Also a Hoosier, and realize this is an older post.......my apologies if that is an issue.
My quest for a legal round in Indiana is a bit different......I guess because I am too. LOL
AND A TIGHTWAD.
The WSM and WSSM rounds are larger in diameter and hold a little bit more powder than mine, however the entire gunsmith bill for mine is less than dies for the 358 WSSM, custom ones anyway. I think Redding did come out with a run of them.
Being a remington NUT, and lover of the main squeeze of the Remington nutcase hoard, the 700 Remington, I wanted a round IN THAT RIFLE to hunt my remaining years here in Indiana.
I also did NOT want to pay for a custom replacement barrel..........or custom dies.
as I said....TIGHTWAD! (aka poor, lol)
A replacement barrel could be found to rechamber, on the used, cheaper side, but.....eh, I wanted a very nice 700. Nothing wrong with a single shot and love the idea of using one but I wanted what I wanted and figured out how to get there on my budget.
Yep........had to buy a rifle. Would anyway for a legal IN round but this is what I did.
I picked up a (actually two) 700 Remington classic in 350 Remington mag. No barrel replacement needed.
Instead of necking up or down and trimming lengths, I just had my 'smith put in an order with PT&G for a "350 Remington mag shortened to 1.795" and kept the factory neck length (another thing I dont personally care for on the WSSM rounds), shoulder angle.......the whole nine, and just shortened it .375 inches. With a factory capacity of 73 grains for the 350 RM.....I figured I "had room" for my purposes.
Simple set back and rechamber.
Take Redding standard 350 Rem mag sizing die and trim die (for forming brass) and shortened them .375 inches. The seater die stem will adjust down far enought to seat bullets as is.
Literally any belted mag brass from the 458 win to 7mm Rem mag can be cut off and sized in the trim die, filed flat and then final trimmed to 1.790 in my Redding trimmer.
Not quite finished yet. Some kind of "delay" at PT&G on the reamer but Im making brass. BTW, once fired belted mag brass is pretty reasonable. I bought 300 for 75 dollars shipped. No need to look for the hard to come by 350 Remington mag brass, but I did come accross some. No need to pay for WSM or WSSM brass either.
Case capacity in h2o is 58.7 grains. Basically a 358 Winchester....just shorter and fatter, with maybe a pinch more room and a smidgen more allowable chamber pressure *supposedly....going by the parent round but as in all wildcats, the end result CAN be different*. Time will tell but Im comfortable that this will do all I could want here for deer.
The 35 caliber rounds are all "thumpers" and the 358 Win has been and is being used on much larger game than our whitetails. I saw little to no reason to push the envelope on the biggest, baddest wildcat out there in a short 35 caliber wildcat.
Deer only take so much killin' and out to 200 yards when zeroed at 150.......there wont be any "hold over" going by even medium velocity loads and a decent bullet (via trajectory calculators Ive found fairly accurate over the years).
Energy wise the bullets will still carry way over the min for whitetail even at 300 yards and IMHO, there just isnt a lot of places I would feel comfortable, safety wise, shooting 300 yards in our home state and even the fastest of the wildcats legal in Indiana dont have much more than a couple inches less trajectory even at 300 yards. Shoot, I can count the number of times Ive had 300 yard shots on groundhogs on both hands.
With 99 percent of even possible shots in my area being 150-175 yards max, the self made and named "350 JR" will whack and stack any whitetail that walked.........and do it relatively inexpensively. The couple inches of flatter trajectory, or additional 50 yards of point blank range......just wasnt worth the cost ....TO ME. This will shoot so much flatter (and kick SO much less) than a 12 gauge slug, I'm good!
Kudos to those that feel differently. Aint a single thing wrong with wanting the fastest of them all......as long as you are willing and ABLE (not me!!) to pay the price to get there. I just went and followed my own path to reach a similar goal.
Besides........this was one HECK of a fun project and being a DIY one, I have to say there is some pride involved. Me thinks that alone was worth the cost! Sans the original cost of the rifle and factory dies, the gunsmith bill was 175 bucks.
God Bless
Steve
The 350 JR.....shown next to the parent round, the 350 Remington magnum.
