HANDLOADERHANDLOADER®

Ammunition Reloading Journal

RIFLE’S

Sitek ArmsCustom 1911

.280 RossThe First Big Seven!

Loads for the.45 ACP

100-YardObsession!

Winchester’s New572 Powder

October 2017 No. 310

Display until 11/13/17 Printed in USA

FEATURES

34 Loading the .45 ACP Handloading for

Flexibility and Accuracy Brian Pearce

42 .280 Ross The First Big Seven and the Pursuit of Velocity Terry Wieland

48 100-Yard Obsession Testing Handloads at Nonstandard Distances John Barsness

54 Winchester 572 Powder A New Powder for 20-, 16- and 12-Gauge Loads John Haviland

58 Beginning Bullet Casting - Part IV Assembling Usable, Accurate Handloads Mike Venturino

On the cover . . .A pre-1914 Ross Model 10 .280 Ross. Photo by Terry Wieland. Wilson Combat Protector .45 ACP and Sitek Arms custom 1911 .45 ACP. Photos by Brian Pearce.

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Page 48 . . .

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Page 34 . . .

COLUMNS

6 .45 Colt Myths Reloader’s Press - Dave Scovill

10 Long Range Shooting Part I: Cartridge Selection Factors Practical Handloading - Rick Jamison

14 .270 WSM Bore Specifications Bullets & Brass - Brian Pearce

18 .327 Federal Magnum Cartridge Board - Gil Sengel

22 Accurate 2230 Propellant Profiles - R.H. VanDenburg, Jr.

24 Sitek Arms Custom 1911 .45 ACP From the Hip - Brian Pearce

Handloader 310

Page 18 . . .

26 Accurate 5744 Mike’s Shootin’ Shack - Mike Venturino

30 .300 H&H Ackley Improved (30 Degree) Wildcat Cartridges - John Haviland

64 Ruger Mk IV .22 Long Rif le and Forster 3-1 Case Cutter Product Tests -

70 Squeaky-Clean Brass In Range - Terry Wieland

Page 10 . . .

10 www.handloadermagazine.com Handloader 310

Shooting at long distances is becoming more popular in both competition and hunting. Shoot-

ers have heard about long shots made in the military and want to see how hard it is to make similar shots on paper or steel gongs with their own rifles. Hunters want to take game at even greater distances. Whatever the reason, shooters are finding out how much fun it is to shoot targets way out there.

How “long range” is defined is dependent on the shooter and the application. This year, a sniper team of Canadian servicemen made a shot in Afghanistan with a .50 BMG rifle at an incredible 2.2 miles. In competition, the five-shot, .50-caliber group record at 1,000 yards has been hovering around 2 inches for quite a few years. Currently, the smallest 1,000-yard, five-shot group fired in a .50 Caliber Shooters Asso-ciation match in 2009 by Lee Rasmussen measures 1.955 inches. That is .187 minutes of angle (MOA). The smallest six-target group aggregate is 5.177 inches, also fired by Rasmussen in 2013.

It doesn’t take a big .50 BMG to shoot at long range. Jim Richards fired a 2.69-inch, five-shot group in com-petition at 1,000 yards using the diminutive 6mm Dasher, a cartridge based on the 6mm BR case. These shots and competition records show us what is possi-ble. While most of us will not become registered com-petitors, nor will we shoot at 2 miles, we can still get in on the target-shooting fun with our hunting rifles and increase our game-taking distance.

I will not go into the ethics of taking game at long range, except to say that for me, shot placement is the key to making a clean kill. I do not seek out long shots, but sometimes it is the only way to take a spe-cific trophy. I believe that a shooter should practice enough to know when he is capable of making a shot

at a given distance, with a specific rest and under the shooting conditions at hand, regardless of the range. Otherwise, he should not take the shot. Bad shots can be made at 50 yards.

Paper targets are a good way to get a dead-on ze-roed at multiple distances, and then steel gongs are fun and you do not have to continually go downrange.

Practice is required to make first-shot hits consistently at distances beyond 400 or 500 yards. Equip-ment alone will not do it.

