Tag: Circassian walnut

Eleanor at 50 and 100 yards

By Joe Berk

Make no mistake:  Even a reduced load in the mighty .416 Rigby is a high-energy proposition.  I use 350-grain cast bullets from the Montana Bullet Company, and my Lyman cast bullet reloading manual shows the accuracy load to be 45.0 grains of 5744 propellant.  The reloading manual says that’s the lightest 5744 load with the 350-grain cast bullet, and that same manual says the load is good for 1779 fps. In my rifle, it was a full 100 fps faster, with a very tight standard deviation.  A 350-grain bullet at 1877 fps is going to settle most discussions pretty quickly, I think.

.416 Rigby ammo, loaded with Montana cast bullets.
The .416 Rigby is a big cartridge. It’s shown here with a .45 70 and several .45 ACP rounds.

The .416 Rigby was originally developed in 1911 by John Rigby and Sons, a British rifle manufacturer, as a cartridge designed for hunting dangerous game (you know, like cape buffalo, elephants, and other stray critters not likely to be encountered on this continent).  But the cartridge is a cool one, and that was enough for me to buy the rifle.  The factory load is a 400-jacketed bullet at 2,370 fps (with prices ranging from $170 to $270 per box of 20 rounds), and that’s good for anything that walks, breathes, or grows, probably including more than a few dinosaurs.  Those are steep prices, working out to about $8.50 to $13.50 every time you pull the trigger.   Me? I reload with cast bullets.  It’s still not cheap to send lead downrange, but it’s way cheaper than shooting the factory stuff.

I had not realized it had been so long since I previously shot the .416 (as my reloads indicated).
Chrono results for my .416 Rigby ammo. That’s a tight standard deviation. This is a great load.

The Lyman manual is right; this is an accurate load.  At least it was for me at 50 yards.

Three shots at 50 yards with the .416 Rigby. That’s not too bad for an old man shooting an elephant rifle with open sights.

I then tried the Rigby at 100 yards.  At 100 yards, my accuracy was poor, but that was me (not the rifle or the ammo).  I had a difficult time finding and focusing on the front sight.  It’s a function of age and the little front sight brass dot, and a pair of new glasses.  I had a tough time seeing the front sight with my new specs; it kept blurring together with the black bullseye.  The easy answer would be a scope, but the rifle is already heavy and maybe I’m too much of a purist; a scope on an elephant gun seems kind of silly.  I have a scope on my .458 Ruger Model 77 and I like it, but the Rigby wearing a scope doesn’t go down well for me.

The Ruger’s rear sight. It’s a classy affair, with a fixed V-notch always up (it’s what you see here). For longer distances, each of the two blades behind the fixed blade can fold up. The two folding blades each have a U-notch, which is easier to see.

When I returned home I reloaded my spent .416 Rigby brass, grabbed my old glasses, and headed out to the West End Gun Club again.  Things at 100 yards improved immediately.  I fired the first three shots you see below using the lowest rear sight (the V, with no U-notch; it is fixed in the up position).    I couldn’t see the bullet holes at 100 yards with the naked eye (hell, I could barely see the target), so I took a peek through my spotting scope and was pleasantly surprised.

Three shots at 100 yards with the fixed V-notch rear sight. Life is good.

That target looked good to me (and knowing I was going to photograph it for the blog I didn’t want to ruin it with additional shots).  For those first three shots, though, I struggled to keep the front sight in focus and seated above the rear sight’s fixed V-notch.  I decided to fold up the first blade, which is a little taller than the fixed V-notch.  Seeing the front sight (and staying focused on it) in that first foldup blade’s U-notch is much easier, but the rear sight was taller.  I expected the next shots to go high (which they did in a surprisingly big way…they were a good six inches above the bullseye).  Two can play this game, I thought, so I walked downrange and put up a third target.  I fired my remaining rounds while holding the top of the front sight about one bullseye diameter below my normal aim point (which is 6:00 on the bullseye).  I guess you could call that Kentucky elevation.

10 shots at 100 yards. Not bad, but too high. I would have liked for that group to all be in the black.

The results were not bad.  What I really need (maybe) is a taller front sight, and I’m casting about to try to find one of those.  I have a call into the Williams Gun Sight company; maybe they will have something that will work.  The reason I said maybe, though, is that several years ago with this rifle and the same load, the sights were spot on for me at both 50 and 100 yards.  It could be that I was simply a better shot several years ago.  I’ll try it again before I replace the front sight.

