatherby personally helped me select it. Well, here’s a story about another rifle chambered for the powerful 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge.

About a year ago, I saw something unusual on Gunbroker.com. It was an ad for a Remington 700 Classic rifle chambered in the venerable 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge. This rifle is quite a setup and, I think, quite a score for me personally. I’ve been a huge fan of Weatherby rifles ever since I was a little boy, when my father chased woodchucks in New Jersey with a .243 Winchester Model 70. Back in the day, woodchucks were about the only thing you could hunt with a rifle in New Jersey. I grew up in a farming community (there’s a reason New Jersey is called the Garden State), and the farmers in our area gave my Dad free rein to cull the chuck population. Those little woodchucks did a lot of crop damage, and the farmers were grateful that my Dad was able send those critters on to their reward. As a little kid tagging along with Dad, it was grand fun. It was not at all unusual for him to take (and make) 400-yard shots, with his rifle resting across the hood of his ’65 F-100 Ford (there were a lot of powder burns on that old pickup truck). Like I said, it was awesome.

Just before I went to Korea, my Dad bought a 7mm Weatherby rifle for me as a going-away gift, and I loved it. I shot the barrel out of that rifle (yep, I shot it so much I wore it out) and then I had it redone with a Douglas barrel in 300 H&H. But the 7mm Weatherby Mag cartridge had its hooks into me, and they never let go. The idea is that a 7mm projectile is aerodynamically more efficient than a .30 caliber bullet (the 7mm is 0.284 inches in diameter; a .30 caliber bullet is 0.308 inches in diameter). For the same weight, the 7mm cartridge has a lower drag coefficient, so it retains more velocity downrange and it has a flatter trajectory.

All of the above is probably more theoretical than real world, but I still like the idea of a streamlined, hard-hitting, flat-shooting, hot 7mm. And that’s what the 7mm Weatherby cartridge is. It was one of Roy Weatherby’s first magnum chamberings, and it has been the fastest 7mm cartridge ever for many decades.

The 7mm Weatherby cartridge. Note the classic Weatherby double radius shoulder…the theory is the double radii act as a venturi, providing higher projectile velocities. It’s probably more marketing magic than real world measurable results, but I’m a believer.

I’ve also always been a fan of the Remington 700 rifle. They are inherently accurate, and when I used to shoot high power metallic silhouette competition back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was rare to see anything other than a Model 700 in the winners’ circle. I’ve owned a few of these rifles, and they are indeed extremely accurate.

Remington had a run of Model 700 rifles they labeled the “Classic” for a little more than 20 years, with the idea being that each year they would do a rifle in one chambering only. Remington stopped making the Classic series more than 20 years ago, and I always wanted one.

Recently, I saw an ad on Gunbroker for one of the rarest of the Classic series, the single year they chambered these fine rifles in 7mm Weatherby Magnum. That was a “must have” rifle for me. A Model 700, chambered in 7mm Weatherby. Wow. The rifle was advertised as new in the box, the cartridge is an awesome one, and unlike most of the Classics I had previously seen, it had killer wood. Hey, what’s not to like? I bought the rifle from Heritage Shooting Academy in Triangle, Virginia, and it was a great deal. If anything, the rifle was better than advertised, and I sure couldn’t argue with the way it shot (more on that in a second).

When it arrived, I was more than impressed. It was indeed new in the box, it was flawless, the walnut was understatedly elegant, and as I was to learn, it shot very, very well. The only thing that initially concerned me was that these uber-velocity cartridges generally give up accuracy for what they gain in speed. But that sure isn’t the case with this rifle. I reloaded different cartridges trying various powder charges using two different bullets, and the groups that resulted (all at 100 yards) were fabulous.

My initial testing showed that the trick here was to load toward the higher end of the powder charge spectrum to more fully fill those big belted magnum cases. The theory is that doing so results in a more uniform pressure wave/flame front when the go-juice lights up, and I guess it worked that way for me. More powder results in more velocity and that meant more recoil, but wowee, the Model 700 provided great results! It shot phenomenally tight groups and the little bit of dispersion you see is undoubtedly more me than the rifle or the ammo. I am one happy camper!

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The Early Machine Guns and modern Gatlings

A scan of a photo of a photo. I handled the original while researching the Gatling gun in the Colt archives at the Connecticut State Library and Museum in Hartford.

Yeah, I know…a Gatling gun is not a machine gun. It was a hand-cranked weapon back in the day, but it’s still a fascinating a bit of machinery and this Civil War weapon concept is the principle behind modern high-rate-of-fire systems on combat aircraft, helicopters, naval vessels, and more. I was so captivated by the Gatling design and how it extended from the Civil War to modern gun systems that I wrote a book about it (The Gatling Gun). You may have already known that.

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The Gatling gun and its transition from the 1860s to today’s modern combat applications is fascinating. To get that full story, you might want to pick up a copy of The Gatling Gun.

So how did it come to be that modern high-rate-of-fire gun systems use the Gatling principle?

Here’s the deal: Around the end of World War II, jet aircraft entered service, and the old .50-caliber M2 Browning simply didn’t fire fast enough. With the new jets, aircraft closing speeds in a dogfight might exceed 1000 mph (two jets coming at each other over 500 mph), and what was needed was a shot pattern rather than a steady stream of bullets. In searching for higher firing rates, the Army discovered that Dr. Gatling and the U.S. Navy had both experimented with Gatling guns powered by electric motors, and way back in 1898 they attained firing rates over 1000 shots per minute. In 1898, a firing rate that high was a solution looking for a problem that did not yet exist. So, the concept was shelved for the next half century. But after World War II, it was the answer to the Army Air Corps’ jet fighter gunnery dilemma. The U.S. military dusted off the concept of an electrically-driven Gatling, gave a contract to General Electric, and the modern Vulcan was born.