Manufacturers encourage this growth of interest in precision shooting at long distance by of-fering products for specific tasks. Some of the new propellants are not as temperature sensitive, and hence produce more uniform ve-locities. Bullet makers are pro-ducing longer, more streamlined hunting bullets that carry veloc-ity and energy even farther down-

PRACTICAL HANDLOADING by Rick Jamison

long Range shooting PaRt i:CaRtRidge seleCtion FaCtoRs

A bipod is just as good as a benchrest and can almost always be used from the prone position in canyon country.

These .30-caliber cartridges include the (1) .308 Winchester, (2) .30-06, (3) .300 Winchester Magnum, (4) .300 Winchester Short Magnum and the (5) .300 Remington Ultra Mag. Handloaders can manipulate the order of their downrange effectiveness, which is why optimizing handloads is often more important than the cartridge chosen.

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range and perform at lower-impact velocities. Rifle companies offer specialty long-range rifles among their standard lines, and scopes are available with target turrets, long-range reticles and a choice of markings in inches or MOA. If serious about this type of shoot-ing, you will probably end up pur-chasing a new rifle, scope and cartridges that lend themselves to long-range accuracy.

tridges are less expensive to load, and less powder makes a barrel last longer.

Conversely, it is true that a higher muzzle velocity is an advan-tage, and it takes a certain amount of downrange bullet velocity and energy to take game cleanly. So how does one determine when a cartridge is enough but not too much?

In this game, a handloader has holds all the cards. A handloader has the ability to mate a cartridge and components with the intended purpose to maximize velocity and energy downrange. Any cartridge is limited by, or made more effective by, the sum of its components. The truth is, a lot of popular hunting cartridges can be handloaded to be effective at distances greater than traditionally thought possible. With the right bullet and load, the .270 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .30-06 and others can be considered long-range rounds. They are not 1,000-yard elk cartridges, but they can all be optimized for the great-

So what does it take in the way of a cartridge? Some shooters auto- matically think of big cartridges when considering “long range.” However, today’s competition shooters show us that big car-tridges are not necessary to make precise hits, even at 1,000 yards (witness the 6mm Dasher record). In fact, people can shoot smaller cartridges with greater accuracy. A smaller cartridge with less re-

coil and blast is less likely to induce a flinch, and this makes shooting more fun. The more you shoot, the better you get, and smaller car-

Paper targets offer a great way to tell exactly where shots impact and to get a precise zero at all distances.

12 www.handloadermagazine.com Handloader 310

To be conservative, let’s stick with the old standards of 1,000 and 1,500 ft-lbs and see how a computer presents it. Software is not always the best source for practical ballistics, but it can be good for making comparisons. I use QuickLoad and its com-panion, QuickTarget, and some-times Load From A Disk when at my desktop computer. For my smartphone I use iSnipe and Bul-letDrop+ quite a lot. If a .30-06 car-

est distance by judicious hand- loading. Some of the most popu-lar long-range hunting cartridges today include the .300 Winchester Magnum, 7mm Remington Mag-num and 6.5-284 Norma. Based both on experience and what the computer indicates, I consider a .264-inch bullet diameter to be a minimum for taking deer and elk at longer distances.

For many years, 1,000 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) of energy has been some-thing of an arbitrary minimum en-ergy standard for a deer cartridge, and 1,500 ft-lbs has been consid-ered necessary for elk at the point of impact. These figures are for all-around hunting, not long-range shooting. Based on my experience with modern bullets, I would be in-clined to place the figures closer to 700 ft-lbs on deer and 1,250 ft-lbs for elk. I have taken deer cleanly with good bullet performance at distances that put the energy level at 700 ft-lbs. Another reason for these lighter energy figures is be-cause in long-range shooting, a hunter usually has a lot of time to set up prone with a bipod or good rest, accurately range the target, adjust his scope if necessary and calmly and deliberately take the shot. Seldom are quick shots taken at moving game at long distance as compared to shorter distances where game has been spooked, nor are long shots taken at a bad angle.

Popular long-range hunting cartridges include (left to right): the 6.5-284 Norma, .270 WSM and 7mm Remington Magnum. All can be effective at great distances if handloads are developed for the purpose.

