I live in southeastern PA where they just passed the law that we can now use straight walled cartridges. Has anyone ever built a .444 Marlin on a 110 action? What bolt face do you use? Magazine mods? Just looking for some advice on where to start. Thank you!
450 Marlin is the better option. Better equivalent to the 45-70 & more bullet choices.
Rimmed cartridges simply don't work in the Savage system unless you want to make a custom bolt head and can live with a single shot. Personally, I would (and did) simply buy a falling block or lever action before going to all the trouble of trying to hack something together on a Savage.
"Life' is tough. It's even tougher if you're stupid." ~ John Wayne
“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” —Mark Twain
I love the 444 but don't think it would work too easily in a bolt action platform. The 450 Marlin would work much better as it's rimless and uses a belt to headspace off of so it should feed just fine from a bolt action. It also uses the standard magnum bolt face so a short action WSM rifle would be a perfect action to use.
Let me throw a horse shoe !! If you have any wild catting blood in ya' you could
do a 444 with a .473 bolt face. Let me work on some numbers. and I'll get back.
Keeping my bad Karma intact since 1952
First off, to do a rimless version, it has to headspace off the case mouth
and that does not allow for higher pressure. Sammi says to keep the 450
Bushmaster down to 35000 cup and the 444 to 44000 cup......If you have
some machine skills, doing a bolt action 444 is not that bad. A .473 bolt
face would need to be re-cut. The tricky part would be to cut a slot in the
breech face to facilitate the extractor .
I do believe that a 450 Bush Master is chambered by Savage in a bolt gun.
The 50 Beowulf would be something to look at also.
350 Legend could be considered as a turn key option. It's capable of higher
pressure then most other straight wall options.
Keeping my bad Karma intact since 1952
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