Repurpose Ruger #1V

[Reaper]

I have an early eighties Ruger #1V in .223 that seldom sees the light of day. Bolt guns and AR's now attend to all matters .223. I'm considering selling it, but also open to re-barreling or re-boring to a larger caliber if possible. I have several .45-70's and two .45-90's, so those are out. Maybe a .50-70 or a rimmed .35 caliber to cut down on barrel weight. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[timspawn]

300 Blackout gets my vote. No mods to the extractor needed, just a new barrel. I have five 300 Blackouts so I may be a little biased.

[triggerhappy243]

leave it 223. most competant gun smiths refuse to work on them because getting the rebarrel to come out right is so much harder than any other action type. i know... i have one. looking for another caliber.... just look for another rifle and go from there.

[timspawn]

leave it 223. most competant gun smiths refuse to work on them because getting the rebarrel to come out right is so much harder than any other action type. i know... i have one. looking for another caliber.... just look for another rifle and go from there.

No disrespect intended but there are many competant gunsmiths that will rebarrel a #1. Some even specialize in it.

[country gent]

How about 38-55 or 38 - 56. Both would be great boolits rounds and would remove wieght also. Barrel could be rebored and done pretty easily. Would save the hassles of the hanger and extractor cuts that are the issues with rebarreling. A 45-70 extrator should work for 38-56 since it is a 45-70 necked down. Alot of diffrent rounds available for this rifle and they are a beautiful rifle when done up

[nekshot]

375 winchester and load that puppy to its proper pressure and enjoy!

[EDG]

Find something else you want and swap it off.
If you rebarrel it to something that you do not shoot a lot it will lose its value and the value of the work you put into it.
However if you pick something you will shoot a lot and enjoy then the financial part is not too important.
I have several that I have threatened to rebarrel to .32-40 and .38-55.
You could rebore to .35 Remington and make your rimmed brass from .303 Brit
or put a .358 Win chamber in it and use .356 Win brass.

[BruceB]

?????

I've never heard of different receiver sizes on the #1 rifles. As far as I know, all calibers are built on the same receivers.

I have two #1 rifles here, and I just measured the side-to-side dimension on both (just ahead of the lever hinge, from underneath).

The width measurement is exactly the same on both rifles.

One rifle is chambered for .303 British. The other is in .416 Rigby, which is surely the "fattest" round that Ruger has ever put in a factory -built #1.

Regardless of all this, the cost of re-barreling is so high that simply finding and buying another rifle would make more sense.

JES re-bores cost about $250 and up, according to their web page. You may want to consider this alternative. They have a good reputation.

[JHeath]

From a .223 chamber to .35 something via re-bore?

Straight path: 9mm Grom or .351 WSL, using cut-down 5.56 brass, barrel bobbed to 18" without turning it down. The barrel will be stiffer and of course being a falling block you can seat boolits into the rifling. It could be an accurate, very short rifle without excessive noise. The action is stout and with milsurp brass you could dose it with fast powder. Maybe even 16" bbl.

[JHeath]

Oops, I was wrong about the Grom but right about the .351, which can be formed from .223. People have apparently necked .223 wildcats up as far as .35:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/archive/index.php/t-165078.html

[rockrat]

Re-bore, then go with JES and do a 356 or 375/38-55. You could also do a 38-72, which would put you on low end H&H loads. Or, you could sell it and get one of the 357mag #1's and rechamber to 357max, which is a real fun gun to shoot.

[timspawn]

no disrespect seen. if the #1 shoots great... dont mess with it. i love mine. but mine is a 22-250 ackley imp. your #1 has a narrow reciever. so rounds based on med. to large cal. parent rounds are out of the question. the 300 b.o. is based on the 223 case. in my opinion, a waste of powder for a varmint rifle. and if you had to sell it, you would not recover your investment. just my thoughts.

The OP mentioned nothing about keeping it in a varmint caliber, actually he talked about going the other direction. There are many options.

[Frank46]

Or you could get rebored by JES in 375 caliber and chamber it for the 37 rimmed which is nothing more than the 303 British case necked up to take 375 bullets. Frank

[Nobade]

If you are contemplating a rebore, carefully measure the depth of the screw holes. Ruger likes to drill them very deep and that can limit how big you can make the new bore. Otherwise, no worries. You can chamber it for anything you are able to get through the loading trough. Without mods to the receiver, a rimmed 50 is about as big as you want to go. We built one in 577 NE ONCE, wouldn't do that again. Takes way too much work. 500NE or any of the 50 cal. Sharps cartridges work just fine though. (New barrel of course) Green Mountain makes nice BPCR barrels for not much money and are a good way to go. My own #1V 22-250 now wears a 34" light Rigby taper 45-70 barrel and is much more useful to me than it was originally.

-Nobade

[Doc Highwall]

How about a nice 30-30 Win. for cast boolit shooting. The case has a nice long neck and cases can be found any where along with tons of moulds in 30 caliber.


When I find a Ruger No 1 cheep enough that is what I want to have it re-barreled to, great for plinking/target shooting and enough power for hunting.

[JeffinNZ]

300 Blackout gets my vote. No mods to the extractor needed, just a new barrel. I have five 300 Blackouts so I may be a little biased.

I second this idea.

