234 Wildcat Family....ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Dennis, let me get my 23 family up and running, then we can discuss more children....................if we live long enough.

The BR cases aren't what I would call cheap and readily available either............but if someone had a bunch of brass and wanted to play with something truly new, it might be the ticket.

Dennis, back when we used to live in Alta it was 23 cal and 1.75" case length which cut out all the pistol cartridge carbines, but that got changed as the 44 is now legal to hunt big game in Alta, or so I've been told a couple years ago.

Reverse offer goes as well Dennis, if you want to build anything 23 cal and need reamers, neck & throater, or whatever they are yours for the asking...............anytime.

Some of the guys may want to have a rifle built by a real gunsmith, at which point I defer to you.......
 
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I just searched a bit on the internet and the present Alberta Game Regulations do not state anything about case size... only:

BIG GAME
It is unlawful to set out, use or employ any of the following items for the purpose of hunting big game:
ammunition of less than .23 calibre,
ammunition that contains non-expanding bullets

My guess is they no longer think case size will be a problem in anything 6mm or larger which is what is on the market. The 23 caliber invasion begins...

If I am still around when the bullets and barrels are available I think I'll go with the BR case and call it the 23 Caliber Coot.
 
guntech said:
I just searched a bit on the internet and the present Alberta Game Regulations do not state anything about case size... only:

BIG GAME
It is unlawful to set out, use or employ any of the following items for the purpose of hunting big game:
ammunition of less than .23 calibre,
ammunition that contains non-expanding bullets

My guess is they no longer think case size will be a problem in anything 6mm or larger which is what is on the market. The 23 caliber invasion begins...

If I am still around when the bullets and barrels are available I think I'll go with the BR case and call it the 23 Caliber Coot.
Click to expand...

Maybe it should be the 23 Caliber Old Coot.................:p:p:p;)
 
c-fbmi said:
Yep Dennis, Ackley did a 35 Whelen in a 30-06 barrel, like you said properly chambered and throated, there is no discernible increase in pressure. I will likely be doing this just to get shooting it before the bullet dies arrive. Probably chamber for the 243 Win and I have thousands of 6mm bullets. After I'll just cut 1/2" off the barrel and rechamber, or maybe I'll just keep it for fun and conversation. Cause God knows I need another 243 firing rifle, as I only have 4 or 5 now.................
Click to expand...

if you would have any interest in doing a second 234 barrel in 243win , I would be very interested .
 
c-fbmi said:
You mean to chamber it up to 243 Win down the 234 bore? I could do that no problem, you need about .060 jump from my understanding of what PO did with the 35 Whelen down the 30 cal bore.
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yes this is what I was thinking , firing 243 win rounds down a 234 barrel .

at the very least it would be unique . and I haven't played with anything like this before .

how easy would it be on your part to thread and chamber the barrel for a savage ?

worst case scenario set the barrel back 3/4" to 1" and rechamber to a .234 specific round






so all it is , is a .060" jump ? nothing else ?
I wonder how a solid copper bullet would work being squeezed down ?
 
burnt_servo said:
yes this is what I was thinking , firing 243 win rounds down a 234 barrel .

at the very least it would be unique . and I haven't played with anything like this before .

how easy would it be on your part to thread and chamber the barrel for a savage ?

worst case scenario set the barrel back 3/4" to 1" and rechamber to a .234 specific round






so all it is , is a .060" jump ? nothing else ?
I wonder how a solid copper bullet would work being squeezed down ?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't try it with a homogenous bullet, Ackley only worked with cup & core bullets..........if we were going to try this let me do it first a few times, as I would sandbag the chamber and action area and fire remotely as I did when trying to crack a 700 action.

I have never chambered or threaded for a Savage action but it would be no different than any other I don't suppose. One would have to set the barrel back enough to get rid of the neck and throat............probably 1/2 - 3/4"
 
After some discussion Marshal and I (99% Marshal and 1% me) have come up with 3 designs for the 23 bullets and have ordered the dies. The first 2 will be a 10s ogive hunting style bullets with bonded cores and either flat base or rebated boattail. These can be made in any weight down to about 70 grns. Minimum weight will be determined by the shortest 6mm jacket blanks he can buy. The 3rd bullet will be a super slippery 14s ogive ULD bullet which he'll be able to make in any weight over the min jacket length again. With the ULD bullet I don't think the light weights will be popular, more on the 80 gn and up weights would be appropriate. Upper weight limit will be way over what can be used in this cal so we'll be able to find the upper limit for twist and velocity.