The .416 Rigby’s front sight. It may need to be taller for the load I am using. Note that there’s very little leading in the bore. That’s because the Montana bullets are hard cast, gas-checked, and appropriately sized.

Here are two more photos of the Rigby, showing its beautiful and highly-figured Circassian walnut stock.  This rifle was a real find.  It’s one I’ll never sell.

Ruger .416 Rigby RSM Magnum, port side. It looks even better in person.
Ruger .416 Rigby RSM Magnum, starboard side. It’s surprisingly easy to shoot with cast bullets.

I named my .416 rifle Eleanor (get it?  Eleanor Rigby?).  It’s the only gun I’ve ever owned that I named.  I bought the rifle for well under what it’s worth off the used gun rack at Turner’s in West Covina (a locale with demographics more in tune with bangers and black plastic 9mm pistols).  I paid a thousand bucks for Eleanor; these rifles typically go for around $2500 when they show up on the used gun market.    There are a couple on Gunbroker.com right now; one is listed at $3,000 and the other at $7,000 (hope springs eternal, I guess).  Ruger quit making these a couple of decades ago because they were too expensive to manufacture, making the small number they did manufacture instantly collectible.

I want to use this rifle with open sights on my next pig hunt.  That would be challenging on several fronts:

      • I want to try for a Russian boar (instead of the more plentiful Ossabaw hogs I previously shot).
      • I want to use open sights (instead of the scoped rifles I previously used).
      • I’ll have to lug this anchor-weight firearm up and down in the Arizona hills where I hunt (instead of the lighter rifles I used on my prior hunts).

It should be fun.   Stay tuned.  You’ll get to read about it here.

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Iron Sights and a .45 70 No. 1

By Joe Berk

There are more than a few .45 70 stories here on the ExNotes blog.  This is another one.  I like the .45 70, and I make no excuses for that. I’ll share a few links on our other .45 70 stories at the end of this blog.

A few years ago Ruger offered a special No. 1 Single Shot rifle in .45 70 with a 26-inch barrel and a Circassian walnut stock.  Most had very plain wood.  Then I found an almost new one in Duarte for cheap. Ruger rifles usually have long throats, but this run of No. 1 rifles had short ones, and conventional 405 grain bullets wouldn’t chamber if the bullet was crimped in the crimping groove (or so the whining on the Internet went).  I’m guessing the original owner either bought or reloaded ammo for my rifle (the one you see above) and it wouldn’t chamber, so he put the rifle up for sale.

Then another stroke of good luck:  A guy at the range had some Winchester 300-grain .45 70 ammo, and it chambered in the No. 1.

A Winchester .45 70 cartridge with a .22 Long Rifle cartridge.

That Winchester ammo was noteworthy for two reasons: It chambered, and it was relatively accurate at 100 yards.  I wrote about that before (you’ll see the link below).

The story gets more interesting.  Hornady makes a jacketed 300-grain hollow point bullet, and I picked up a bunch of those years ago.  When I loaded them, they wouldn’t chamber in the Circassian .45 70.  Then I noticed a Hornady illustration of their current 300-grain bullet design, and the bullet profile had changed.  It looked like it might work based on the illustration, so I bought a box of the Hornady bullets and they worked.  I could crimp in the cannelure and they chambered in my Circassian Ruger.

XBR 8208 Propellant. This is good stuff.

Like I said above, I knew from an earlier range session that the Winchester ammo was relatively accurate in my Circassian No. 1, so my objective was to duplicate that load.  I found online that Winchester listed their ammo’s velocity at 1880 feet per second.  I didn’t know what propellant Winchester used, but I had a bottle of XBR 8208 and it was proving to be very accurate in other cartridges (more on that later).  Interpolating from the Hodgdon’s XBR 8208 load data, it looked like what I needed was 54.0 grains, and that’s how I loaded.

It was an overcast Wednesday morning out at the West End Gun Club when I tried the load at 100 yards.  I fired three rounds and took a peek through my spotting scope.  I couldn’t spot the hits in the scope, so either they all went in the black (which would be good), or I missed the target completely (which would be bad).  Good buddies Duane and Walt were on the range that day, and when we walked out to check our targets, it was time for a collective “Whoa!”  I was more than pleased with the results.   Hell, a 0.906-inch group would be good with a scoped rifle.  For a guy like me and open sights at 100 yards, it was spectacular.  I’m really pleased with the load, the rifle, and myself.  I’m even more pleased I had a couple of witnesses out there to see it!