Like I said earlier, the Gatling gun and its variants are used on many different combat systems. One of the earlier ones was immortalized by Puff, the Magic Dragon, in The Green Berets. The Green Berets is one of my all time favorite movies and the scene I’m describing shows up at around 1:20:

The first Vietnam-era gunship used old World War II C-47s (that’s what you see in the video above). Then the Air Force went to the C-130, a much larger aircraft, because it could carry more cannon. Then, because they couldn’t get C-130s fast enough, they turned to old C-119s. When the Air Force did a range firing demo to convince the folks who needed convincing at Eglin AFB, the gunship Gatlings fired continuously until they had no more ammo, and I’m told it was so impressive the project managers secured an immediate okay to proceed. The bigwigs viewing the demo firing thought the sustained burst was all part of the plan; what they didn’t know is the control system malfunctioned and the aircrew couldn’t turn the Gatlings off. Hey, sometimes things happen for a reason.

I know a fascination with Gatlings is unusual, and you might wonder how it came to be. It goes like this: When I was in the Army, my first assignment was to a Vulcan unit in Korea. To ready me for that, I had orders to the US Army Air Defense School’s Vulcan course in Fort Bliss, Texas. Vulcans were the Army’s 20mm anti-aircraft guns, and on the first day of class, the sergeant explained to us that the Vulcan gun system was based on the old Gatlings. Whaddaya know, I thought. The Gatling gun.

Then things got better. After a few weeks of classroom instruction, we went to Dona Ana Range in New Mexico to fire the Vulcan. I thought the Vulcan would sound like a machine gun…you know, ratatat-tat and all that. Nope. Not even close. When I first heard a Vulcan fire I was shocked. If you’ve ever been to a drag race and heard a AA fuelie, that’s exactly what a Vulcan sounds like. I heard one short BAAAAAARRRKKK as the first Vulcan fired a 100-round burst at 3,000 shots per minute. Jiminy! The effect was electrifying. We were a bunch of kids yammering away, and then the Vulcan spoke. Everyone fell silent. We were in awe.

At the Dona Ana range, the effect was even more dramatic…there was the soul-searing bark of the actual firing, and then an echo as the Vulcan’s report bounced off the distant Dona Ana mountains. Then another as the next gun fired, and another echo. And another. Cool doesn’t begin to describe it.

A Vulcan firing at night. Think that shot pattern is impressive? Hey, you’re only seeing every 7th round (the combat mix was one tracer every 7 rounds). This is a US Army photo included in The Gatling Gun (along with many others).

After I left the Army, my next job was on the F-16 Air Combat Fighter, and it used the same 20mm Gatling as did the Vulcan. After that it was General Dynamics in Pomona, where I worked on the Phalanx (a 20mm shipborne Vulcan). Then it was on to Aerojet, where we made 30mm ammo for the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8/A Gatling. It seemed that every job I had was somehow tied to a Gatling gun variant, and that was fine by me. I loved working with these systems.

And there you have it. If you’d like to more about the different systems using Gatlings today and the early history of the Gatling gun, you can purchase The Gatling Gun here.

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The 7mm Weatherby Magnum

This is a hot rifle with a cool story. Folks, check out this left hand 7mm Weatherby Mark V…

A 7mm Mk V Weatherby. Note the left hand bolt and the exquisite walnut.

It’s one of the great ones, and the story behind it goes like this. About 35 years ago I was an engineer working for Aerojet (we manufactured cluster bombs and artillery ammunition) and the Weatherby plant was just up the road from us in Southgate, California. Weatherby had a retail sales outlet there, too. It was awesome. Hunting trophies (including an enormous full body mount of a standing polar bear that must have been 10 feet tall), all kinds of shooting gear, beautiful Weatherby rifles…you get the idea.

I stopped in one day and mentioned to Pat, the sales guy I had come to know, that I wanted to buy a Weatherby in 7mm Weatherby Magnum for my Dad. I told him it had to be a left handed action (Dad was a southpaw), and I wanted a rifle with exceptional walnut. “If you see one that has particularly nice wood, let me know,” I said.

Pat’s answer was immediate: “Let’s go in the back and pick one out now,” he said. In those days, they would take you into the Weatherby warehouse deep in the facility to select the rifle you wanted.

It was awesome. Imagine being in an Army armory, you know, the ones with the plain wood racks and zillions of rifles stacked in them. Now imagine those same plain wood racks filled with Weatherby Mk V rifles. That’s what it was like. I could have spent a year in that room, but after an hour I got it down to two rifles and I told Pat it would be cool if I could tell Dad that Roy Weatherby helped me select the rifle.

“Let’s go,” he said, and that’s exactly what happened. In two minutes I was in Roy Weatherby’s office and there he was. I remembered my father and I studying the Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid. They all had this photo of Roy Weatherby in his office, surrounded by animal skins, his personal gun collection, and hunting trophies. Suddenly, Pat and I were in that photo. And there was Mr. Weatherby.

Roy Weatherby, in his office. I was there. Photo from the Weatherby catalog.

Roy Weatherby was one hell of a man. He spoke to me like we had known each other for years, and I guess in a sense we had. He knew his customer base, and I had read about Mr. Weatherby growing up. He wanted to know about the velocities of the 25mm ammo we manufactured at Aerojet, he wanted to know about me, and he wanted to know about my father. Dad was a world-class trapshooter, and Roy wanted to know all about that, too. The entire time we chatted (maybe 30 minutes), Pat and I were holding the two Weatherby rifles I had selected.

Finally, Mr. Weatherby said to me, “Joe, I understand you’re buying a Weatherby for your Dad and you need help selecting the rifle.” We hadn’t told Mr. Weatherby that yet, but he knew. Then he said to Pat, “Pat, let’s put those two rifles up here on my desk,” and we did.

“You know, from this side I like that one best,” old Roy said. “Let’s turn them over.” We did, and then he said, “Oh, I see the problem. From this side, I like this one best,” pointing to the other rifle.

Then he looked at me and said, “Joe, which one do you like best?”

“I like this one,” I said, pointing to the rifle in the photo on top of this blog.

“That’s the one I would have selected,” Roy said, with a knowing smile.

Mr. Weatherby obviously had done this before. He had helped in the selection, but it was my choice. This was a wise man. In a different time, I could imagine him suggesting slicing the baby in half like old King Solomon. Just being in his presence was an amazing experience. Like I said, he was one hell of a man. It was easy to understand why he was successful. My guess is everyone who met Roy Weatherby loved the guy.