•

tridge is loaded with a Hornady 165-grain spitzer flatbase bullet with a reported .387 ballistic co-efficient (BC) to a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second (fps), the resulting load produces 1,500 ft-lbs of energy at about 380 yards, and it carries 1,000 ft-lbs of en-ergy to 595 yards. By comparison, if the same .30-06 is loaded with a Hornady 220-grain ELD-X bul-let (with a very high quoted BC of .650) to a slower 2,400 fps, it car-ries 1,500 ft-lbs of energy to about 580 yards, and 1,000 ft-lbs to about 930 yards. It is easy to see how the handloader makes the difference regarding a long-range cartridge just by bullet and load selection. Unlike at shorter distances, where bullet shape and length is not crit-ical, it makes a big difference far-ther downrange.

There is perhaps more involved with a specific load recipe than with the size and shape of the car-tridge. Of course, impact veloc-ity is important as well, insofar as bullet expansion is concerned. In the latter instance, the bullet would be traveling at about 1,434 fps at 930 yards. Will it expand and transfer killing energy at this low velocity without punching through with little tissue damage? That is yet another aspect of developing a long-range handload, and the subject will be covered in a sub-sequent column.

Nonoptimized (Average) Load Comparison with Traditional Bullets ballistic muzzle retained retained cartridge bullet coefficient velocity recoil 1,500 ft-lbs 1,000 ft-lbs (grains) (fps) (ft-lbs) (yards) (yards)

6.5-284 Norma 120 Barnes TSX .381 3,050 11.2 300 520.270 Winchester 130 Hornady InterLock SP .409 3,050 13.8 370 610.270 Winchester Short Magnum 130 Swift Scirocco II .450 3,200 18.2 480 7407mm-08 Remington 140 Nosler Partition .456 2,850 12.4 350 5907mm Remington Magnum 140 Sierra spitzer .377 3,150 20.3 420 640.308 Winchester 150 Barnes TSX .369 2,850 14.2 330 540.30-06 165 Speer SP .433 2,800 17.3 430 680.300 Winchester Magnum 165 Hornady InterLock SP .387 3,050 24.7 480 700.300 Winchester Short Magnum 165 Nosler Partition .410 3,050 23.3 510 740.300 Remington Ultra Mag 165 Barnes TSX .398 3,100 35.7 520 740.338 Winchester Magnum 225 Swift A-Frame .384 2,750 31.0 510 720.338 Remington Ultra Mag 250 Nosler Partition .473 2,850 47.9 750 1,010.338 Lapua Magnum 250 Hornady InterLock SP .431 2,850 47.8 690 920

Notes: This computer-generated data is an overview comparison that gives a rough idea where standard cartridges fit in the downrange energy spectrum with normal loads. Powder charge weights can vary, depending on powder type, and this affects recoil. Recoil figures are for an 8.5-pound rifle. If cartridges look out of order, it is because of muzzle velocity, bullet weight and ballistic coefficient.

.280 ROSSThe First Big Seven and the Pursuit of Velocity

Terry Wieland

The Ross Model 1910 sporting rifle has one very strange fea-ture: Its iron sights consist of a fine bead near the muzzle of

its 28-inch barrel and one folding blade just forward of the action – one blade only, cut with a midsized V notch. En-graved beside it is the number “500.” To sell a hunting rifle with just one sight setting – 500 yards – would be outlandish today; in 1910, when the

M10 came on the scene, it was unbe-lievable and, for any other cartridge available in 1910, it would have been ridiculous. For the .280 Ross, however, it was merely highly optimistic. This was a cartridge that was truly accu-rate enough out to 500 yards to down a big-game animal. All it needed was a hunter who could shoot extremely well, judged range with uncanny ac-curacy and knew how to use that one lonely sight blade.

www.handloadermagazine.com Handloader 31042

Facing page, after 1912, .280 Ross ammunition was produced by many different companies. Some continued to identify it as the .280 Ross; others, such as Kynoch, simply referred to it as the .280.

Right, the Ross Model 1910 .280 Ross was made as well

as any bolt action from London of the pre-1914 era.

