My two bits says that the best thing you could do with a 303 is use it for a tomato stake, honestly.
But the next best thing would be to take any and all tools and gauges that were built to the WW1 era clearances and specifications, and use them for fishing weights. Utter war-grade crap, designed to get safe, one-time use out of cartridges built in a hurry and possibly covered in trench warfare mud.
Treat yourself. Find a new bolt head, set back the barrel, find a chamber reamer that is built to specs that somewhat resemble the modern era as far as min/max size tolerances go, and you can have a .303 that you can reload for that won't need new brass every few cycles and won't need any molycoddling to feed. Of course this will mean a set of dies that match as well. $$$$ on a $$ gun.
All that is a PITA compared to most modern cases and cartridges, thus the tomato stake suggestion.
Makes a swell wall ornament, but unless you get one of the good(ish) ones, barely worth pounding money into.
That should get a few LE types riled, but really, look up the SAAMI specs showing the maximum chamber and minimum cartridge size on a .303 Brit, and compare to the same specs on a more modern sporting round. The differences are huge. The cartridge makers make ammo to fit in the smallest chamber, the die makers make dies to resize to fit in the smallest chamber, and the gun makers made the chambers to take the largest cartridge that would have been passed in wartime production, which is 15-18 thousandths of an inch larger, on a lot of dimensions. Huge differences.
Buy a bolt head that fits instead of dicking around.
Cheers
Trev
But the next best thing would be to take any and all tools and gauges that were built to the WW1 era clearances and specifications, and use them for fishing weights. Utter war-grade crap, designed to get safe, one-time use out of cartridges built in a hurry and possibly covered in trench warfare mud.
Treat yourself. Find a new bolt head, set back the barrel, find a chamber reamer that is built to specs that somewhat resemble the modern era as far as min/max size tolerances go, and you can have a .303 that you can reload for that won't need new brass every few cycles and won't need any molycoddling to feed. Of course this will mean a set of dies that match as well. $$$$ on a $$ gun.
All that is a PITA compared to most modern cases and cartridges, thus the tomato stake suggestion.
Makes a swell wall ornament, but unless you get one of the good(ish) ones, barely worth pounding money into.
That should get a few LE types riled, but really, look up the SAAMI specs showing the maximum chamber and minimum cartridge size on a .303 Brit, and compare to the same specs on a more modern sporting round. The differences are huge. The cartridge makers make ammo to fit in the smallest chamber, the die makers make dies to resize to fit in the smallest chamber, and the gun makers made the chambers to take the largest cartridge that would have been passed in wartime production, which is 15-18 thousandths of an inch larger, on a lot of dimensions. Huge differences.
Buy a bolt head that fits instead of dicking around.
Cheers
Trev
