What about the 30-06 Ackley Improved?

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I just heard about a rechambered 30-06 called Ackley Improved which seems to have ballistics very near .300WM with no apparent downside I'm aware of.

Does anyone here know about this and what they use as the parent case?

Thank you,

Francis
 
I had Bevan King barrel me up a 30-06 Ackley Imp........twice.

Both rifles were accurate and interesting, but did not nearly approach 300 Win Mag velocities, even when I really leaned on them. :eek:

I would not build another.

Ted
 
A 30/06 AI will give about another 50-75 fps at the same pressures as the 30/06. It's just a 30/06 with the taper reduced and shoulder angle sharpened.

The idiots that "get" very near 300 Win Mag velocities with the 30/06 AI with only 80% of its case capacity are running extreme pressures.

Cool for sure, but if you want greater velocity than the 30/06 gives, you're much farther ahead to go to a 30 Cal Magnum.
 
Improved??

Interesting.
I have been happy using my .300WM and .338mag on the moose hunt although I still have a nice, classic .308 and equally nice 30-06 I shot moose with some years ago--I just don't use them any more. Prolly better to sell one of 'em and maybe try a 375 H&H for the fun of it all.
No real point rechambering for small gains like those.

Thanks for the info!

FM
 
The Real Thing

.270Win?

One classic that still excels--I have two of them and I use them because I have confidence in .270. I haven't used .270 on the moose, perfect for Bambi.

I suppose the standards are standards for practicality. Why get fancy unless you want the entertainment?

That's a pretty good reason...

Fm
 
What about a .300H&H? More than '06 performance with less powder, recoil, noise, than the .300win? Yes it's a belted mag, but can be loaded down to '06 velocities or loaded up to acceptable .30 cal magnum velocities. Haven't sold myself on it yet because I have a .300wsm, but I am seriously thinking of the H&H because of the reliabilty of the tapered case and the versitilty of the loads that function well.

Just a thought.

On another tangent, what about .308 norma? Personally not to interested but another good cartridge.

And, if your going to all the trouble of the '06Ai what about 30gibbs? More performance, no belt, but hassle of creating brass.
 
I'm drinking and posting again, but the .30gibbs is the way to go over a '06AI in my opinion. .300H&H will get you there without forming brass though. My 300wsm is great, hotter than '06 but not quite a 300win, but no belt.
 
Most AI cartridges only get "magnum" performance when the reloaders really lean on them. And they have no idea about what the pressures are.

Some are better than others, mostly the ones that blow out very tapered cases- 30-30 AI comes to mind.:)
 
The most improved Ackley cartridge I ever had was the 250-3000 Imp. It was so good I built three of them!

No trick at all to get 3300 fps with 100 gr bullets and cases last forever! :cool:

I had two 30-30s rechambered to AI. One a Model 94, the other a Marlin. Both would get over 2600, easily, with 150 gr bullets.
 
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The 30-06 is a potent caliber in its own right. I cannot imagine deer or moose ever being able to tell if the bullet had been launched 100fps faster.

That said, I use a 260 Ackley and the extra powder capacity makes quite a difference in my target rifle.

The concept of the Ackley design is that the parent, virgin round can be fired in the improved chamber. It then comes out as a fatter case.

If you visit the JGS reamer website you will see they sell reamers for Ackley chambers in many calibers.

As for the 270 on moose debate, I kidded a hunting buddy about using the 270 130 gr bullet on moose. I thought the 150 would be a better choice. He explained that it tended to blow the lungs out the nose and the moose were dead before hitting the ground. Hard to argue with success.

The 30-06 "improvement" I have always wanted to try is the 30-338. A 30-06 necked up to 338. The reports on it are very good.
 
The 30-06 is a great cartridge, however both my wife and myself have put an awful lot of big AK-Yukon moose meat in the freezer with 270s.

In fact the second largest moose I ever killed was with a single 130 gr Silvertip ahead of 62 gr of the old H4831 that we bought in a 50 pound drum for 75 cents a pound! It was my sheep load, but what I had when the big guy showed up.

Those were the days....Still have the drum. Use it to store topo maps. :D

Ted
 
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Yeah, but...

if people want .300 win mag performance, why not just go and buy a .300 win mag instead of risk melting their faces off?

its not like theyre prohibited :)

Let's not bring reason into this discussion! The issue as I understand it is how to make something interesting out of surplus (?) 30-06 chambered hunting equipment. Personally, I have a .300WM and use it but I was attracted to the article in Chasse-Peche on machining your .30-06 chamber to AI specs (as described so well above).

I wonder about the trade-off trying to use velocity to compensate for mass deficiency in smaller calibers. Hard to beat a reasonably heavy bullet with respectable energy on moose. I'm intrigued by the number of success accounts of dropping moose with .270. Sectional density numbers for .270 look pretty good and they do shoot well.



FM
 
Keep in mind that a .30-06 rifle cannot simply be rechambered for a true AI. It is necessary to set the barrel back before rechambering, to avoid headspace issues.
 
The 30-06 "improvement" I have always wanted to try is the 30-338. A 30-06 necked up to 338. The reports on it are very good.

The .30-338 is a .338 Win Mag necked down to .30, creating a very similar round to the .308 Norma Mag.

The .338-06 is what you are thinking of.
 
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