Most of us would immediately jump up and shout that no cartridge, even the best ones available today, has a flat enough trajectory to hold on the same spot all the way out to 500 yards, and we would be right. That, however, is not how the sight was intended to be used.

Read some books from that era and you’ll come across references to “taking a coarse bead” or “draw-ing a fine bead.” If the hunter judged that his quarry was 500 yards away, he would place the bead in the center of the V notch – a normal sight picture. If it was closer – say, 200 yards – the bead would be drawn down into the V, lowering the muzzle and trajectory; if it was farther, the bead was raised above the V, el-evating the muzzle. Simple.

An experienced hunter made range judgements instinctively, and soon got a feel for where the bead needed to be. It was called, quaintly, “shooting skill,” as opposed to reading a digital rangefinder, being whispered to by computers and adjusting a scope, all of which depend more on computer programming than on shooting ability.

The Ross M10 straight-pull hunting rifle was a won-der of the age, and were it not for the untimely inter-vention of World War I (1914-18), it might have gone on to have quite a different career. As it was, the war sank the military version of the rifle and Ross Rifle Co. with it, leaving the .280 Ross an orphan in search of a home. Fortunately, it was a great cartridge and had no trouble finding one. In fact, it found several.

Sir Charles Ross was a wealthy Scottish baronet who grew up stalking stags on his family estate near Inverness. He became interested in guns and deter-mined to design the ultimate hunting rifle. Being an admirer of Ferdinand von Mannlicher, Ross leaned toward straight-pull designs. Being an aristocrat, he also had connections so formed an alliance with Charles Lancaster, the great London gunmaker, to produce rifles of his design.

Ross had many virtues, but also many vices. He was brilliant and talented but impatient and intoler-ant. Having burned through the family’s ready cash by his twenty-first birthday, he was land rich but cash

The .280 Ross inspired cartridge development by other London gunmakers. Examples include the (1) .280 Ross, (2) .280 Magnum (Rimmed Ross), (3) .275 Holland & Holland and the (4) .275 H&H Rimmed.

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Although the .280 Ross achieved 3,000 fps with a 150-grain bullet, it was more commonly loaded with (left to right): the 140-grain, copper-tube bullet (prompting a patent infringement claim from Westley Richards), the Kynoch 160-grain HP and Ross’ own 180-grain match load.

Modern bullets in .288-inch diameter are hard to come by. From left, these include a 140-grain cast bullet (Ideal mould 287377), a 150-grain bullet made for Huntington Die Specialties and an unidentified 152-grain spitzer boat-tail match bullet.

.280 ROSS

Select .280 Ross Handloads

bullet powder charge velocity (grains) (grains) (fps)

150 HDS* H-4831 60.0 2,750 65.0(1) 3,072140 Hayley cast** A-5744 25.0(2) 1,814

* Huntington Die Specialties** Ideal mould 287377 without gas check.Notes: All loads used Hayley Custom converted .300 RUM brass and Federal 215 Match Large Rifle Magnum primers. Further details regarding the above areas follows:

1. Maximum load with no pressure signs and a very low extreme spread of 14 fps.

2. Light load, calculated as 40 percent of case capacity to base of bullet. Three shots had an extreme spread of 89 fps, and extremely poor accuracy. There is room to increase the charge, but it is inadvisable to go over 2,000 fps to avoid leading.

Be Alert – Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. Listed loads are only valid in the test firearms used. Reduce initial powder charge by 10 percent and work up while watching for pressure signs.

poor. He raised money against the estate and invested in different businesses, among them a rifle-making company in Connecticut.

During the Boer War, Ross com-manded a machine gun company and armed his men with rifles of his own design. After that con-flict, the British public became ob-sessed with target shooting with rifles, and the longer the range, the better. Suddenly, everyone was

trying to design a better rifle and a better, faster, more accurate car-tridge.