“Do you think your Dad would like a Weatherby catalog?” Roy asked. Would he ever, I thought. I still have memories of Dad reading those Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid. They were big, glossy, full color affairs showing Weatherby custom rifles, famous people who hunted with Weatherby rifles, and more. Roy pulled open a desk drawer, took a catalog from it, and inscribed the inside cover with a big Roy Weatherby signature. It was a moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life. The he gave me a Weatherby hat and a Weatherby belt buckle, and he said, “Give these to your Dad, too.” It was an incredible day.

I was a Weatherby fan when I went in; when I left I was even more so. On the way out, I bought a Weatherby scope and a Weatherby rifle case. Pat, the sales guy, told me they had other cases and other scopes that cost less, but I knew that wouldn’t do for me. It had to be a Weatherby product. If they had a guy there offering Weatherby tattoos, I would have opted for one of those, too.

I gave the rifle to Dad and he loved it. We spent several days on the range shooting the Weatherby, and then shortly after that, Dad’s number came up and he was gone. Dad had heart disease, and it was his time. That was a tough pill to swallow, but life goes on. It was one of the lowest and saddest times of my life, but I will forever be grateful that I was able to give Dad the Weatherby and see him enjoy owning and shooting it.

The Weatherby had not been out of my safe since then, other than to run a patch through the bore and to keep it oiled. I didn’t shoot it because it’s left handed (I’m a righty), and then one day recently I was thinking about that. My Dad was left handed and he shot right hand bolt action rifles, so I reasoned that as a righty I could shoot a left hand rifle. And last year, I did.

Me, with Dad’s Weatherby. Dark striped walnut runs the length of the stock on both sides.

That 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge is a real powerhouse. It’s hotter than the 7mm Remington Magnum by about 200 feet per second and the bark is ferocious. The recoil is significant, but truth be told, when I’m hunting I never feel the recoil and I never hear the shot. That’s because my concentration is elsewhere.

My reloaded 7mm Weatherby Magnum ammunition. Weatherby cartridges have a unique double radius shoulder. The theory is it provides higher projectile velocities.

I’m working on different loads trying to zero in on the secret sauce that will provide the tightest groups in his magnificent old rifle. And I’m having a lot of fun doing it. Every time I head to the range with the 7mm Weatherby Magnum, I’m thinking of Dad and that day with Roy Weatherby.

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375 H&H Loads…

A couple of folks wrote to me asking about the loads I used for the recent blog about the Model 375 H&H Model 700. Say what you will, but most folks are fascinated by these big bore rifles (including me), and I figure if a couple of guys took the time to write, there are probably a bunch more out there with the same question.

When I shot the 375 H&H Model 700 last weekend, I wanted to work up some loads for it but I ran out of time. I grabbed what I had in the ammo locker, but I couldn’t find a record of having developed specific loads for this rifle earlier. Maybe I did and the loads were ones I had tested already (you’ll see from the dates on the load labels that I preppred this ammo a few years ago), or maybe I loaded them and just never got around to trying them. In any event, these were the loads that went to the range with me last weekend.

I did all my shooting off the bench at 50 yards, and here are the results…

I used a 6:00 hold on all the targets. All of the loads were accurate. The recoil on the Trail Boss loads was light, about like shooting a .223. The full power loads (the ones with 66.0 grains of IMR 4320 propellant) was accurate, but recoil was significant. It’s probably okay as a hunting load (no one notices recoil when hunting), but shooting off the bench with this load didn’t quite move the needle into the fun range. The 33.0 grains of SR4759 was potent, but recoil was manageable, and it was very accurate. It’s the one I’m going to use.

These .375 H&H rifles are normally big ticket items, but Weatherby recently introduced their synthetic-stocked Vanguards (with iron sights) in a .375 H&H chambering. You can pick these up for around $600, and that’s a phenomenal deal.

See our other Tales of the Gun stories here.

A .30 06 Mk V Weatherby…

After a couple of months of not being able to shoot because the creek was too high, good buddy Greg and I were finally able to get out to the range this weekend. It was sorely-needed range time, and I brought along two rifles. One was the .375 H&H Safari Grade Remington you read about a few blogs down; the other was a very nice Weatherby Mk V you haven’t heard about yet. It’s the one you see in the photo above.

This particular rifle is a bit unusual. It’s a Mk V Weatherby (Weatherby’s top of the line bolt action rifle), but it’s not chambered in a Weatherby magnum cartridge. This is one of the very few rifles Weatherby has offered over the years in a standard chambering, and in this instance, it’s the mighty .30 06 Springfield. You’ve read about the .30 06 on these pages in earlier Tales of the Gun blogs. It’s one of the all-time great cartridges and it’s my personal all-time favorite.

So, back to the Weatherby. There were four things that made this rifle particularly attractive to me when I first spotted it on the rack in a local Turner’s gun store: The stock was finished in their satin oil finish (not the typical Weatherby high gloss urethane finish), the rifle had an original 3×9 Weatherby scope, the .30 06 chambering, and the price. It checked all the boxes for me. Those early Weatherby scopes are collectible in their own right. I like an oil finished stock. And the price…wow.

The Weatherby was something I knew I had to have the instant I saw it, and (get this) it was priced at only $750. This is a rig that today, new, would sell for somewhere around $2500.

The shop had this Weatherby on consignment at $750. It would have been a steal at that price; I got it for $650.

Pretty walnut on both sides. Weatherby builds a fine rifle.

Back in 2008, when the Great Recession was going full tilt and still gaining steam, there were fabulous firearms deals to be had if you knew what you wanted and you weren’t addicted to black plastic guns. Nope, none of that black plastic silliness here. For me, it’s all about elegant walnut and blue steel. I carried a black plastic rifle for a living a few decades ago. Been there, done that, don’t need any more of it.

When I spotted the Weatherby I asked the store manager about it. She told me it was a consignment gun, and when I asked if there was any room in the price (it’s a habit; I would have paid what they were asking), she asked me to make an offer. So I did. $650 had a nice ring to it, I thought.

“Let me call the owner,” the manager said. She disappeared and returned a few minutes later. “$650 is good.” Wow. I couldn’t believe I scored like this. I felt a bit guilty and asked her if I was taking advantage of the guy who had put it on consignment, and she told me not to worry. He needed the money, I needed the rifle, and the price was good for both of us.