Phenomenal results (at least for me) at 100 yards with open sights.

Those other cartridges I mentioned that work well with XBR 8208?  In my .22 250 rifles, this propellant works very, very well with Hornady’s 52-grain match bullet.  In the .243 No. 1, it pairs very well with Nosler’s 55-grain  bullet, Hornady’s 58-grain V-Max bullet, and Speer’s 75-grain jacketed hollow point bullet.  In 6.5 Creedmoor Browning X-Bolt rifle, XBR 8208 is the cat’s meow with the 123-grain Nosler jacketed hollow point boattail bullet and the 140-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point boattail bullet.  With that last load, you could shoot flies at 100 yards if you could find them in the scope.

More .45 70 stories?  We’ve got a bunch of them!

Ruger No. 3 45 70 Loads
Ruger .45 70 Circassian No. 1
Buffalo Guns
A Wind  River Marlin .45 70 Rifle
A .45 70 Remlin 1895
The 1886 Winchester
Turnbull Guns
Marlin Cowboy Front Sight Installation
Marlin 1895 Cowboy Revisited
Henry Rifles
The Henry Is In California
Developing a Henry .45 70 Load: Part 1
Developing a Henry .45 70 Load: Part 2
Henry’s Home and an Interview with Dan
Henry Accuracy Loads

More shooting fun?  You bet!  Check out Tales of the Gun

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A Ruger .45 70 Circassian No. 1

By Joe Berk

The .45-70 Government cartridge was destined for obsolescence in the middle of the last century and then a curious thing happened:  Ruger chambered their No. 1 single shot rifle for it and Marlin did the same with an adaptation of their lever action rifle a short while later.

300-grain .45 70 Winchester and .22 LR Federal cartridges.

When Marlin and Ruger came on board with their .45 70 rifles, there was suddenly significant interest in the cartridge.  I fell in love with the .45 70 when I bought a Ruger No. 1 in 1976 (a rifle I still have), and I’ve been reloading the cartridge ever since.  I’ve owned several No. 1 Rugers, a few Ruger No. 3 rifles, a bunch of Marlin .45 70s, and a replica 1886 Winchester (by Chiappa, with wood that is way nicer than anything from Winchester).

Starboard side of the Ruger Circassian .45 70 No. 1 rifle with 26-inch barrel.
Yep. The .45 70 was adopted as the official US Army cartridge in 1873, hence the “Gov’t” designation sometimes seen with the cartridge name.
In addition to its Circassian walnut and 26-inch barrel, these rifles included wrap-around checkering on the forearm. The standard checkering pattern for a Ruger No. 1 is shown on the rifle to the left.

All these manufacturers have offered special editions of their .45 70 rifles. One of the more recent offerings from Ruger was a 26-inch barreled No. 1 with a Circassian walnut stock.  When it was first offered about 7 years ago by Lipsey’s (a Ruger distributor), it was a limited run of only 250 rifles.  They sold out immediately and folks still wanted these, so Lipsey’s and Ruger offered a second run of 250 rifles.  I wanted one with fancy wood, but none of the Circassian Rugers I saw online had wood nice enough to be interesting.  Even though the rifles had Circassian walnut, all the ones I saw were plain and straight grained.  Then one day I wandered into a local gun shop and I saw the rifle you see here.  It caught my eye immediately and at first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  These rifles were next to impossible to find and here was one right in front of me.  It was pricey, but I Presbyterianed the guy down to $1050 (you fellow Members of the Tribe will get it) and I pulled the trigger (figuratively speaking).

Ruger’s more recent .45 70 No. 1 rifles have a short leade (the distance between the forward edge of the cartridge case and where the rifling starts).  Mine won’t chamber cartridges with 400-grain and above bullets.  In fact, I had some ammo I had loaded with an old batch of Hornady’s 300-grain jacketed hollow points, and this ammo wouldn’t chamber, either.   I examined the profile of my old 300-grain Hornady bullets and compared it to pictures of the current Hornady 300-grain bullets, and it was obvious the older bullets had a more gradual ogive (the curved portion of the bullet’s profile).  I ordered a box of the current Hornady 300-grain slugs, I loaded them, and the ammo chambered in this rifle easily.  In researching this issue on the Internet, the issue of recent Ruger .45 70 rifles’ shorter leades is a complaint that’s popped up more than once.  One guy even sent his rifle to Ruger, but he said Ruger measured the chamber and returned it to him with no work done (according to him, Ruger said the rifle met SAAMI chamber spec requirements).  It’s not really an issue to me; if I want to shooter the heavier bullets I’ll use a different .45 70 rifle.

