Tag: 300 H&H

Premiere Pro, Pinnacle, and Proficiency

By Joe Berk

I’m learning a new video program (new to me, at least) called Premiere Pro.  It’s part of the Adobe Creative Studio suite, and it is way more complicated than anything I’ve ever used before.  Well, maybe that’s not fair:  The only video program I ever used in the past was something called Pinnacle.  It was a low-bucks affair at Best Buy 16 or 17 years ago.  I bought it because I was doing a lot of videos for CSC Motorcycles and the kid at Best Buy said even an old guy could use it.  You can see many of those videos (along with the excellent ones Joe Gresh created) on our YouTubby page.

About that YouTubby thing:  The Chinese marketing guys at Zongshen were following the CSC blog closely back in those days, and they knew me from the videos before I went there and met them for the first time.  When they saw me, they pointed and exclaimed, “Youtubby, Youtubby!”  They didn’t realize the “e” in YouTube was silent.  I didn’t realize what they didn’t realize, and my first thought was “yeah, I guess I am carrying a few extra pounds.”  My second thought was that the Chinese don’t hold back (I later learned that they do; in fact, as a group the Chinese are the most polite people I’ve ever known).

To get back on topic, when good buddy Greg shot a video of me doing my thing with the Mini 14, I decided it was time to learn Premiere Pro.  I’ve been paying for that program for years because it is in the Adobe package, which you have to buy as a subscription.  Sometimes, you just have to set your mind to doing something, and that’s what I did.  Between my firm commitment to learning Premiere Pro, Google’s help (I asked it a ton of questions, because the program is anything but intuitive and the Adobe tutorials are close to useless), and a lot of trial and error, I was able to create the Mini 14 video.

Then I did the one on the Monster Guns a few days ago.

I like both the above videos.  In creating them, I used maybe 1% of what Premiere Pro can do.  It is an intricate software package and I have a lot to learn.  It keeps my mind going, as does writing this blog.  I guess that’s the good news.

I never made any money off YouTube.  I’ve heard of folks having insanely high view counts and making maybe 37 cents.  Nope, I’m not in it for the money.   But the two gun videos above got me thinking:  Maybe I should do more gun videos.  Then came another surprise:  I already have.  In reviewing my videos on YouTube’s summary page, I found several gun videos I had forgotten.  These were all uploaded either directly from the camera, or I assembled them using the old, cheap, easy-to-use Pinnacle program.  I thought I’d post them here in case any of you had nothing else to do or you have insomnia.  Enjoy.

Here’s one that’s a little unusual. I have a 50-year-old Weatherby Mark V chambered in .30 06 and sometimes I can sometimes coax a 1-inch group from it. I bought a borescope and, surprisingly, you can make a video with the borescope as you run the fiber optic cable through the rifle. The marks you see in the bore are pretty typical machining marks made during the rifle barrel fabrication process. Most folks are alarmed when they first use a bore scope and see this sort of thing. I was. But hey, the thing groups pretty well for a glamour gun.

Here’s one that’s pretty cool.  My buddy Mike, a retired chief of police, goes to the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention and when it’s on the west coast, I go along as his assistant (I got a badge out of the deal, but no gun).  One of the exhibitors had a video/handgun-based training system.  Mike and I both tried it.  It was awesome.

Here’s one from long ago that could use Premiere Pro’s lighting adjustment tool.  It’s my buddy Duane shooting reduced loads in his World War II bring-home Mauser 98.

I recently mentioned my Model 52 Smith and Wesson here on ExNotes.  It’s an amazing pistol.  What’s part of the wow factor is how well it feeds wadcutter ammo; in fact, it’s so good it will feed an empty case.

I have a Weatherby that has a custom Douglas .300 H&H barrel on it.  The .300 H&H is an amazing cartridge with plenty of energy.  Here’s a video of a couple of shots on the gongs at 100 yards.  That .300 H&H energy really makes them jump around.

My buddy Paul is a serious black powder shooter and collector, and his enthusiasm (along with watching Lonesome Dove about a hundred times) convinced me my life wouldn’t be complete unless I owned a Colt Walker.  I ordered one and created a video unboxing it.  It’s a thing people do.  So I did it, too.

