List your favourite underrated cartridges

Ardent said:
Looking hard at starting a new Roberts build, Krieger 1-9” for 115gr VLDs, picked up a whack of Berger 115s, would try swaging down some .264 130gr Berger hybrids too to see if they’ll fly and bought some of those too. Should be a .25 to annoy the 6.5s. Barrel will start at 32” so she should be cruising.
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Standard Robert's or Improved? I just sold my last Robert's rifle... got out of the .25 Cal's all together... when it was time to hunt, they just never got pulled from the safe, too big for coyotes, and for deer sized game I usually start at 6.5mm... I have shot a few deer with a Robert's and they died just fine, but I have this small, nagging voice in the back of my head whenever I carry one in the field, whispering, "you should have a 6.5 or 7mm..." That is probably just me....

If I recall, your little Rook rifle 5.6X50R was supposed to start at 32"... what happened there? ;)
 
It did, or somewhere around 30” I forget the length of the blank, then I carried it and put it in a floatplane repeatedly. :eek: It’s built to be sub 4lbs and just didn’t fit the plan. Now it’s 19”. :d

This .257 would be meant to sit and shoot slowly at 400-750. Quite frankly for my concepts of rifles a .25 is probably the ideal bore, I just need to bump the bullet weights up a bit compared to conventional .25s. I think the 6.5 is a bit too big and the 6mm a bit too small, but we’re talking minutia for sure. A 125gr .257 VLD at 3,200fps pushing 0.600 G1 would nail what I want to see in a mountain round. I’m not going to quite get there with a 1/9 twist but baby steps.

I’ll probably go standard Roberts, as I own the reamer and gauges, or a .250 AI or maybe .25 Creedmoor. Hate to give the Creed case a nod but it’s easier than fireforming .250 brass and is the exact same damn thing.
 
How about a 7mm-08 shooting 120 ballistic tips at 3250 zeroed at 275....less than 3.5 above or below out to 325 yards. :)
 
Ardent said:
It did, or somewhere around 30” I forget the length of the blank, then I carried it and put it in a floatplane repeatedly. :eek: It’s built to be sub 4lbs and just didn’t fit the plan. Now it’s 19”. :d

This .257 would be meant to sit and shoot slowly at 400-750. Quite frankly for my concepts of rifles a .25 is probably the ideal bore, I just need to bump the bullet weights up a bit compared to conventional .25s. I think the 6.5 is a bit too big and the 6mm a bit too small, but we’re talking minutia for sure. A 125gr .257 VLD at 3,200fps pushing 0.600 G1 would nail what I want to see in a mountain round. I’m not going to quite get there with a 1/9 twist but baby steps.

I’ll probably go standard Roberts, as I own the reamer and gauges, or a .250 AI or maybe .25 Creedmoor. Hate to give the Creed case a nod but it’s easier than fireforming .250 brass and is the exact same damn thing.
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Sounds like a very "useable" project... I really like the X57 case... of course, I also like the .284 case and a 6.5X284 would be a pretty nice mountain cartridge... starting your barrel at 32" makes for additional range fun as you take it down incrementally until just right... unless you go one chop beyond "just right" ;)

The older I get the more practical I become... I still have my silly moments and do things that are pretty much indefensible to any rational person, like my 7.62X57 Medium Mauser, but I have lots of love for the 8X57 case, with no love of the 8mm caliber, so taking it down to .308" made sense to me, at least it did at the time. The 6.5 Rem Mag was an eminently practical build... too bad the custom contour got buggered so badly, despite a very good contour chart... the rifle is a tad more "piggish" than I would like, however it shoots like a "house on fire" so I am inclined to leave it as is... in addition to the mountain goat at 430, I took a meat doe across a hay field at 475 with the point of impact bang on... the rifle is so consistent, no fliers. I took the barrel down to 22" because I hate busting brush with a long barrel slung over my shoulder... it doesn't lack for speed with the 140 AB's. I loaded up some identical loads with the 140 NBT and was please to see the identical point of impact out to 500 yards... will save some coin at the range.
 
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