I had some Winchester factory .45 70 cartridges in my ammo locker, including the Winchester load with 300-grain hollow point bullets.  I thought I would shoot those to see how they did in the Circassian No. 1.

A big ol’ .45 70 hollow point cartridge.
Spent cases destined for reloading. This is one of my favorite cartridges to reload.

My first shots were at 50 yards, and the Ruger grouped nicely.  The shots were biased very slightly to the right.  That’s okay, because the Ruger rear sight is adjustable for both windage and elevation.   I didn’t bother making the adjustments on the range, as it was a fairly windy day.  I’ll make the adjustments, if necessary, on the next trip.

50-yard groups with the Circassian No. 1. The groups are biased to the right, some more than others (a function of how I held the rifle for each group).  Ignore the upper right target and the circled holes to the right of the bullseye; those were from a .243 I had out on the same day.

I then set up a standard 100-yard target (at 100 yards).  There were 20 rounds in the box of Winchester .45 70 ammo and I had already shot four 3-shot groups at 50 yards.  That left eight rounds to play with at 100 yards, and play around I did.

Eight shots at 100 yards. I need to move the rear sight a bit to the left. The vertical stringing is most likely a function of not allowing the barrel to cool between shots.

The results surprised me.  I was holding on the bullseye at 6:00, and those big 300-grain hollowpoints hit at about the right elevation.  As was the case with the 50-yard targets, the point of impact was biased to the right.  The first three made a tight group and then the shots climbed as I progressed through the eight.  The vertically strung group was only about an inch in width.  The stringing is almost certainly due to barrel heating and the barrel being deflected up by the forearm (it’s not free floated).  I was pleased with the results.  It told me that I could leave the elevation adjusted for 50 yards and it would still be spot on at 100.  On my next range outing with this ammo, I’ll adjust the rear sight to the left a scosh and take my time between shots to preclude the stringing.  Even with the stringing you see in the above target, it’s not too shabby for a 100-yard group with open sights.

More blogs on this and other .45 70 rifles?  You bet!

Buffalo Guns
A Wind  River Marlin .45 70 Rifle
A .45 70 Remlin 1895
The 1886 Winchester
Turnbull Guns
Marlin Cowboy Front Sight Installation
Marlin 1895 Cowboy Revisited
Henry Rifles
The Henry Is In California
Developing a Henry .45 70 Load: Part 1
Developing a Henry .45 70 Load: Part 2
Henry’s Home and an Interview with Dan
Henry Accuracy Loads

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Mini 14 Bench Cleanup

When you’re a reloader you get a bunch of odds and ends components and you go on a jag to load them all just to get the stuff off the bench.  Oddball bullet dribs and drabs, brass you don’t want to bother cleaning, trimming, or sorting, that sort of thing.   I had a bunch of the above laying around crying out to become .223 ammo, I hadn’t been to the range with my Mini 14, and it was time to shoot up the leftovers.

First, a bit about the rifle.  It’s what Davidson’s called the Mini 14 Tactical, and it was a limited run they had Ruger make with Circassian walnut stocks.  I looked at a bunch of them on Gunbroker before I spotted the one you see here and I pounced (most had very plain walnut).

An unusual Mini 14 with a Circassian stock. I get a lot of compliments on this rifle. It’s not for sale.

This is a rifle that gets compliments every time I bring it to the range.  I’ve written about my Mini 14 before here on the ExNotes blog and I know what it takes to make this puppy group.  This wasn’t going to be one of those days; like I said, I was just using up remnants from reloading sessions for other rifles.

The left side of the Mini 14’s Circassian walnut stock.
The right side. This sure is a nice-looking Mini 14.

The Davidson’s Mini 14s came with 30-round mags and a flush suppressor, both of which are apparently favored by folks who rob gas stations and convenience stores (our legislators have their heads so far up their fourth points of contact they haven’t seen daylight in decades).  I replaced the flash suppressor with a muzzle brake to make the rifle much less intimidating.

