Author Topic: Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35  (Read 807 times)

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Offline Jacko

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Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35
« on: October 07, 2010, 12:50:46 PM »
G/Day folks, a couple of Wildcat newby questions

still waiting on my rifle to be No1 Mk3 custom to be finished but I'm at the stage now where the Gunsmith has requested a couple of dummy rounds to work out the throat and neck for it. He's cobbling together the tools to ream my chamber from a .303 and a .357 rifle reamer and bushing up the pilot.

I've used a .358 Winchester die to expand the cases. I was surprised at how basic it is to do, I just eased the lever on the press up and down a couple of times, no case necks split. I am confident I have safe powder charges sorted out but am not confident with determining how deep I seat the bullets and the connection between correct seating depth and pressures.

It seems reasonable to me to use .303 British case length but where I'm not sure is how to determine overall cartridge length to ensure my dummy rounds are right when using the .358 proj. I'll mostly be using 225 grain Speer Gameking .358 projectiles which are somewhat stumpy when compared to .311 220 gr projectiles.

The OAL of the .303 British ranges from 2.915 to  3.075 depending on the weight of projectile obviously, how do I determine this for my 303.35 when starting from scratch

regards Jacko
"To my deep mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

                                                      Charles Darwin

Offline jeepmann1948

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Re: Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2010, 02:45:34 PM »
Measure the length of the magazine make the OAL slightly shorter for feeding and go from there allowing at least the diameter of the bullet for seating length in the case neck (or the cannalure groove depthe if bullets have one) Good luck sounds like a nice choice of wildcat!
"it ain't what you shoot em with......................
  it's where you hit em "

Offline Jacko

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Re: Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2010, 01:42:48 AM »
Thankyou jeepmann1, I was mulling this over today and pondering about seating the bullet to the bottom of the case neck for each different weight or seating it at least one caliber deep in the case neck. How obvious, checking the magazines internal dimensions and subtracting a bit - I would never have thought of that - too many Lever rifle tube magazines in my Gunsafe.

regards Jacko
"To my deep mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

                                                      Charles Darwin

Offline jeepmann1948

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Re: Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2010, 02:09:20 AM »
Jacko, you are most welcome, please keep us informed on the progress, it sounds like something I could use in  a Handi rifle . ;D
"it ain't what you shoot em with......................
  it's where you hit em "

Offline trotterlg

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Re: Working out overall length / bullet seating depth for 303.35
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2010, 04:25:54 PM »
Jeepman knows what to do, it is exactly right.  As a starting load I would use the max load for a 303 with the same bullet weight as the 35, it would be hard to hurt your self with that.  Larry
A gun is just like a parachute, if you ever really need one, nothing else will do.