How to load down a 340 Weatherby Mag?

the sky is falling...grin

You are rite Lynn...there are folks who cant swim telling others not to go white water rafting...and who dont want to leave the beaten path,but ridicule a pioneer when he tries to give advice about something he has done all his life...It is tiresome to have the same coupla people ridicule evrything that some have to say ,when they have never struck out on their own from the world of keyboard shooting or just one aspect of our big world of shooting.....and then those who we give advice to never say thnks.....its a sad day.....Roger
 
Ben... I didn't specifically ask Hodgdon about whether Trail Boss has replaced 4895 in reduced loads. I asked about 4895 in 340 Wby and he said no way, but that's as far as it went. Seems like he said that the 'base of the seated bullet minus 30%' approach can be used for most other cartridges as well, but you might want to verify that. I think the velocity is gonna be too low for me, tho.
 
Here is an injury making blow up of what looks like a Savage, that is reported to have happened yesterday at the Ben Avery.

They appear to be still investigating the cause, including reduced loads.

I have never seen a locking lug with this type of damage before..................Don


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http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3686034
 
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Wow

I suppose everybody would love to know what happenned here.

Total Destruction of a Rifle,such as what we see here, is extremely rare. All of us who are old enough remembers how PO Ackley delibertly triedto "destroy" several of the betterknown WW-1 and WW-2 vintage actions. I took a lot more than he thought it would.

I have seen Remington 700's with a case completly welded into the bolts face, it took unscrewing the barrel to get it out. The "three rings of steel" had didit'sjob, theouter ring of the bolt had expanded tightly into the barrels counterbore.

How much pressure did it talke to do that?? Who knows, 110,000, 130,000.

Backin the 70's, I fooled with handguns, shot a lot of Police Course Matches. I even built some target revovers for the Houston Police team.

I was at their range one night, and the range Captain showed me a Model 29 Smith that had the top strap split in two,and the top three cylinder chambers blowed out..

It turned out that a Houston Police Officer had bought himself a new 6 1/2 inch barrel Model 29. He decided to handload , so he could use it for "target practice". He had no previous experience with re-loading.

He bought everything he needed, and meticuously weighed each charge of Unique, to be placed behind a 240 grn hard cast bullet.

The first round he fired blew the pistol up.

The investigation showed that yes, he did follow the loading manualto the letter, weighing out each recommended charge to the tenth. But, when they pulled the bullets,they found the cases were completly full.

It turns out, that due to his ignorance of the proccess, he had failed to remove the little rubber protectors from the knife edges of his little RCBS Scale. The added friction caused the scale to read way light, so light that what he thought was about 10 grns of Unique was really about 25 grns. He simply did not know.

Strange things can happen. It will be interesting to see what caused that Rifle to destroyed.......jackie
 
I wonder if the Remington famed "3 rings" would have fared any better in this type of blow up?

Hard to tell, I guess once the receiver ring goes all bets are off, unless the "3 rings" somehow seals the pressures to the barrel which would have to give before exposing the action receiver ring to the same pressures.........Don
 
Don
When you see a blow up like you posted and read that they found a cartridge case in the barrel of a 338 it leads me to believe he put a smaller cartridge into the gun first and obstructed the bore.
Another common error is to shoot a 308 in a 270.

If the original poster will call Hodgdon or IMR and ask them about using trail boss he will be much happier.I have never used 4895 in my 340 and I've never heard of anybody using it.The 60% rule on 4895 has always applied to guns commonly using 4895 like the 223 or 30-06.
Once you start breaking the rules your on your own.

If you look at Trail Boss it looks like a washer from a bolt.They give it this strange shape so it will take up copious amounts of case volume.It is not a slow burning powder.
Waterboy
 
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pfranklin said:
I asked about 4895 in 340 Wby and he said no way, but that's as far as it went.
Click to expand...
That's good to know. For as long as Hodgdon has been advocating 60% loads of H4895, they've also stressed to only do it where you can already find good loading data (preferably, I suppose, from Hodgdon) for the cartridge using H4895. Since this thread started, I've been looking and been unable to find major-player, pressure-tested loading data for H4895 in the 340 Wby. So, I guess that's out.

Like I said, good to know.
 
papapaul said:
Almost like it was made out of nitroglycerine or something. Wait a minute! It IS!


P.Ps. For a thread which was dying on the vine, this thing sure has picked up steam!
Click to expand...

Right and right! ;)

And this is all good IMO. Keep up the info flow.

al
 
PFranklin
There are several websites devoted to Weatherby rifles and that is where I would look for light loads.One of them is called Weatherby Nation and for the rest you'll have to do a search as my memory is old and tired.

For the really light loads Trail Boss is the best powder made in my opinion.You can't put enough in your case to get any pressure out of it and you can't reduce it enough for a detonation.The only thing wrong with it is it smells different than normal gunpowder.

In a 308 case you can't get 15 grains into the case.No that isn't a typo 15 grains won't fit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Waterboy
 
Getting back to that picture of a blownup gun... There are so many scenarios... and so few people who are actually equipped and qualified to sort it out, that most of these things just become another legend. Remember how everybody cautions about rebuilding a gun which has been in a fire? I wonder if anybody did a hardness test on that receiver in the pic. It looks like a savage. Those switch barrels are good, but give rise to many combinations that could cause problems, headspace being only one.
 
I was looking through a Speer loading manual last night, in the front section. There was a blurb about reduced loads. They said it was like the Loch Ness Monster. They have never seen it, can't duplicate it in the lab, and nobody has ever sent a firearm in for analysis.
 
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