Due to lead time for the dies I decided to go "all in" and order all the dies at once to make all the styles we would be interested in using for this cal.........nothing ventured, nothing gained !!!

So theoretically we should be seeing 23 cal bullets about June of 2015............I should have 4 or 5 rifles and several hundred brass made up by then waiting for the "23 Caliber Trials"
 
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It appears your project or venture is rapidly surging ahead:cool: so all the best of success in its continued progress. I look forward to these ongoing development updates to completion:).
 
Well I had a learning experience last night, had a long conversation with my barrel guy and found out that with an appropriately ground button we can make 1-7, 1-8, 1-9 twist barrels, as well as 1-16-8 gain twist barrels or 1-16-7 or 1-16-9. How cool is that? He also confirmed that in a 300 WM the identical load developed an extra 93 fps with a 180 from a 1-10 twist to a 1-20-10 gain twist barrel of the same length.
Another thing I learned was that the rifling gets shallower as the caliber gets smaller, so this means the 23 will have a .006" differential from bore to groove, not .008" like I thought.

These revelations open up a whole bunch of new possibilities and necessitates a whole bunch more barrels to play with...................starting to sound more like a career than an experiment............
 
That's interesting about the velocity increase possible with the gain twist, and doesn't make me any more patient for my build to be completed. I have 3 barrels on order for it right now. They are all fast, gain twist, cut rifled barrels from Ron Smith: a 1:14-7 6mm, a 1:16-8 7mm and a 1:20-10 .375. If I can get one of your .23s, it would be nice if it was a gain twist as well. The only disadvantage of the gain twist that I can see is a minor one, in that any future shortening of a barrel will impact the rate if twist, depending of course how much barrel you want to chop off. But one of the advantages if gain twist is that purportedly its easier on bullets, as the spin is not induced so violently. Thin skinned varmint bullets would, with some regularity, explode prior to hitting the target from my 1:7 .222, so I'm interested in seeing if the gain twist would eliminate or at least minimize this.

I just wasted the last 15 minutes attempting to measure the depth of the rifling on the base of a 50 gr .224 BT I recovered the other day, but the jaws of my caliper are too fat and my eyeballs are too old. But a recovered .458 is still .004" per side or close, the measured diameter was .4505"-.451" with both jaws in opposing grooves. I do wonder though to what extent the depth of the grooves are dependent on the individual maker of the button, or the individual cut barrel maker. Obermyer barrels are said to be cut slightly deeper than the industry standard, and that they give a little longer life where such things apparently matter.
 
Boomer........deeper rifling most definitely gives longer barrel life but tends to be very hard on bullet jackets depending on caliber. Hence the shallower rifling for the smaller calibers and their normally thinner jackets. It's a delicate balance of barrel life, enough to grab and not strip and not too much so as to cut through thin jackets thus causing in-flight bullet rupture. Now deeper rifling and homogenous bullets may just be the ticket but you may get pressure issues and not get the velocity the cartridge is capable of.
It was also pointed out to me that gain twist tends to give up some accuracy, this was confirmed in another conversation with an old bench shooter. However how much it gives up is the real question, I've been told that moa is still doable with a gain twist but that same barrel with a standard twist might produce .5 or even .3 moa, so I guess it all comes down to application. 1 moa still means you can hit a deer in the heart at 500 mtrs, but might only be successful 50% of the time on gophers at 500.............

My understanding of bullet structure and maximum rpm says that the gain twist won't help bullet rupture, as the final rpm which creates the centrifugal force which tears the bullet apart is the same whether from a standard twist or gain twist. In fact it will most likely be worse because of the less resistance creating greater velocity, thus even more rpm, thus even less powder to blow up bullets..............
 
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The difference in accuracy between gain and regular twist rifling is apparently related to the smoothness of the final bore surface. For whatever reason, its more difficult to lap a gain rifled bore, although I won't pretend to know why that might be. Harry Pope was reputed to make the most accurate barrels of the day, and his barrels were gain twist rifled, but he didn't lap his bores, so I don't think gain twist rifling automatically means poor accuracy. It will be interesting to see if these barrels shoot with the my standard rifled barrels, although I'm not looking for quarter MOA. My last Ron Smith barrel, a 20" stainless fluted 1:12 .375, shot like a varmint rifle, but was the standard style twist.

Good point on the effects of twist on thin jacketed bullets.
 
I've never heard gain twist rifling giving up accuracy. If that's the case I may rethink my next barrel plan. I've got lots of life left so I can't wait to see if it does
 
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