Bashing the belt

furry said:
Ted - your 30 cal built on the 8x68 likely duplicated the 30 Newton - Newton made it from the 8x68S in 1912 pushing a 180 gr bullet to 3000 fps back in the day, case capacity 89.2 gr's water. The 300 WM has a case capacity of 90.36, not much to choose between them except no belt on the Newton.
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furry......My name is Douglas, Ted is Why Not?
 
Back when a belt on a magnum cartridge was the norm a guy I hunted moose with bought a 7mm Imperial Magnum... That's when I stated to question the belt, and since preferred cartridges without it.. At one time the 30-06 was basically the magnum of the time, and it didn't have a belt..
 
Ive never had a head spacing issue with a belted cartridge. If you adjust you dies correctly you can adjust your head spacing very accurately
 
I love belts when making weird and wonderful wildcats as they give me a positive reference to headspace while I'm fireforming cases. All my 300 Wby is fireformed W-W 300 H&H brass, much more difficult and involved without the belt. I also love many beltless cases and have designed many myself, hell I love almost all types of cases even rimmed!!! What's not to love, they make a very loud bang and kill things....................
 
Hey no problem furry, I'm honored to be confused with Ted, he's a very good friend of mine and a great fellow all around. I aspire to be as good as Ted in the big picture. I just hope Ted is not insulted by the confusion!!! LOL
 
I'd be honoured to be confused with Ted too, and yes, he is a great fellow. And I'm thinking that Whitehorse must be full of excellent hunters, fine riflemen, and great fellows. One day I will have to venture up north, visit Whitehorse, and meet you folks in person. =)
 
I just realized that for the first time in my life I'm belt less. :)

Nothing against belts although they serve no real purpose in most cases. Although I load for friends with belted cases, I have none myself. Weird. :)
 
My experience with belted cartridges goes back to 1969 when I bought my first one, a Husqvarna in 358 Norma Mag. Man, I was riding tall in the saddle then! IIRC, the next one was her roomate, a 308 Norma Mag.

Then came a cornucopia of many belted cartridges: 270 Wby, 7 mags, 300 Wins, 300 Wby, 323 Hollis, 338 Wins, 340Wby, at lest six more 358 Normas, a 350 Ackley Magnum, 375 H&Hs,one 375 Wby, 375 & 416 Taylors, a 458 Win, and a few wildcats on the 300 Win Mag case.

Somewhere along the line, I had a Mark V 240 Wby for a while. It wouldn't do any more than my 240 Page SP or my 6mm Ackley, so traded it for a 22 foot freighter canoe.

Even had a 460 Wby that I never fired. Bought it from a guy who fired it twice! :D Bevan King got it from me a built a 416 Rigby on it.

Through all of this, I never found a problem with a belt. Just load them properly, adjusting the sizing die to headspace on the shoulder, and cases last as long as any others. One thing I did discover for certain, was that W-W SuperX 300 Win Mag brass is about as tough as they come. That's what we used for the 35-300 and 375-300 wildcats.

Ted
 
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308 Norma Magnum necked up to 8mm, gets 200 gr bullets to a bit over 3000 fps, and cases lasted forever!

A friend had an 8mm on the 338 Win case. It was a rechambered VZ24. He called it his 8mm Mouser (with an o) Magnum. It would get almost the same velocity, and was actually quite accurate with the military barrel.

Ted
 
On another note: I have a pet load for my .300. 180 grain TSX over 83 grains of H1000. Will shoot clover leafs at 100 yards if Ive stayed away from coffee that day...
Cant get H1000 right now it seems, so I picked up some IMR 7828 to try with Sierra 190s for paper punching, saving those Barnes strictly for hunting. They are devastating on game...Anybody have any experience with this combo?
 
guntech said:
The cheapest thing to do would be turn all the belts off your brass and continue loading with your present dies... the headspace is set in the rifle from the factory - you control the amount of cartridge head clearance when you reload fired brass...
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I've threatened to do exactly this when confronted with a rabid belt-hater......it wouldn't hurt a thing....


funny how the belt was not an issue until the short mags arrived on the scene.....:=)
 
Belts are like wearing suspenders with jogging pants, if ya need the suspenders, why are you wearing jogging pants?, and if the brass needed the belt, it shouldn't have been created. However I have never had an issue with belted brass, in fact I am sort of partial to them for the simple reason that many great chamberings came belted.
 
I am curious as to why Ted has had soooooooooo many different rifles in so many
different calibers.
Has he lost that many canoes?........Awww Ted, I'm funn'in ya.....:wave:
It's great to learn from those in the know.
 
My experience with belted cases began with the .350 Remington and the .300 Winchester, the former was mine, the latter, a M-70, belonged to a friend, but I shot it more than he did. Since then I've managed to press the trigger on a few others, enough that I wonder what all the fuss is about. When I purchase a rifle today, it is with the end use in mind. Some of these are chambered for belted cartridges, while others are not. My preference for the .375 Ultra over the .375 H&H has nothing to do with the belt on the H&H, and everything to do with how fast a 350 gr Woodleigh or a 380 gr Rhino can be driven. I like the Ultra case in medium or large bore sizes, but I'd have been equally happy with a .378 Weatherby if I could find brass for the same price. I discovered some time ago that anything I wanted done with a .30 caliber rifle, I could do with a .30/06. If a .30/06 won't do it, or becomes marginal, chances are I'll reach for a .375 or a .458, not a belted .30.
 
Cleftwynd, I don't quite agree that the belt wasn't needed or that those cartridges that needed the belt shouldn't have been created. I would agree that the belt was a step on the evolutionary ladder that isn't really needed any longer. When the prevailing wisdom for cartridge creation had long, tapered cases with rims, the belt allowed for the loss of the rim, making the cases feed better from magazine rifles, such as Mausers. Gun-people are historically luddites, abhoring new-and-improved until it is proven (quite often for decades!). They might tolerate the loss of a rim as long as the general case shape stayed the same, especially when those long tapered cases fed so doggone well! This being said, they still can serve a purpose, such as creating cartridges like the .458 Win Mag or .470 Capstick. As a formerly rabid wildcatter, I love having lots of options for base cases.
 
Good point gabrielguitars, I guess when I posted I had the more modern belted cartridges in mind, lots of shoulder to headspace with. But since they are all wildcats based off a design that benefitted from the belt, there was no reason to remove it I guess....
 
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