The Weatherby had a few minor dings in the stock and the finish was a bit worn in a few places, but the metal was perfect. Because it was an oil finished stock, it was a simple matter to steel wool it down and add a few coats of TruOil, and the Weatherby was a brand new rifle again.

TruOil and fine walnut…a marriage made in Heaven. TruOil really brings out the grain. You can leave it glossy, or knock it down to a luxurious subdued satin finish with 0000 steel wool (which is what I did on this rifle).

I’ve shot this rifle quite a bit over the last 10 years and I knew it shot well, but I hadn’t recorded which load shot best. I had several loads I’ve developed for other .30 06 rifles over the last few decades (like I said above, it’s my favorite), and I grabbed three that have worked well in other rifles. The good news is the Weatherby isn’t fussy. It shot all three well. The bad news is…well, there isn’t any bad news. It’s all good.

A few favorite 30 06 loads developed for other rifles. They all worked well in the Weatherby, too, as you can see below.

The Weatherby did well with all three loads. All were fired at 100 yards. If you’re going to develop loads for your rifle, start lower than these and work up. These loads worked well in my rifle; you need to roll your own to learn what works well in your rifle.

The first load is one with a lighter bullet that has worked well on Texas jackrabbits in a single-shot Ruger No. 1. I found that load back in the 1970s when I spent entirely too much time chasing rabbits in the desert east of El Paso. It’s the 130 grain jacketed soft point Hornady with a max load (52.0 grains) of IMR 4320 powder. Yeah, the first two groups were larger than I would have liked, but don’t forget that I had not been on the rifle range for a couple of months. Folks think that shooting off a rest eliminates the human element, but it does not. I was getting my sea legs back with those first two groups. It’s the third group that tells the story here, and that one was a tiny 0.680 inches. If I worked on this load a bit and shot a bit more, this is a sub-minute-of-angle rifle.

The next load is the hog load I used in a Winchester Model 70 on our Arizona boar hunt last year. That one uses a 150 grain Hornady jacketed soft point with 48.0 grains of IMR 4320 powder. It shot well in the Model 70 and it shoots well in the Weatherby, too. The Weatherby averaged 1.401 inches at 100 yards with this load. The point of impact was about 3 inches lower than the 130 grain load described above.

The third and final load I tried this weekend was with a heavier 180 grain Remington jacketed soft point bullet. I had originally developed this as the accuracy load for an older Browning B-78 single shot rifle (I’ll have to do a blog on that one of these days; it, too, has stunning wood). This is a near max load (48.0 grains of IMR 4064 propellant) and with those heavier 180 grain bullets, recoil was attention-getting. But it was still tolerable, and the average group size hung right in there with the 150 gr load. It averaged 1.456 3-shot groups at 100 yards. Like they say, that’s close enough for government work. Another cool thing…the 180 grain load point of impact was the same height above point of aim as the 130 grain load, but the group centers were about three inches to the left of center.

There’s one last thing I wanted to share with you before signing off today. Good buddy Greg is an accuracy chaser like me. He was out there with his rifles this weekend trying a few of his loads. When I measure group size, I always use a caliper. Greg has an app on his iPhone (it’s called SubMOA and it’s free) that allows him to simply take a photo of the target and it computes group size and a bunch of other good data. I always wondered if the results from Greg’s iPhone app were as good as the real thing, so I asked him to take photos of two of my targets and tell me what the iPhone app felt the group sizes were. He did.

I measured this group size with a caliper and found it to be 0.680 inches; the SubMOA iPhone app clocked it at 0.640 inches. That’s a 0.04 inch difference, or 5.8%. That’s pretty close, I think.

I measured this group size to be 1.245 inches; SubMOA found it to be 1.200 inches. That’s a 0.045 inch difference, or 3.6%. In both cases, the SubMOA program found the group size to be smaller than my measurements.

So there you have it. If you’d like to read more of our Tales of the Gun Stories, you will find them here.

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The Remington Safari Grade .375 H&H

Two of the all time greats…a Safari Grade Model 700 Remington, and the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge. Check out the walnut on this magnificent rifle!

I started playing with guns when I was a youngster and the disease progressed as I aged. I almost said “matured” instead of “aged,” but that would be stretching things, especially when it comes to shelling out good money for fancy guns. When I see a rifle I want, I haven’t matured at all. I sure have aged, though.

So anyway, when I was a young guy, I read everything I could about all kinds of guns, and I especially enjoyed reading about big game rifles. Really big game, as in Peter Hathaway Capstick chasing cape buffalo, Jim Corbett chasing man-eating tigers in India, and Colonel John Henry Patterson chasing the man-eating lions of Tsavo. It was all books and magazines back in those days. Al Gore was still a youngster and he had not invented the Internet yet, and if you wanted to read about cool things you went to a place called the library. One of the cool things to read about there, for me, was the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge, along with the rifles that chambered its Panatela of a cartridge. The descriptions were delicious…a magnum rifle firing a 300-grain bullet 3/8ths of an inch in diameter at 2700+ fps with the trajectory of a .30 06.

The .375 H&H goes all the way back to 1912, when it was developed by the great English firm of Holland and Holland. It’s still one of the best cartridges ever for hunting big beasts that snarl, roar, bite, stomp, and gore those who would do them harm. It was the first belted magnum cartridge. The idea is that cartridge headspaces on the belt (a stepped belt around the base), a feature that wasn’t really necessary for proper function, but from a marketing perspective it was a home run. Nearly all dangerous game cartridges that followed the mighty .375 H&H, especially those with “magnum” aspirations, were similarly belted. Like I said, it was a marketing home run.

As a young guy, I was convinced my life wouldn’t be complete without a .375 H&H rifle. You see, I had more money than brains back in those days. I spent my young working life on the F-16 development team, and my young non-working life playing with motorcycles and guns. I was either on a motorcycle tearing up Texas, or on the range, or hanging around various gun shops between El Paso and Dallas. In Texas, some of the shops had their own rifle range. People in Texas get things right, I think.

