Marlin 94 44mag and Ranch Dog 265

[PacMan]

Been messing around with the conbination for a while now and was just about ready to call it quits. I could never get better than 2" fifty yard groups and the 1800 fps velocity that i wanted. My Marlin has a rather sloppy chamber and the throat is overly long.
Just for the heck of it yesterday i decide to mess with seating length a little. Of corse when you seat to be just off the lands the bullet would not feed. I started seating a little shorter and kept going untill the bullet would feed as slick as snot. The COL of the round comes out at 1.725 which is .161 longer than the OAL of 1.564 with the bullet seated in the crimp grouve of the bullet.
That put the case mouth right in the middle +/- of the 2nd from top driving band. I am still off the lands some.TBD later. I worked up to two more grains of Little Gun (plenty of room for more) and went to the make shift home range. Results was 6 shots into a 1 1/4 inches with five being in a ragged hole measuring just over 1/2 inch. It was cloudy today so i could not test the velocity.
I had loaded 7 dummy rounds that i kept in the mag. to check if the bullets would telescope under recoil. I fired 20 rounds of the previsoly loaded 265 grainers seated to crimp grove going 1850 fps and did not have any bullets move at all.

Any way i now like my Marlin and the Ranch Dog bullets a lot more.

Dwight

[Blammer]

amazing what kissing the lands will do. :)

[PacMan]

Yea Blammer i learned years ago the benifits of kissing the lands. I did not think that i could ever get close with this bullet and the 94 Marlin.
The problem of course is feeding in a lever gun. Not sure how this would work in other Marlins.If i seat any deeper at all or any longer feeding becomes a problem. Luckly the little narrow driving band was in the right place and in the past have not needed the top lube grove. Not sure what to make of it but i have shoot 4 diffrent design and make cast bullets out of this rifle and as of yet i canot make it lead the least little bit.
It is a keeper now with this load combination.
Dwight

[Blammer]

sweet!

The ruger M77 has the same "flaw" with the magazine. You're limited to OAL to make it feed right.

I know the problem well. :)

[44man]

That RD boolit shot great at 50 and I had one of my own boolits do 1/2" at 50 yards. It is the stupid twist that scatters boolits at 100 yards that is the problem. I made many boolits shoot good at 50 but go unstable at longer ranges.
I sold the gun to be converted to another caliber by the new owner.

[mdi]

Thanks for the info dh. I use the same boolit in my Puma .44 with good results (I'm working on sights now before I can really test for accuracy; old eyes ya know). My mold casts easy the boolits feed easy, and I've got some good loads of WC820 I wanna try.

[PacMan]

Yea 44Man the 1 in 38 twist is bad news.I could never get the RCBS 300 grainer to shoot well past about 70 yards. Have not tried the Ranch Dog 265 at 100 yet but hope to this weekend.
Got to thinking that some of the problem may be the long jump that the bullet has to make before it contacts the lands. If that bullet does not hit the lands perfectly straight no amount of twist will do much good. Add to it the fact that the Ranch Dog like many others have rather light front driving bands things can get out of balance real quick.
Time will tell.

[44man]

Yea 44Man the 1 in 38 twist is bad news.I could never get the RCBS 300 grainer to shoot well past about 70 yards. Have not tried the Ranch Dog 265 at 100 yet but hope to this weekend.
Got to thinking that some of the problem may be the long jump that the bullet has to make before it contacts the lands. If that bullet does not hit the lands perfectly straight no amount of twist will do much good. Add to it the fact that the Ranch Dog like many others have rather light front driving bands things can get out of balance real quick.
Time will tell.
Jump to the rifling really has less affect then you think. The RD 265 is one of the most accurate boolits out of my SBH and the gun has a lot of slop in the chambers along with a long jump to the rifling. It easily does 1-1/4" at 100 yards.
The boolit is a good design and will not cause you any problems, any unstable boolits can be blamed on the twist.

[longbow]

I have found much the same as 44man in that I cannot get decent accuracy at longer than about 75 yards with boolits heavier than 265 gr. Checking Greenhills, the 265 gr. is about as long as 1:38" is supposed to stabilize.

While Greenhills may not be perfect, I think it is a good indicator for appropriate twist. Regardless, I have shoot boolits and bullets from about 220 gr. to 310. gr. in various nose styles and so far I have not been successful with heavy boolits at 100 yards.

I have gotten good groups all the way to 200 yards with 265 gr. from a home made mould. These were not tiny groups but considering old eyes, open sights, stock trigger and light little carbine they made me happy enough.

In comparison I have had 300 gr. boolits keyhole at 100 yards and Hornady 300 gr. "J" bullets giving oval holes at 50 yards.

Others have reported that WFN boolits can do well to 100 yards if pushed hard and RanchDog says his 300 gr. remains stable out to long range. Nose shape does have an effect for sure and I have not tried his heavy boolits yet. I kinda settled on 240 to 260 gr.

Something you can do to allow longer OAL is to file the cartridge stop. That is a pretty easy exercise and allows more flexibility for loading ~ either heavier boolits or seated out further.

Instructions here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=7750

Longbow

[PacMan]

44Man i beg to disagree.I have been reloading since the summer of 76 and have loaded for 458 Lott to 22 Hornet and canot think of any thing that i have loaded for that shoving the bullet closer to the lands did not help.Some liked to touch some prefered a little room but they all done better close to the lands than if they had to make the jump. I reloaded for three Weatherby calibers and we all know that some of the velocity that Weatherby was famous for was because of excessive freebore. But all three the 300,257 and the 240 all improved in acuracy when the bullet was moved closer to the lands. Some designs such as the Nosler Balistic Tip BT would be too long and would have to be loaded and shot single shot but the accuracy improved with very little velocity loss.
I have a 244 Ackley improved that was built just to shoot that Nosler bullet but the throat was to long and shot 1 1/2 to 2" groups at a hundred yards. When loaded to tickle the lands with that bullet it is a honest 5 shot 1/2" gun but it is also a single shot.
I really have not loaded for the 44 mag very long have have only been shooting cast for about eight months so i may be wrong when it comes to bullet jump using cast.
I agree that rifle twist is a major factor in bullet stablization but also contend that any bullet that does not enter the lands correctly the acuracy is affected which amounts to an unstable bullet be rifle twist or not and if you have both you have nothing.JMHO.
Dwight

[PacMan]

Hey guys all i was trying to do in my orignal post was to let you know that the RD 265 does not have to be seated to the crimp grove to work. There is another sweet spot that will work and by finding that spot you should gain acuracy and increase power space. I was just having problems seating to the crimp grove,using my power of choice and desired veloicty.When i found that sweet spot for the rifle to feed the bullets as slick as they fed when seated properly i found that the power of choice and velocity was there with a increase in accuracy.This bit of info may be of help to some either with the same bullet or another.
Dwight

[44man]

Dwight, some of that is very true for a high power and jacketed. Some of my varmint and deer rifles needed an actual touch to the rifling. Others needed .020" off.
However my .300 Weatherby would shoot any load from starting to max into 1/2" all day long. My best shot was a chuck shot in the eye at 550 yards. All I did was bed the action and float the barrel. I had the "B", 26" barrel. I never found the free bore to be a problem.
Where I changed my mind was with my 45-70 revolver. I have kept all boolits on a steel ram at 500 meters and shoot groups under 1" at 100, been down to 5/8" once.