It is impossible to completely disentangle the fortunes of the Ross rifle from the .280 Ross cartridge, and the two of them from the life and loves, conflicts and controversies of Sir Charles Ross himself. All are intertwined and interdependent. In 1902, Ross convinced the Canadian govern- ment that it needed a Canadian- produced military rifle to arm its militia and the North-West Mounted Police. He set up a man-ufacturing facility near Quebec City, moved skilled craftsmen north from his factory in Connecti-cut, and went into production.

From the beginning, the Ross straight-pull designs were more like target rifles than military or hunting rifles. They were initially chambered for the .303 British,

but Ross wanted to design the ul-timate long-range cartridge. From studying von Mannlicher, he con-cluded that a 7mm cartridge was the answer. Around 1905, with the 7x57 Mauser (aka .275 Rigby) gain-ing in popularity, Ross decided to up the stakes. First, he designed what he called the .28/06, a 7mm designed in 1906. It resembled a .30-06 necked down, but there were dimensional differences and Ross’ cartridge was semirimmed. It did not deliver quite the veloc-ity he wanted, so he decided to go bigger.

At the time, Ross and his rifle were heavily involved in the an-nual military long-range matches held at Bisley, where rifle teams from all over the British Empire (including Canada) competed for trophies, medals and money. First, Ross designed a new bullet for the .303 British and began producing

The Ross M10 looks modern even today, 117 years after its introduction.

It was highly effective and very ergonomic.

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match-quality .303 ammunition. This bullet was a heavy-for-caliber spitzer with a long ogive – what today is known as an “extra-low drag” bullet. It dominated the Bis-ley matches.

Ross’ colleague in designing ammunition was Frederick W. Jones, one of the foremost ballis-ticians and long-range shooters of the age. During his long career, Jones worked for the New Explo-sives Company, Eley Brothers, No-bel and the British government. In 1898, at the age of 31, he patented a process for coating smokeless powder to regulate burning rate. Col. Schultze (of Schultze Pow-der fame) called him “the father of smokeless powder.” He wasn’t, of course, but his coating process made possible almost all the im-provements that came later.

Jones was more than a scien-tist. From 1908 until his death in 1939, he was a member of the Brit-ish Elcho Shield team. The Elcho Shield is an annual team competi-tion shot at 1,000, 1,100 and 1,200 yards; by comparison, the Palma Match is 800, 900 and 1,000 yards.

Ross and Jones worked together closely for years. Jones’ testing of the .28/06 showed a velocity of 2,735 feet per second (fps) with a 150-grain bullet. This was good, and certainly better than the 7x57, but Ross wanted 2,800 fps. He lengthened the case, widened it at the base and gave it a pronounced taper. Since it was intended for use in a straight-pull rifle, the ta-per was a definite advantage. It also meant it fed out of box mag-azines beautifully. For reasons unexplained, he chose to use a .288-inch bullet diameter rather than the 7x57’s .284-inch diameter.

The new cartridge was loaded with 58 grains of Neonite (not Cordite). Produced by the New Explosives Co., Neonite was a coated, guncotton-based powder

in the form of black flakes. (Sir Charles Ross later persuaded Du-Pont to produce a new, slower pow-der called No. 10, for use in loading .280 Ross ammunition in America.)

Jones’ testing showed a velocity of 3,047 fps with a 140-grain bullet. Eley Brothers agreed to produce ammunition, and in 1907 it was unveiled to the world as the .280 Ross-Eley. This nomenclature was

retained until 1912, when other cartridge companies began pro-ducing ammunition. Since then, headstamps have read either “.280 Ross,” or simply “.280.”

In 1907, F.W. Jones took a pro-totype .280 Ross target rifle to Bisley, not to compete, but simply to see how it performed. The Field magazine reported he made “a number of possibles,” and the Ross

The Ross Model 1910 .280 Ross was the popular hunting rifle of its day. Manufactured in Quebec, Canada, it equaled the bolt actions of London in its quality and workman-ship. Sir Charles Ross’ .280 actions were proofed to a level of 28 tons.

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team set about producing a real target rifle for the 1908 matches. According to Ross biographer Roger F. Phillips, the Ross match rifle had a heavy barrel with a spe-cial leade that allowed a “push fit” for the bullet, similar to that used in Schutzen rifles. The long bullet was positioned to enter the bore precisely.