One of the shops I frequented was the Alpine Range in Fort Worth, Texas. The fellow behind the counter knew that I was a sucker for any rifle with fancy walnut, and when I stopped in one Saturday he told me I had to take a look at a rifle he had ordered for a customer going to Africa. He had my interest immediately, and when he opened that bright green Remington box, what I saw took my breath away. It was a Safari Grade Model 700 in .375 H&H. In those days, the Safari Grade designation meant the rifle had been assembled by the Remington Custom Shop, and that was about as good as it could possibly get.

The Model 700 was beautiful. Up to that point, I’d never even seen a .375 H&H rifle other than in books and magazines. This one was perfect. In addition to being in chambered in that most mystical of magnums (the .375 H&H), the wood was stunning. It had rosewood pistol grip and fore end accents, a low-sheen oil finish, the grain was straight from the front of the rifle through the pistol grip, and then the figure fanned, flared, flamed, and exploded as the walnut approached the recoil pad. I knew I had to own it, and I’m pretty sure the guy behind the counter knew it, too. Did I mention that the rifle was beautiful?

“How much?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

“I can order you another one,” the counter guy countered, “but this one is sold. I ordered it for a guy going to Africa. I’ll order another one for you. They all come with wood this nice.”

“Has he seen this one yet?” I asked, not believing that any rifle could be as stunning. I knew that rifles varied considerably, and finding one with wood this nice would be a major score, Remington Custom Shop assembly or not.

“No,” the sales guy answered, “he hasn’t been in yet, but I can get another for you in a couple of days. Don’t worry; they’re all this nice.”

His advice to the contrary notwithstanding, I worried. This was the one I had to own. “How much?” I asked again.

“$342,” he answered.

Mind you, this was in 1978. That was a lot of money then. It seems an almost trivial amount now. The rifle you see in the photo above, especially with its fancy walnut, would sell for something more like $2,000 today. Maybe more.

“Get another one for Bwana,” I said. “This one is mine.”

“But this is the other guy’s.”

“Not anymore it’s not. Not if you ever want to see me in here again,” I said. Like to told you earlier, I was a young guy back then in 1978. I thought I knew how to negotiate. My only negotiating tool in those days was a hammer, and to me, every negotiation was a nail. You know how it is to be young and dumb, all the while believing you know everything.

“Let me see what I can do,” the sales guy said, with a knowing smile. When the phone range at 10:00 a.m. the following Monday, I knew it was the Alpine Range, and I knew the Model 700 was going to be mine. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well.

“Another rifle?” he asked. He didn’t need to ask. He knew. We were in Texas. He had the disease, too.

In less than an hour, the rifle you see in that photograph above was mine. The guy behind the counter at the Alpine Range was good. He had already received a second Safari Grade Model 700, in .375 H&H, so the safari dude was covered. I asked to see the replacement rifle and the walnut on it was bland, straight grained, and dull…nothing at all like the exhibition grade walnut on mine. It made me feel even better.

I’ve owned my Model 700 .375 H&H Remington for more than four decades now. I’ve never been on safari with it and I have zero desire to shoot a cape buffalo, a lion, a tiger, or anything else, but I do love owning and shooting my .375 H&H. I’ve never seen another with wood anywhere near as nice as mine, and that makes owning it all the more special.

Like reading about guns? See all our Tales of the Gun stories!

Applying Taguchi to Load Development

By Joe Berk

People reload ammunition for different reasons. It used to be you could save money by reloading, and I suppose for the more exotic cartridges (any Weatherby ammo, the big elephant rounds like .458 Win Mag, the .416 Rigby, etc.) that’s still the case. It’s not the case for the more common rounds like 9mm, .45 ACP, and .223 Remington; bulk ammo for those is so inexpensive you’d be hard pressed to reload for as little as that ammo costs. Sometimes people reload because factory ammo is no longer available or it’s very tough to find. But most of us reload for accuracy. We can experiment with different combinations of components and tailor a combo to a particular firearm to find the sweet spot…that combination of components that provides the tightest groups. I’m in that category; it’s why I reload.

When I’m testing for accuracy and I get a tight group, I always wonder: Is it because of the combination of components, or is it just a random event? Usually, if the group size is repeatable, we conclude that it is the component combination, and not just a random good group that results from all the planets coming into alignment. But is there a better way? You know, one that shows with more certainty that it’s the component combination, and not just a fluke?

This article is a bit different. It’s not just a story about a gun or about reloading ammunition. It includes those things, but it’s more. This story is about applying the Taguchi design of experiments technique to .45 ACP load development for ammo to be used in a Smith and Wesson Model 25 revolver (the one you see in the photo above).

I’m guessing you probably never heard of Taguchi. That’s okay; most folks have not. Taguchi testing is a statistical design of experiments approach that allows evaluating the impact of several variables simultaneously while minimizing sample size. The technique is often used in engineering development activities, and I used it regularly when I was in the aerospace world. The technique was pioneered by Genichi Taguchi in Japan after World War II, and made its way to the US in the mid-1980s. I used the Taguchi technique when I ran engineering and manufacturing groups in Aerojet Ordnance (a munitions developer and manufacturer) and Sargent Fletcher Company (a fuel tank and aerial refueling company).

Taguchi testing is a powerful technique because it allows identifying which variables are significant and which are not. Engineers are interested in both. It lets you know which variables you need to control tightly during production (that is, which tolerances have to be tight), and it identifies the others that are not so critical. Both are good things to know. If we know which variables are significant and where they need to be, we can change nominal values, tighten tolerances, and maybe do other things to achieve a desired output. If we know which variables are not significant, it means they require less control. We can loosen tolerances on these variables, and most of the time, that means costs go down.

Like I said above, I used Taguchi testing in an engineering and manufacturing environment with great success. The Taguchi approach did great things for us. When I worked in the cluster bomb business, it allowed us to get the reliability of our munitions close to 100%. When I worked in a company that designed and manufactured aerial refueling equipment (think the refueling scene in the movie, Top Gun), it helped us to identify and control factors influencing filament-wound F-18 drop tanks. In that same company, it helped us fix a 20-year-old reliability problem on a guillotine system designed to cut and clamp aerial refueling hoses if failures elsewhere in the refueling system prevented rewinding the hose. You don’t want to land in an airplane trailing a hose filled with JP4 jet fuel. Good stuff, Taguchi testing is.