When I resurrected the Star progressive reloader, I shot a series of short videos on its operation.

Back in the day, a watch company (Gear’d; I don’t know if they’re still around) sent a couple of watches to Gresh and me so we could review them on the blog.  I thought it would be a good idea to see how mine would stand up to the recoil after firing a hundred shots of .45 ACP hardball.

I always wanted an 1886 with fancy walnut, but I didn’t want to mortgage the house to get one. So I bought a Chiappa (an Italian copy). This is another video that could have been helped by Premiere Pro’s advanced features.

Some of my friends think I’m fast. The rest know that I’m just half fast.

Here’s one I did years ago on loading cast bullet ammo for the Mosin-Nagant rifle, with accompanying music from the movie, Enemy at the Gates. I used Pinnacle on this one, and I think I exercised all its capabilities.

I guess I had more gun videos than I realized.  Maybe I’ll become an influencer (whatever that is).  I’ll keep plugging away polishing my very meager Premiere Pro skills, and you’ll see the results in future blogs.

A 300 H&H Ammo Score

Finding reloading components of any kind these days (brass, bullets, powders, or primers) is a tough thing to do.  Finding brass for more exotic cartridges is near impossible.  One of my favorite cartridges is the famed .300 Holland and Holland.  It’s a specialty item.  I’ve not seen loaded .300 H&H ammo or brass in gun stores for years.  I searched for two years for brass and found nothing.  Prices for both ammo and brass have climbed through the roof (Nosler brass, just the empty brass, is now about $6 per round), but it’s all moot.  It could be free or it could be $100 per round.  Nobody has any.  I know moot, and this is it.

I was recently in my local reloading shop (Phillips Wholesale, in Covina, California).  I stop by there periodically just to see what Rick has in stock, and if it’s anything I might be able to use, I buy it because there’s no telling when it will be available again.  While there, I was lamenting with Rick about the sad state of affairs in component availability, and I mentioned not being able to find .300 H&H brass.  Rick perked up.  “.300 H&H?” he said.  “I might have something.”

Rick pulled a plastic box of 50 cartridges from under the counter.  It contained .300 H&H handloaded ammo in virgin (previously unfired) brass.

.300 H&H ammo. It;s beautiful, isn’t it?
The data label on the ammo Rick showed to me. It was loaded 12 1/2 years ago.

Rick helps folks settle estates when the estate includes reloading goodies.  This was a box of ammo with that provenance.   I normally wouldn’t fire someone else’s handloads.  I’m a careful reloader; I don’t know that the someone else who loaded other ammo was.  But I had, in my hot little hands, 50 rounds of fresh .300 H&H brass.   I didn’t recognize the propellant (AA 86?), but I didn’t care.  I figured I could pull the bullets, dump the powder, and load the new brass with my preferred .300 H&H load, which is 60.0 grains of IMR 4320 and a Winchester 150-grain jacketed softpoint bullet.  My rifle (I’ll tell you more about it in a minute) has shot 0.25-inch groups with this load.

So I bought the ammo and proceeded to pull it apart.  I removed the bullets (which mashed a few tips and scraped a few ogives), dumped the powder, and reloaded the brass cases with my IMR 4320 load.  I reused the pulled bullets.  The bullets weren’t perfect after the extraction operation, but I wanted to fireform the brass to my rifle and I didn’t care about their condition.  Once the brass has been fireformed (fired so it conforms to that particular rifle), I will neck size only to maximize case life.  The .300 H&H cartridge is known for short case life when it is full length resized.

AA 86 propellant and Remington 150-grain jacketed soft poin bullets pulled from the first box of ammo. I’m going to use that powder in .243 ammo now that I know what it is.

I weighed a few of the powder charges as I was pulling the bullets and they were exactly as labeled on the box Rick sold to me:  75.0 grains.  Whoever loaded this (a fellow from Riverside who passed away) was obviously a careful reloader.  The propellant was a stick powder, so I figured it was a rifle propellant, but I had never heard of AA 86.  I recognized AA as most likely belonging to Accurate Arms, but there’s nothing I could initially find on the Accurate website called AA 86.