The .280 Ross-Eley match am- munition was loaded with a 180- grain spitzer FMJ bullet, also extra-low drag, with a muzzle ve-locity of 2,700 fps. Jones won five individual and aggregate long-range matches at Bisley in 1908. The British NRA (aka National Rifle Association of the United Kingdom) received a complaint from aggrieved competitors and found the Ross rifle barrel was a couple ounces too heavy. Jones returned the silverware, but the Ross rifle retained the glory.

From that moment, the .280 Ross became the most influen-tial cartridge in the world. Other makers began chambering it in both hunting and match rifles. King George V took a pair of .280 rifles on a hunting tour of India and reported them to be “a great success.” Less positively, George Grey (brother of the foreign secre-tary, Sir Edward Grey) was killed by a lion in Kenya in 1911, after wounding it with a .280 Ross and failing to stop its charge. On his deathbed, he acknowledged that it was his own fault for getting too close, but the .280 takes the blame to this day.

Its more than 3,000 fps muzzle velocity inspired Charles Newton to design America’s first 3,000- fps commercial cartridge, Sav-age’s .250-3000. In the U.S., DuPont developed a special slow pow- der (DuPont No. 10) that allowed American commercial .280 ammu-nition to equal the British loads. Introduced in 1910, it was released for canister sale in 1912, and discontinued in 1915, but it made possible the .250-3000 and set the stage for a series of even slower-

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.280 ROSS

47October-November 2017 www.handloadermagazine.com

burning powders in the IMR series.

In London, Charles Lancaster & Co. chambered .280 Ross rifles with its famous “oval” bore and developed a rimmed version of the cartridge for use in double rifles and single shots. The War Office was so impressed, it com-missioned a very similar military round, the .276 Enfield, intended to replace the .303, and a new Maus-er-inspired rifle with an oversized action, the Enfield P-13, to accom-modate it. It was never adopted, because war broke out in 1914, but it was adapted to the .303 as the P-14 and later the .30-06 (P-17). Both rifles saw use in both world wars.

The Mauser company in Ober-ndorf offered its magnum Mauser commercial rifles in .280 Ross. Later, the German-American bal-listic fraudster, Hermann Gerlich, took the unaltered Ross case, renamed it the .280 Halger and embarked on his straight-out-of-fiction attempt to persuade shoot-ers on both sides of the Atlantic that he was getting impossible velocities.

Although the Ross Rifle Co. closed before 1918 and new Ross rifles disappeared from the mar-ket, the cartridge (by its various names) became a standard of the English gun trade. Ammunition was manufactured on both sides of the Atlantic and stayed in pro-duction by Kynoch until 1967.

There are two immediate prob-lems with shooting a .280 Ross rifle. One is brass, the other is bul-lets. Although new factory brass is occasionally available, the key word is occasionally. When it can be found, it’s expensive. Quality Cartridge (www.qual-cart.com) lists it, and Bob Hayley of Hayley’s Custom Ammunition, 1-940-888-3352 in Seymour, Texas, makes .280 Ross brass by swaging down and resizing .300 Remington Ultra Mag cases, resulting in good, re- usable brass. Bob can also supply cast lead 140-grain spitzers.

Hayley’s remanufactured brass costs about $3 per round. Given the amount of reworking neces-

sary, annealing the case necks before shooting is a good idea to prevent splitting. Once annealed, it lasts almost indefinitely with sensible loads.

Bullets are another matter. In the past, Huntington Die Special-ties has offered a .288-inch diam-eter, 150-grain bullet that works well, but it no longer seems to be available. Hawk, Inc., makes a .286-inch diameter, 160-grain roundnose and will produce other weights on special order.

Powders are no problem. Hodg- don’s H-4831 is ideal for the Ross, and combined with Feder-al’s 215M primers, it is possible to reach original velocities with no adverse pressure signs. The 4350s do not work as well in the roomy Ross case; in my rifle, I get flattened primers before I get to 3,000 fps.

As for the 500-yard shots with the single folding blade, I’m work-ing on targets at 300 yards for now. It is certainly educational. •