You might laugh at a muzzle brake on a Mini 14. It works, though. Fire a Mini 14 with a muzzle brake and then fire one without and you’ll feel the difference.

I also installed the Tech Sights Mini 14 rear aperture sight, which I like a lot better than the standard Mini 14 rear sight.

The Tech Sights rear aperture sight. If you have a Mini 14 and you don’t have one of these, you’re missing the boat.

I loaded three configurations of ammo.   The first was a new load I had developed using XBR 8208 propellant.   For reasons I can’t remember, I had a bunch of Hornady 55-grain full metal jacket bullets I had pulled from another load.  If you look closely at the photo below, you’ll see the circumferential ring where the collet puller grabbed the bullets.  My thought was that pulled bullets would degrade accuracy, which is why they were tucked away and ignored for a long time.  The load was 25.3 grains of XBR 8208, mixed brass previously fired in the Mini 14 (neck sized only for this load), and Winchester small rifle primers.  I seated the bullets about midway in the cannelure, but I didn’t crimp.   For this load, I didn’t tumble or trim the brass, either.

55-grain bullets loaded in .223 Remington brass for the Mini 14. Note the circumferential bullet puller collet marks just above the cannelure.

Surprisingly, the above load shot relatively well.  If the marks on the bullets affected accuracy I couldn’t see it.  I shot a few 10-shot groups at 50 yards just to get into the swing of things, and then I fired a 10-shot group at 100 yards (which I’ll get to at the end of this blog).   The 10-shot group at 100 yards wasn’t too shabby.  The rifle shot low left (my aim point was at 6:00), but I hadn’t adjusted the sights for this load.

50-yard groups with the above load. The flyers are do to operator error. The groups showed promise at 50 yards, and I knew I would test them at 100 yards.

For the next load, I had a few 35-grain Hornady V-Max bullets I normally use for my .22 Hornet.  This is a bullet I guessed would not do well in the much-higher-velocity .223 Remington cartridge, and I was right.  Some of them grouped okay at 50 yards, but they were right on the edge of instability.  A few tumbled and went wide.  I didn’t bother firing these at 100 yards; if they were flaky at 50 yards, they would be positively flaky at 100.

.223 Remington cartrdiges loaded with 35-grain Hornady VMax Hornet bullets. The ammo looks good, but it was not a good load for the Mini 14.
The 35-grain VMax loads at 50 yards. The bullets were right on the stability threshold.

The last group was one I put together using another set of leftover Hornet bullets, the 46-grain Winchester jacketed hollow point bullet.  They shot poorly when I tested them in my Ruger No. 3 Hornet, and they were really terrible in the .223 Mini 14.   I suspect they were breaking up in flight.  Several went wide or through the target sideways.

46-grain Winchester hollowpoint jacketed bullets loaded in .223 brass. This didn’t work out at all.
A huge hollowpoint. It might work well on prairie dogs in the .22 Hornet, but these bullets weren’t stable and didn’t group well in the .223 Remington cartridge.

The 46-grain Winchester groups were huge at 50 yards and I could see on the target that they were unstable.  At least one tumbled.  Some never even made it to the target.

The above load’s poor performance was predictable, but I’m one of those guys who has to pee on the electric fence. You know, just to make sure.  The arrow points to a spot where a bullet went through the target sideways.

After testing the above bullets at 50 yards, I knew that the Hornet bullets were a no go.   Actually, I kind of knew that before I tested the load.  But I had the bullets and I thought I would give it a try.

I wanted to see how the pulled 55-grain Hornady bullets would do at 100 yards, so I moved a target out to 100 yards they did relatively.   The group centroid shifted from my usual Mini 14 load, but it was fairly tight for iron sights with junk/untrimmed mixed brass.

55-grain full metal jacket boattail pulled Hornady bullets, 25.3 grains of XBR 8208 propellant, Winchester small rifle primers, and mixed brass provided a 3.65-inch 10-shot group at 100 yards. The black bullseye is 5.50 inches in diameter. I was pleased with these results.

Well, you live and you learn.  I cleaned off the reloading bench, I had a little fun, and I now know from personal experience that 35-grain and 46-grain Hornet bullets won’t do very well in the .223.  Sometimes it’s good to learn what doesn’t work as well as what does.

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