I called Accurate Arms’ customer service to see if they could shed any light on the AA 86 mystery.  The kid I spoke with told me Accurate Arms had gone through an acquisition, and he didn’t know anything about their propellants before the acquisition.  He specificially had never heard of AA 86.  I poked around a bit more on the Internet and learned that Accurate Arms had occasionally sold surplus powders identified as Data Powder (or DP) powders, followed by a two-digit number.  There was a DP 86 powder.  I went back to the Accurate Arms site and found a reference to it, which said that DP 86 was essentially the same as their AS 3100 powder.  The Accurate Arms customer service guy didn’t know this (he sounded like a young guy).

When I bought the box of .300 H&H ammo from Rick, he told me he might have some more.  I gave him my phone number and Rick called a couple of days later.  He found three more boxes.  I was in the middle of doing something important (writing an ExNotes blog, actually), but Rick’s message took priority.  I stopped writing and left for Rick’s shop immediately.

I told Rick about the phone call to Accurate Arms.  Rick knew all about DP 86, and he told me that this ammo had indeed been loaded with DP 86.  He also had canisters of the powder from the gentleman who passed away.  It sold quickly, Rick told me.

After pulling the bullets, I reloaded the first box with my pet load. If I was loading for accuracy, I would measure each charge, but I just wanted to fireform so I charged each case with my RCBS powder dispenser. IMR 4320 is an extruded rod powder, but the individual rods are small and it meters well.

I mentioned above that I would tell you a bit about my .300 H&H rifle.  My Dad bought it for me in the early 1970s before my US Army tour in Korea.  The rifle began life as a 7mm Weatherby Magnum, but I never could get the rifle to group well with that cartridge.  I had it rebarreled in .300 H&H, a cartridge I had read a lot about and learned to love in a pre-’64 Model 70 Winchester (don’t ask, it’s sold, and yeah, selling it was a dumb move on my part).   I glass bedded the Weatherby action, and I stripped the rifle’s original epoxy finish and refinished it with TruOil.

A Douglas barrel chambered in .300 H&H. It has a 1 turn in 10 inches twist rate and it is accurate. The rebarreled  Weatherby feeds the .300 H&H cartridges flawlessly.
Rich, warm, and beautiful.  There’s something about oil-finished walnut that is just right.
The flip side looks just as good. About 10 years after I refinished this rifle, Weatherby introduced their Euromark line, which was the Mark V with an oil finished walnut stock. I own a couple. Both have highly figured walnut, but to me this custom .300 H&H looks better. It groups better, too.  Weatherby has since discontinued making walnut Mark V rifles.  They are all composite rifles now, which seems like a crime against nature.

I’ve been shooting and hunting with this custom .300 H&H Weatherby for close to 50 years now, and  I’ve owned and shot quite a few other rifles during that time.  This one remains my favorite. I am a big Weatherby fan and I love the .300 H&H cartridge.  It is the perfect combination of power, accuracy, and manageable recoil.  I greatly prefer the .300 H&H Magnum over the .300 Weatherby Magnum.  The .300 Weatherby Magnum’s recoil is vicious and unpleasant.  The .300 Weatherby’s recoil is aggravated by a need to load at or near maximum for accuracy.  The .300 H&H is a more useable and enjoyable chambering.

I bought four boxes (200 rounds!) of this handloaded virgin brass, and I recently took two boxes to the range.  One contained my reconstituted ammo with the IMR 4320 powder and 150-grain pulled Remington bullets; the other was loaded with 180-grain Nosler blemished bullets and AA 85 powder.  On this blemished bullet business: Sometimes bullet manufacturers sell factory seconds at reduced prices. This was the only time I’ve heard of blems from Nosler.  I’m a guy who loads for accuracy (I could care less about muzzle velocity or killing power), so the idea of using a rejected factory bullet seems silly.  I’m firing this ammo only to fireform the cases, so I was okay with reusing the pulled bullets.  And I felt more comfortable about firing the ammo as provided by Rick once I learned more about AA 86 and AA 85 propellants.

