Check out this Sporter...

I have seen pics of this model but with either a blued finish or parkerized finish. These are newly manufactured rifles (not sure of the recievers.) They are not in .303 but in an old Austro - Hungarian Empire rimmed cartridge. Of course the ammo is modern. Rumour ctrl. says the ammo for these has a 244 grain bullet. Velocity? Unknown.

A thread on these:

https://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=760

The guy in the op is something like a church warden, could be wrong. Ah wait - 'Nihang' is the word. I think that model of rifle is the cheapes t in that power class a citizen can legally get in India after considerable hoop jumping and palm greasing. I am guessing the load has about the same power as .303. They seem to have a reputation of being crow bar like. Pass!

.318 Westley Richards is a thing. A very British thing, that is far superior to the India proprietary load.

This is the unblinged animal free of smoke and mirrors:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/8×50mmR_Mannlicher

8×50mmR Mannlicher

This uses a .321" bullet. I guess this means supposing you had a rifle in this caliber, you might be able to use bullets meant for .32 Winchester Special.

These old Austrian rounds are wild and sort of off the beaten path. The 8 ×56 mm r sounds intriguing.

And the metric designation for .303 is 7.7×56mm r. The 8×56 mm r has a bullet diameter of .329"!?

The 8×56mmR has an elegant vibe like sneaking looks at pics of hot young women of 1964 lol. It resembles the .300 H&H. They seem to have designed the neck and shoulder area for laminar flow. A stubby magnum it ain't. I am impressed engineers of over 100 years ago had such forward thinking ideas about laminar flow and keeping breech pressures reasonable. You have to hand it to them.
 
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I'm intrigued by the modern-day use of 8x50r in India. I wonder what spec.'s this ammo is made to?
Both the Austrian 8x56r & the earlier, unmodified 8x50r rifles have an approximate .329-.330 groove diameter but the older bullet design was supposed to bump up to fill the grooves. This makes it challenging to reload today because a modern .323 bullet design is unlikely to expand into the bore and a .329.

Jump ahead to 02:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNBBS82E0y4

The potential problem is that some chamber/brass combinations can be a bit tight in the chamber neck if the brass is thick, which can cause dangerous pressure spikes, or bind when using bullets larger than intended.
 

I kind of wonder if this .315 has a .321" bore. If so this caliber is sort of like the .38/55 rifles where there are differing bore diameters, therefore the optimal loads will not be identical to what one of the Austro Hungarian rifles would require obviously.

The previous vid shows long nosed bullets with lots of exposed lead at the tip. I am guessing the jacket is cup type. If the jacket is the open base type, that is not a good thing.
 
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The British "Gunmakers" called this round [the Austrian 8x50R] the .500/320 Flanged Nitro Express. It was offered B.S.A.Co. manufactured, "Gunmaker" retailed Lee Speed type rifles after the 1907 ban on British rifle cartridges & their components in India & Africa.

While we always hear about the ban on .450 rifles, cartridges & components [because of the .577/450 Martini round], which spurred the development of the .465, .470, 475, .476, &c. cartridges, it also applied to the .303, as well as the .455 Webley.

A 244 grain bullet, with a Sectional Density of 0.322, cruising at ~2,000 fps, will do anything the old MK VI 215 grain bullet will out of a Lee Speed.
 
I suppose these proprietary India rifles have sporting rifle chambers. So to get a similar product all you would need is to get an SMLE rechambered to .303 Epps but that takes the fun out of things maybe. You can still get Woodleigh bullets. The word is the only advantage to the Epps is realized in a rifle such as the P14. Then you can run into feeding issues. It would be nice to get .303 cases of steel.

In times past I have heard of SMLE sporters having the barrel removed, the barrel shoulder cut back equal to the thread pitch, reinstalled, and finish reamed to SAAMI specs. Not sure if this is really worth it as some claim the brass still flows, it does not appreciably extend case life. The advantage would be the firing pin would no longer hit the primer at weird spots, which would be a plus to the terminally fussy.
 
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