As you know from reading our other Tales of the Gun stories, the idea in reloading is to find the secret sauce…the perfect recipe of bullet weight, propellant, brass case manufacturer, and more, to find the best accuracy for a given firearm. Hey, I thought…I could apply the Taguchi technique to this challenge.

When you do a Taguchi experiment, you need to define a quantifiable output variable, and you need to identify the factors that might influence it. The output variable here is obvious: It’s group size on the target. The input variables are obvious, too. They would include propellant type, propellant charge, primer type, bullet weight, brass type, bullet seating depth, and bullet crimp. We’re trying to find which of these factors provides the best accuracy. I wanted to turn my Model 25 Smith and Wesson into a hand-held tack driver.

The Model 25 is an N-frame Smith and Wesson revolver chambered for the .45 ACP pistol cartridge. It is a superbly accurate handgun, as attested to by the target above.

When Taguchi developed his testing approach, he made it simple for his followers. One of the things he did was define a simple test matrix, which he called an L8 orthogonal array. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. It just means you can evaluate up to seven different input variables with each at two different levels. That’s a bit complicated, but understanding it is a little easier if you see an example. Here’s what the standard Taguchi L8 orthogonal array (along with the results) looked like for my Model 25 load development testing:

As the above table shows, three sets of data were collected. I tested each load configuration three times (Groups A, B, and C), and I measured the group size of each 3-shot group. Those group sizes became the output variables.

The next step involved taking the above data and doing a standard Taguchi ANOVA (that’s an acronym for analysis of variance). ANOVA is the statistical method used for evaluating the output data (in our case, the group sizes) to assess which of the above input variables most influenced accuracy. That’s a complex set of calcs greatly simplified by using Excel. The idea here is to find the factor with the largest ANOVA result. You see, any time you measure a set of results, there’s going to be variation in the results. Where it gets complicated is the variation can be due to randomness (the variation in the results that would occur if you left all of the inputs the same). Or, the variation can be due to something we changed. We want to know if the differences are due to something we did (like changing or adjusting a component) or if they are due to randomness alone. I cranked through the ANOVA calcs with Excel, and here’s what I obtained…

The above results suggest that crimping (squeezing the bullet by slightly deforming the case mouth inward) has the greatest effect on accuracy (it had the largest ANOVA calculated result). The results suggest that cartridges with no crimp are more accurate than rounds with the bullet crimped. But it’s a suggestion only; it doesn’t mean it’s true. The next step is to evaluate if the differences are statistically significant, and doing that requires the next step in the ANOVA process. This gets really complicated (hey, I’m an engineer), but the bottom line is that we’re going to calculate a number called the f-ratio, and then compare our calculated f-ratio to a reference f-ratio. If the calculated f-ratio (the one based on the test results above) exceeds the reference f-ratio, it means that crimping versus no crimping makes a statistically significant difference in accuracy. If it not not exceed the reference f-ratio, it means the difference is due to randomness. Using Excel’s data analysis feature (the f-test for two samples, for you engineers out there) on the crimp-vs-no-crimp results shows the following:

Since the calculated f-ratio (3.817) does not exceed the critical f-ratio (5.391), I could not conclude that the findings are statistically significant. What that means is that the difference in accuracy for the crimped versus uncrimped rounds is due to randomness alone.

Whew! So what does all the above mean?

All right, here we go. This particular revolver shot all of the loads extremely well. Many of the groups (all fired at a range of 50 feet) were well under an inch. Operator error (i.e., inaccuracies resulting from my unsteadiness) overpowered any of the factors evaluated in this experiment. In other words, my unsteadiness was making a far bigger difference than any change in the reloading recipe.

Although the test shows that accuracy results were not significantly different, this is good information to know. What it means is that all of the test loads (the different reloading recipes) are reasonably accurate. If I had used a machine rest, I might have seen a statistically significant difference. Stated differently, the test told me that I needed to use a machine rest with this gun to see which load parameters were really playing a role in accuracy. Without it, my flaky shooting skills (or as the statisticians like to say, my randomness) overpowered any accuracy gains to be realized by playing with component factors.

That said, though, I like that 4.2 grains of Bullseye load with the 200 grain semi-wadcutter bullet, and it’s what I load for my Model 25. But I now know…the gun shoots any of these loads well, and crimping versus no crimping doesn’t really make a difference.

Check out our other Tales of the Gun stories here.

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A Savagely-inexpensive rifle…

My new-to-me Savage 340 in .222. It’s got a scope and the whole shebang set me back $180. Such a deal!

I’m a rifle enthusiast, I can’t pass on an interesting experience, and I’m cheap. So when I was in a local gunshop a year or so ago, I was surprised and intrigued to see a consignment rifle go on the rack at a ridiculously low price. It was a 50-year-old Savage 340 bolt action rifle in .222 Remington (complete with a period-correct 3×9 telescopic sight) for only $180.

A Bushnell 3×9 scope was included with the deal!

This is a rifle that probably sold new for around $35 or $40, but like I said, that was 50 years ago. These days, any kind of a shooter for $180 is a steal. I was immediately attracted to the Savage by the price and the thought that it might make for a nice gunstock refinishing project. What really got my attention, though, was the cartridge for which it was chambered: The .222 Remington.

I’ve never owned a gun chambered in .222 Remington. The Triple Deuce is a cartridge that has a cult following because it is one of those special numbers known to be inherently accurate. It’s very similar to the .223 Remington (the 5.56 NATO round), but the .222 is a little bit shorter with a longer case neck. It’s proportions are said to be ideal for phenomenal accuracy. Like I said, I’ve never had a .222, but for $180, I could afford to find out if the stories were true.

Okay, on to Step 2 of this saga, and that’s the reloading aspect. Accuracy can be greatly enhanced by reloading. You know, that’s the deal where you save the fired brass, resize it in a reloading press, punch out the old primer, insert a new primer, load a precisely-controlled amount of new gunpowder, and seat a new bullet. Oilà…you have a reloaded round ready for firing. The deal with reloading is that you can experiment with different powders, different powder weights, different primers, different brass manufacturers, different bullet makers, different bullet weights, different bullet seating depths, and more. The concept is that you can tune the ammunition to precisely match a rifle’s preferences and achieve improved accuracy. I’ve been reloading ammo for close to 50 years and I’m here to tell you it works.