How did it shoot?  Both the boxes I tried (my IMR 4320 load and the 180-grain Nosler load) shot very well.  The 180-grain load predictably had a bit more recoil, but it wasn’t bad.   The 150-grain bullet and IMR 4320 load showed no primer flattening; the 180-grain Nosler load showed just a hint of primer flattening (but not enough to be of concern).

My favorite 300 H&H load showed no pressure signs. The guy who loaded it snuck in a different primer on one cartridge.
The ammo loaded with 180-grain Noslers and a near-max DP 86 load flattened the primers just a bit, but not enough to indicate excessive pressure. This load had more recoil, but it was still way below .300 Weatherby levels.

Accuracy was surprisingly good with both loads, especially considering that I dinged up the 150-grain Winchester bullets during the removal operation and the 180-grain Noslers were factory blems.

Here’s the target I shot at 100 yards with my IMR 4320 loads:

This is way below minute-of-wild-boar and more than accurate enough for ammo loaded with pulled bullets and brass that had not yet been fireformed. Next tme will be better.  It’s a load that has produced quarter-inch groups in the past.  I didn’t expect that kind of accuracy with this ammo due to the bullets’ condition.

And here’s one I shot with the 180-grain Noslers as loaded by the original reloader 12 1/2 years ago.  You can ignore the group(s) circled in black.  When good buddy Chuck gave me a target board at the range, it had a target stapled on it with usable real estate.  I’m cheap so I reused the target (somebody  had previously fired at the bullseyes circled in black; I only shot at the orange and blue targets).

Groups shot with the 180-grain blemished Nosler bullets and DP 86 surplus powder. It’s not bad for a dragon slayer at 100 yards. The shots circled in black were already on the target when I used it.

I’m quite pleased with this .300 H&H ammo.  I picked up 200 rounds at about one-sixth what factory ammo would have cost at a time when neither ammo nor brass is available.  It pays to maintain a relationship with local businesses.

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A Tale of Two 300 H&H Magnums

I had the 300 H&H Mags out last week, and when reloading the brass from that range session, I noticed a bright ring around some of them about a quarter inch above the belt.  I did the inside-the-case check with a bent paper clip and sure enough, I could feel the sharp step of the brass thinning.  Uh oh.  Impending case separations.   I had reloaded this brass once too often.

Case separations are caused by case stretching, which progresses each time you reload a cartridge. You can check for impending separations by examining the cases closely (you’ll see a bright ring, maybe evidence of gas escaping, or maybe even the beginnings of a crack above the case head). You can also make a tool from a paper clip to feel for a circumferential notch inside the case. That’s what I do, and I could feel the notch on these cases. They were at the end of their useful life.

I don’t know how many times I had reloaded these cases (maybe something like 3 to 5 times?), but rather than risk an impending case separation, I tossed the brass (all 50 pieces).  It felt like a crime against nature, but it was necessary.  I had two more boxes of 300 H&H brass (100 rounds) tucked away, so that will be the next lot that I load.  I had tumbled the old brass for several hours, and maybe that was a good thing because it let me see the warning signs and the faint beginnings of circumferential cracks.  Time to move on and start with fresh brass.

Evidence of a escaping gas on a fired 300 H&H Magnum case. The “belt” is the larger diameter just above the case base.
A classic impending case separation. You can see that the case has already started to crack. This would separate if I loaded and fired it again.

When I started this blog, I didn’t intend for it to be another reloading tutorial, but here we are anyway.  Let’s get back on the two 300 H&H Magnums.  I guess to start, allow me to tell you a bit about the magnificent and classic 300 H&H cartridge.  It goes back to shortly after World War I, when the venerable English firm of Holland and Holland introduced it as an African plains game cartridge.  I know, I’m coming across as snooty, and to tell the truth, I’m not entirely certain what “venerable” means.  But it sounds like it fits.