[Hogdaddy]

How about a nice 30-30 Win. for cast boolit shooting. The case has a nice long neck and cases can be found any where along with tons of moulds in 30 caliber.
.

If I was going to re-barrel it ^^^^^^^^^ Thie sound about right to my liking ; )
H/D

[Reaper]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll throw one more into the mix. A friend has offered 20 boxes of PMC 40-65 ammunition and a set of Lee dies for a can't refuse price. He had a line on a Browning Highwall in that caliber that didn't pan out. Now he wants to forget the whole thing. Would this be a viable choice for a rebore in the #1V ?

[triggerhappy243]

reaper, i am really curious. could you measure the width of your #1 in 223 across the reciever where the block slides up. a dial caliper should work. I want to compare it to mine.

[Nobade]

All the receivers are exactly the same. (Within Ruger's tolerances, that is.) Doesn't matter which caliber they were originally produced in.

Reaper, you could certainly take that barrel out to 40 caliber as long as the screw holes aren't too deep. Measure them and leave at least .100" and preferably .150" of wall thickness.

-Nobade

[Gelandangan]

Another vote for 300 BLK

[bigted]

the 40-65 winchester is SWEEEEEEEEEET !!!!!!! that would make a super dandy rifle ... install a unertl and have an absolute blast ... pun intended.

[Gibbs44]

I'm going to throw my .02 in just because. Though I realize you'd need to modify the extractor, the .308 Win gets my vote, with the barrel cut back to about 20" or 22".

[country gent]

The 40-65 will work with a 45-70 extractor. Cases can be formed easily from 45-70 cases also. My 40-65 shoots very good out to 500 yds ( farthest Ive shot it so far) I use a couple diffrent bullets The lyman 400 grn "snover" and the 400 grn Nasa bullet mold was from old west molds.

[rr2241tx]

Have JES rebore & rechamber it to .358 Winchester. No worries with re-fitting a barrel that way.

[Good Cheer]

Don't bother with other peoples cartridges. Go for it!
http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy192/SNARGLEFLERK/R_zpsf80ebd9a.jpg (http://s791.photobucket.com/user/SNARGLEFLERK/media/R_zpsf80ebd9a.jpg.html)

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy192/SNARGLEFLERK/carrier38LC_zpscbb07a6d.jpg (http://s791.photobucket.com/user/SNARGLEFLERK/media/carrier38LC_zpscbb07a6d.jpg.html)

[rr2241tx]

Good Cheer, what is your #3 chambered for? Bet you'd been looking at a 577-450 when you got that idea.

[skeettx]

Is that a 45-70 necked to 375???
Kinda like a 33 Win up to 375??

[Gibbs44]

I'd like to know what it is myself. It certainly looks like it'd be great for cast.

[bigted]

come on "goodcheer" ... spill the beans there ... that is a very cool lookin case and the #3 aint bad either ... i see that you prolly shoot southpaw ... correct?

[Artful]

search is our friend

Had a No.3 in .375Win. It was very accurate with fast burning powders and hard cast. Didn't have enough powder capacity for me so it got rechambered to .375H&H. That was incredibly accurate with high powered jacketed loads but had too much powder capacity for what I wanted to do with cast. And it pulled muscles in my ribs. So it got rebarreled to 26", .375x45-70. Like Goldie Locks porridge, now it's just right.

[Gibbs44]

Thanks Artful for finding that.

[Good Cheer]

come on "goodcheer" ... spill the beans there ... that is a very cool lookin case and the #3 aint bad either ... i see that you prolly shoot southpaw ... correct?

Just made it back by this thread. Yes sir, you are correct. Rifle lefty, pistol righty.

[bigted]

so i see that the 375-70 is a usefull case but why not the old 38-56? it is just the same except for maybe a "improved" shoulder. still looks like a winner and i bet it is "JUST RITE. how is the accuracy with it?

[wallenba]

There are plenty of wildcats based on the 223. The 6x45mm would be interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6x45_mm

[Good Cheer]

so i see that the 375-70 is a usefull case but why not the old 38-56? it is just the same except for maybe a "improved" shoulder. still looks like a winner and i bet it is "JUST RITE. how is the accuracy with it?

The case design grew out of experiments with various cartridges* and ended up what it is. The thing to do was just to put the figures into some iron and brass and see how she did.
The deer load ended up being the 375296 (283 grains), a compressed charge of 760 and mag primer for 2"-2 1/2" groups at 200. Enough pressure but not so much as to over power the alloy, along with an elongated (lesser spiked) pressure curve was the operative theory. Blowing unburned some powder out the muzzle was the way to get it done.

Got a hollow point 300 grain mold sitting in the box to try out.:happy dance:

*One of the test guns was a 788 in 7-08 with the neck lengthened for making them out of 30-06 cases. Called it the 7mm Longneck 'cause the load round looked like a beer bottle.
RCBS had a long straight sided 168 grain mold back then that it shot great with.

[beagle]

Rebarrelled a .220 Swiftie 1V to .38/55/.375 Win. Made a good conversion and I love it. Some extractor work involved but in my case, not much./beagle

[bigted]

very cool good cheer ... looks like a winner in that #3 rebarreled rifle. snazzy looking settup fo sho.

[Good Cheer]

Thanks. My big brother did the wood work and made the cartridge carry. He's an artist with wood, leather and steel.