Anyone chambered for Redding SA ?

[gunjnkie]

Hello everyone!

Found this forum while reading about 6mm wildcats last night and been doing a little reading today. Looks like I found a great place to read about wildcatting! Apache, if you're reading this, great looking family of wildcats you have! I look forward to hearing more about your -55 endeavors as I have a couple in mind for that cartridge as well.

Just a little background on me. I've been loading for about 3 years now. Started on 7.65 Argentine, then 280 Remington and just recently started loading for my SKS. I don't have the 280 anymore, had more punch on the shoulder than I care for. So far I've stuck to the book recipes, but I'm looking to branch out more and get into some wildcatting. To date I've been mostly an old military rifle guy, I love the old mausers. Three of my six children are very much into shooting (22 LR for now) and one of my sons has the potential to be a great shooter I think. None of the three are old enough to hunt yet (according to Iowa, have to be 12 and take a hunter's safety course before they can get their hunting license), but I'm getting ready to purchase a Savage Edge to start them on to be ready for hunting when they are old enough. Gonna start with a 243 and work them up from there. We have a 50 yrd pistol / 100 yrd rifle range about 20 min from our house, and my father-in-law has about 400 acres we can go shoot / hunt on. So plenty of opportunities to shoot.

So, now for my question. Have any of you chambered for any of the Redding SA cartridges, specifically 6.5 or 270? In looking at the drawings, the parent case is a 7mm-08. Shoulder on these are 30 deg vs the 20 deg on the 7mm-08, and they have an increased diameter of about .006 at the body / shoulder junction. My idea for these is more practical than scratching an itch. Theoretically, I could cover three chamberings with one type of brass. I also figure not as much kick which the kids will be better with.

Well, I look forward to hearing from you guys and learning from your experiences and knowledge.

Happy Shooting!
John

[sinman]

if you want to used an improved version of the 308 case then I would use the ackley since it is the standard improved, thus you will find cheaper dies, sometimes factory brass/ammo, and the barrel maker will probably have the reamer so no custom reamer to buy. a 260ai is a very popular round, the 7mm-08ai has some followers too. Just a little help.

[cowboyarcher]

Bob T on the forum has a 270-08AI. . .

[BillPa]

Bob T on the forum has a 270-08AI. . .

I have one too (270-08 Imp) and it's little brother the 270-308.


The two on the far left, the Imp and the "UnImped"

Bill

[gunjnkie]

Thank you for the responses. I'm interested in other input, I'm not set on any particular cartridge yet.

I did contact Redding and they sent me a couple of articles by Wayne van Zwoll and one by Charles Petty on the 6.5 and 270 Redding S.A. cartridges. I stand corrected, the cases are not from 7mm-08 but were originally formed from .308 brass. But the brass for either can also be formed by fire forming 243 Winchester brass, or by just firing loaded 243 Winchester ammo in either chambering (from the article, not me). Not sure I like the second method, but since I don't have any loaded 243 yet, I'd be using the fire forming method with new brass. PTG has the reamers for both cartridges and Redding can make up the dies but I don't know the cost. There were 2 different articles about the 270 Redding S.A. and I got a feeling of mixed results. What I got was that you can almost duplicate the 270 Winchester, but that it is a picky cartridge and may be a little hard to develop loads that will group consistently.

BillPA, how is the recoil on the 270-308? Is it easy to load for? Does it group consistently once you have found a good load? Where do you find dies for it?

Bob T, if you happend to read this, I'm interested in your input as well since you also have the 270-08AI.


John

[BillPa]

The recoil of is mild as far as I'm concerned, my 9 year old grandson shoots them and complains when "Pop" didn't bring more ammo!

Both my rifles are built on Mod 70 SAs, 22" 12 twist LWT barrels, .550" muzzles. The reasoning behind my madness? I wanted a light(er) shorter carry rifle for speed beef ( whitetails) with the ballistics of or close to the 270 Winchester in a 27 bore with 130 grain bullets. Most shots in the areas I still hunt are 100 yards or under, only on rare occasions the opportunity might arise for something further, so the little 270s are up to that task if needed. I only planned on and have used 130s, the reason for the 12 twist barrels.

I'm not sure where the "picky" opinion came from, but tuning wasn't any different than anything else. Here is one target I shot during my workup with the better version using the 130 SST ( 5 @100). Plenty good enough to keep 3 out of 5 shots on a garbage can lid at 50! ;D



Like their cousins a bunch of powders seem to work well, accuracy and velocity wise, Varget, RL-15, 4320, H-4350, 414/760 all work. It more a matter of which give the best velocities / accuracy. I haven't had the time to try it, but I'm thinking the 4007 SSC might be a really good choice too.

I posted this before, the initial load workup with the 270-08 Imp using Varget, 130 Sierra's seated 10 off, Win brass and Fed 210s. The 46 and up results were with the new lot of powder.



The double bars for the 44-45 grain loading was due to the different lots of powder, the lower being what I used up of what was left of a one pound can. Those results mimic the results of two other rifles put together about the same time frame as mine, one on a Savage action the other on a TC.

As you can see it duplicated the 270 Winchester but burned roughly 10-15 grains less powder. I generally shoot it in the 3050-3100 range for my purposes.

And Mr. Zwoll and Petty are correct, both versions as well as all the other wildcats, the 243 Win ( 6mm-308), 260 ( 6.5-308...aka; 6.5-08 A-Square) Rem, 7mm-08 ( 7-308) and the latest entry , the 338 Federal ( 33-08) were all on the necked 308 case without any other changes. In fact Federal didn't change a thing on the 338! Many moons ago as a younger lad I whacked a few whitetails with a 7-08 before there was a 7-08, in the mid early 70's time frame, just a few days before Remington "designed" it. ;D

In a SA 27 bore either one is good, but today I'd lean more towards the standard version. It will work through any this setup of the other 308 based cartridges without alteration whereas the Improved version may cause some feeding problems. Although its very doable it may take some tweaking, time (and BEER!) to get it right. In my case, the goats aren't too fond of either one!

Bill

[gunjnkie]

Thank you everyone for your responses, and thank you BillPA for all the info that you posted. Sorry to say that after all this I'm going to table this idea for now. I think I'm going to go with a Savage Edge in 7mm-08 for the kids. I can load up lighter loads until the kids are used to the recoil and then start building them up. Besides, it will just be for hunting and I'd rather invest the serious money on building a nice 6mm or 6.5mm rifle to shoot in some local competitions.

For now I'll just continue reading and learning from you guys!

Happy Shooting!


John

[BobT]

Bob T on the forum has a 270-08AI. . .

I really like this one though I still haven't had the chance to work it out much. In a nutshell it gives .270 Winchester ballistics with about 10 grains less powder (IMR 4350). Brass is plentiful and easy to form and it's easy on the shoulder as well. The only negative is the cost of dies but I got mine in a package deal from Adam (cowboyarcher).

I got most of my loading info from Adam and BillPa, I do plan to try Varget in the very near future and have been wondering what Reloader 17 might do. So far I have stuck to 130 grain bullets and see no reason to change.

Sorry I didn't reply sooner but it's a project worth pursuing in my opinion, for what it is worth, I had no feeding problems in a M10 stagger feed action!

Bob