300 H&H reloads.  I use 150 gr Winchester bullets I bought about 6 years ago.   I got a good deal on those bullets and I bought about 700 or so.  I should have bought more, as I can’t find them anywhere online.  I think I have about 200 or 300 left.  You can see a bright circumferential ring above the case base on the lower cartridge, warning that this brass was past its useful life.

The 300 H&H was the absolute hottest .30 caliber cartridge in those days, and the belted 300 H&H cartridge just looks cool.  It became the basis for nearly every magnum round that followed, including nearly all the Weatherby chamberings, the 7mm Remington Magnum, and a bunch more.  The 300 H&H round won the Wimbledon 1000 yard match in 1935, and in 1937 Winchester offered it as a factory chambering in their Model 70 (assuring it’s survivability well into the future).  Did I mention it just looks cool, too?

So to continue the story, I had to have a 300 H&H, and because I had a Weatherby 7mm Mag that I couldn’t get to group well no matter what I tried, to me the solution was obvious:  Rebarrel it in 300 H&H.  Which I did.  35 years ago.  I’ve been shooting it ever since. It’s the one you see in the big photo at the top of this page, and if you don’t feel like scrolling up, here’s a view from the port side:

A custom 300 H&H Weatherby Mark V. This is a magnificent rifle.
The cartridge stamp on my custom barrel.

The 300 H&H Weatherby is a fabulous rifle.  It has a Timney trigger my Dad put in it while I was overseas, and it breaks like glass.  I enjoy owning it, reloading for it, and shooting it.

Then I picked up another 300 H&H rifle maybe 7 years ago:  A Model 70 Winchester.  The Model 70 in 300 H&H is not a commonly-encountered rifle, and I searched a while to find this one on Gunbroker with the fancy walnut I wanted.   Trust me on this:  It looks even better in person.  And this one is a shooter.  It deserves a better scope, but it’s still a beautiful rifle.

Sometimes people ask why I always find rifles with the nicest wood. It’s because I look for them!
The Model 70 stock from the right side of the rifle. It’s unusual to see this kind of walnut on a production rifle. I recognized that when I saw the rifle on Gunbroker, and I pulled the trigger.

Anyway, one day last week was one of those days when I woke up and knew I needed to get out and shoot some 300 H&H Magnum.  So I did.  These are some photos from that range session.  I think it was a Monday.   It was cold and windy as hell with gusts up to 60 mph (that’s the bad news), but because of that I had the range to myself (that’s the good news).

I shot my standard 300 H&H load.  It’s one that has done well for me in the Weatherby, and it does equally well in the Winchester.  The load is 60 grains of IMR 4320, a CCI-250 large rifle magnum primer, the 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet I mentioned above, and an overall cartridge length of 3.600 inches.   You won’t find this load in any of the newer reloading manuals, but I still have the manuals I used years ago, before all the latest and greatest gee-whiz propellants came out.   That’s where I found this one.  And wow, does it work!  Check out the 100-yard groups on the targets below, and remember it was a cold and windy day when I shot these.

The inexpensive Bushnell on the Model 70 was at the end of its elevation adjustment range and the rifle still shot a little high at 100 yards.  I shimmed the front of the scope up .010 inch, which should get me a foot lower on the target at 100 yards (if you do the math, each 0.005 gets you 6 inches at 100 yards).  I should be in the scope’s adjustment range after shimming, but I haven’t fired it again to make sure. I’ll check it the next time I’m out there.  Longer term, though, the Model 70 will get the scope it deserves (and that will be a Leupold).

Edit:  I learned that the manufacturer has discontinued IMR 4320 propellant, so the bad news is that when I deplete the little bit of this wonderful powder I have left, I need to develop a new load (and I guess that’s also the good news, as it means I get to play around with developing a new accuracy load).  I’ll probably start with IMR 4350, as my research indicates it’s the go to powder for .300 H&H.  Nobody has 4350 in stock right now; hopefully, that will change soon.

One more update…on a subsequent trip to the range, the shims did the trick for the Model 70; the Bushnell scope can now be adjusted to put the shots right where I want them.

More fancy walnut:  Check!
More accuracy loads:  Check!
More gun stories:  Check!

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