Now, back to that Savage rifle. I waited my obligatory 10 days (the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia’s “kooling off” period) and in Governor Gavin’s eyes I guess had cooled off sufficiently. I picked up my new-to-me, 50-year-old Savage and loaded several different combos to see how the old 340 would work. In a word, it was awesome…

Impressive results for the first time out with a 50-year-old rifle. These groups were fired at 50 yards; the next steps will involve experimenting around the best load and testing for accuracy at 100 yards. The recipe for the tiniest loads was a 55-grain Hornady full metal jacket boat tail bullet, a cartridge overall length of 2.176 inches, and 22.6 grains of IMR 4064 propellant.

You can see that different loads do indeed result in different accuracy levels. This is encouraging stuff, and what makes it even more promising is it shows the results of just one reloading session. The load that printed a 0.538-inch group is clearly pointing toward what the Savage likes, and my next set of loads will refine that combination. Good stuff and great fun, and all with a rifle that only cost $180!

Check out our other Tales of the Gun stories here!

No Refunds!

Some days you just have to pick up your marbles and go home.

We’ve had a lot of rain out here this winter, and I’ve been suffering from cabin fever. Big time. I’m headed to Baja next week and it’s supposed to start raining again, but hey, it is what it is. What I really wanted to do this morning was get to the range to shoot my .45. The range I belong to (the West End Gun Club) is private, it’s tucked behind the hills in the San Gabriel Mountains, and getting there literally involves driving across a stream. Usually there’s only a couple of inches of water in the stream and getting across is no problem. But all that changed with the recent rains. The little stream became a torrent, it’s still a torrent, and it’s moved huge boulders downstream. It’s been that way for a couple of weeks now. I was hoping the water level had gone down and I would be able to get across this morning, so I loaded up the Subie and headed up in the mountains.

When I got to the stream, I could see there was no way I was going to get across short of renting a helicopter. Our little stream was deep and fast a couple of weeks ago when I made the video above, and it’s stayed that way, with the addition now of the aforementioned boulders.

Okay, there’s a commercial range open to the public deeper into the mountains. I’d have to pay to shoot there, and I hadn’t done that in years, but like I said, I had cabin fever and I wanted to shoot. So I rolled another 15 miles or so deeper into the mountains.

“It’s $20,” Grizzly Adams (the guy behind the counter) told me (that’s not his real name, and I’m probably insulting folks named Grizzly Adams everywhere by assigning the moniker, but you get the idea). “It’s another 6 bucks for a target stand,” Grizzly continued, “and more if you need targets.”

Nah, I’ve got my own stand, I told him, and I brought my own targets with me.

“Drive through that gate and turn left,” he told me. I did.

As soon as I parked, another Grizzly Adams type came up and asked me, “Do you see what’s different between your car and every other car parked here?”

Hmmm. I didn’t know. I looked. I thought about it briefly. My car had no primer spots and missing body panels?

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I really didn’t drive out here to take a quiz. Make it easy and just tell me.”

“You’re supposed to back in,” Grizzly No. 2 said. Sure enough, I was the only one who had parked like a normal person. Go figure.

“Okay, I’ll turn my car around,” I said. It’s better to just do things sometimes than to try to argue or comprehend the reasons why. But we were on a line break, people were downrange changing their targets, and I asked if I could set up my target stand first, and then turn my car around.

Just then one of the shooters ran up. “Hey, my gun’s still loaded,” he said to Grizzly No. 2, who as it turns out was also the rangemaster. Wow, I thought. This is a big deal. The rangemaster (and I’m using the term very loosely; the only thing this guy had evidently mastered was controlling which way parked cars faced) had failed to do his most important job: Making sure all weapons were clear before he allowed folks to go out in front of the firing line. I mean, wow, there were folks downrange with a loaded rifle on one of the shooting benches. Pointing downrange. In the Army, best case, that would get you a lifetime of KP duty and maybe a couple thousand punitive pushups.

Then he compounded the felony.

He didn’t tell the people downrange to move aside and return to safety behind the firing line. “Just leave it alone,” the rangemaster quietly told the guy who owned the loaded rifle, which was pointed downrange, while people were out in front of said loaded rifle changing their targets. He allowed the folks who were downrange, in front of the loaded weapon, to continue their activities. I’d never seen anything like this on any range, and I’ve been doing this a long time. I was shocked.

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ve seen enough,” and with that I got back in my car and headed back to the little building at the entrance. I went inside and told Grizzly No. 1 what had just happened. “You’re running an unsafe range,” I told him, and I explained I didn’t feel safe being there. “I’d like my $20 back,” I added. All of this (from the time I drove in, paid my $20, went to the line, and returned to this guy’s counter) happened in the space of maybe 3 minutes.

“Can’t do that,” Grizzly No. 1 said. And with that, he smiled a gap-toothed, maybe-my-parents-were-related-before-they-got-married smile, and pointed to a small sign on the wall.

No refunds.

I looked at him. Then I looked at the sign again. Then I looked at him. He was still smiling. I smiled too. Sometimes I wonder what I’m going to put on the blog the next day, and I had been wondering about that as I drove out to the range. Problem solved, I thought. I still had a touch of cabin fever, but I had no new bullet holes in me and I knew what the 28 February ExNotes blog would be all about.

A custom .375 Ruger…

About six years ago I had an urge to build a custom rifle. Some folks consider a custom rifle to be one you build from the ground up. For others, a custom rifle is one you buy off-the-shelf and then modify. My idea of a custom rifle starts with a barreled action (the metal parts) and an unfinished, semi-inletted stock (I’ll explain that “semi-inletted” descriptor a few paragraphs down). I had built rifles like this a couple of times in the distant past and I had the urge to do it again.

A tray full of .375 Ruger cartridges. I included a .223 Remington in the foreground (it’s the one on the left) for comparison. The .375 Ruger is a powerful round!

My objective was to build a rifle chambered for the .375 Ruger cartridge. The .375 Ruger was a joint project between Hornady and Ruger. The idea was a cartridge faster than the .375 Holland and Holland (a classic African big game cartridge), but shorter so it could cycle through a standard-length rifle action. When the .375 Ruger came out 10 years ago, everyone who tested it said it hit both marks. That was enough for me; I needed a .375 Ruger rifle in my life.

It had been a long time since I tackled a project like this, and I was surprised when I looked for a stock. Three or four decades ago several outfits offered semi-inletted stocks. Most of them were in Missouri (I guess that’s where all the good walnut is). The stock companies I knew decades ago (Fajen, Bishop, and others) are gone. The demand isn’t there. Millenials don’t shoot much, gun laws are more restrictive, and shooters today go for black plastic (there’s no accounting for some folks’ taste, I guess).

A semi-inletted stock is one that 95% inletted (that’s what the stock companies say); what is euphemistically implied is that you need to do just a bit more to fit your barreled action to the stock. That 95% inletting claim always brings a laugh, because final fitting of the action to the stock takes a ton of work…something way more than the implied final 5%.

The English walnut blank I selected and the barreled action that would go into it.

Richard’s Microfit is an old-line gunstock company right here in So Cal. I called Richard’s to ask if I could visit and personally select the piece of walnut I wanted, the answer was yes, and it was time for a ride out to the Valley.

Stock blanks at Richard’s Microfit. There were these and many, many more. Visiting the factory and selecting the one I wanted was a lot of fun.

Richard’s had a lot of lumber and I selected a piece of English walnut with lots of figure and grain that ran lengthwise (what you want in a magnum rifle, as it makes the stock stronger). The contrasty grain was a difficult to see in the blank, but the Richard’s people knew how to mist it with water and that made the walnut come alive. I specified a solid black rubber recoil pad, an ebony pistol grip cap, and a matching ebony fore end tip. The price went up, but I don’t do this sort of thing very often and the heart wants what the heart wants. My heart wanted ebony accents.

Few rifle manufacturers sell barreled actions today (they all used to), but Howa still does and they had one in .375 Ruger. It is a stout thing with a stubby 20-inch heavy barrel. Howa makes complete rifles under their own name and they also sell to other manufacturers (the Weatherby Vanguard, one of the world’s great rifles, is made by Howa). A custom rifle I built 40 years ago (a .30 06) had a Howa barreled action and I knew from that project they were good.

I took a good 80 hours to fit the barreled action to the stock, but I was in no hurry (it’s easy to take wood away; it’s a lot harder to add it back on), and I glass bedded the action with AcraGlas for added accuracy. That involved coating the barreled action with a release agent, mixing epoxy and glass fibers and slathering the mix in the stock, placing the barreled action in the wet epoxy, and then clamping it all together while the epoxy cured. A day later, I pried the barreled action out of the stock and oila, the action now had an exact fit to its glass bed.

Glass bedding the .375 Howa barreled action in the stock.

The next steps involved shaping the stock exterior and the ebony accents to my tastes, and then sanding everything with 100, 200, 400, and then 600 grit sandpaper. That required another 60 hours. Then it was on to applying the finish. I like TruOil. The drill is to apply the first coat of TruOil heavily (to allow it to fill the wood pores and soak into the walnut), wait a week, and then use 0000 steel wool to remove the excess. Then came TruOil Coat No. 2, a 24-hour cure, and more steel wool. Then another coat and another 24-hour cure. It would be 10 coats total in this manner. With each coat of TruOil the inner beauty of the walnut emerged further. This is one of the best parts of building a custom rifle…finishing the stock and watching the walnut wake up. It becomes a living thing, changing colors and character as the light hits it from different angles.

Somewhere around Coat No. 8 or 9. It’s starting to come together. This was way too glossy for a hunting rifle, but a final steel wool scrub would knock it down to a more subdued and refined appearance.

The feeling of satisfaction that comes from fitting, bedding, shaping, and then finishing a custom gun stock is profound and difficult to describe. Applying an oil finish is the best part. You get a high gloss finish, which can be left that way, or you can knock it down with the steel wool again for a sublime satin low gloss finish. That’s what I did. Shiny looks good but it is reflective and that’s bad for a hunting rifle. And that’s what this .375 is: A hunting rifle. For pigs, to be specific.

On the range with my custom Howa rifle and its 4X Weatherby scope.

While all of the above was going on, I found a used 4X Weatherby scope in a local gun shop’s parts bin. Old Weatherby scopes are stunningly clear and they generally go for something north of $200 when you find them (which isn’t often because they stopped making them more than 30 years ago). I prefer a simple 4X scope even though few manufacturers offer them (it’s mostly variable-powered contraptions today, something I view as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist). The gunshop guy told me I could have the old Weatherby scope for $25. I couldn’t pay him quickly enough. I mounted the scope that night.

How does the rifle shoot? I’m happy to tell you that the answer is very, very well, and it does so with nearly every load.

The Howa and my cast bullet loads. These are accurate and hard hitting. The jacketed bullets are even more accurate, but the cast bullets are close enough for government work.

Not too shabby for cast bullets. Everything came together on this one…the English walnut stock, the glass bedding, the Weatherby scope, and the load development effort. These groups were shot at 50 yards.

I built the .375 rifle to shoot cast bullets. They’re less expensive, they’re cool, and I have a local caster who makes good ones. For my cast 275-grain bullets, I use 30.0 grains of SR 4759 propellant, a load that consistently delivers tight groups at both 50 and 100 yards. I use the same powder and charge weight with 270-grain jacketed soft point Hornady bullets, a load that is scary accurate (as in one-hole, 5-shot groups at the 50-yard mark).

The plan is to hunt pigs with cast bullets, but the rifle is accurate enough to go after grasshoppers with the jacketed load. I haven’t shot the jacketed bullets at 100 yards yet, but I will the next time I’m at the rifle range. Both loads, according to the reloading manuals, are pushing the bullets at about 1800 feet per second. Recoil at those velocities is just shy of being unbearable (it’s stout, but manageable). This rig is a shooter, it’s a powerhouse, it groups well, and it’s fun!

Hey, check out our other Tales of the Gun stories, and for another take on building a modern sporting custom rifle, take a look at this Tavor X95 project!

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