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.300 Savage?

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    Posted: January 04 2010 at 10:57am
There seems to be continuing interest in the Ishapore .308s and converting other SMLEs to .308. However, if you wanted a .308-ish cartridge, it looks like the .300 Savage would be the way to fly. Ballistics on the Savage are darned close to the .308 despite operating at only 46,600 SAAMI maximum pressure vs. 52,000 for the .308 Winchester or 45,000 for the .303 (http://www.saami.org/Publications/206.pdf) - and a lot of military .303 was way hotter than that.

The Savage is slightly shorter than the .308 and will fit in .308 magazines; in countries which prohibit their citizenry from owning rifles in "military" calibers, you can find FALs chambered in .300 Savage. If you stuck a .30 caliber barrel on, it looks like all you'd need would be an Ishapore .308 mag and (maybe) bolt head.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote LE Owner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 05 2010 at 1:48am
I've given the .300 Savage some thought, and I think a standard magazine can be altered to feed the shorter round well enough for hunting purposes.
 
I have a few DP magazines with damaged Left hand feed lips, the most common damage to SMLE and N0. 4 mags it seems, and probably why they were downgraded.
I've given thought to ways of modifying these for other uses.
For now I reshaped the worn down lips by upsetting the metall and stretching it to reform the lips. This leaves the lip a bit thin but servicable.
 
A altered mag would have the original feed lips ground off and new lips formed of springy sheet steel, these would be silver soldered or brazed to the mag body a bit further back than the originals.
 
A No.1 mag can also be shortened from top down using notch of the triggerguard locator/tension  spring as the new mag catch notch. The new feed lips suitable for a shorter case can be formed from the remaining metal at top of the shortened mag. 
 
The Remington Lee Sporters in .32 Winchester Special used a mag altered by a stamped in deep ferrule on either side to limit rearwards movement of the shorter cartridges.
Those were single row mags , but it might work for a LE staggered row mag.
 
The .300 savage was an inspiration for the 7.62 NATO. No doubt that its performance to adequate for almost any purpose you'd want a .308 for.
 
The performance of the .303 is fine for my purposes. I can't see going to another caliber so long as reloadable cases are available.
If I rebarrel a stripped action I have had sitting idle for too long I'll be looking to go to .32 Winchester Special, to take advantage of its suitablity for both high velocity jacket bullet loads or medium velocity cast bullet loads. The latter depending on finding a proper .321  1:16 twist barrel blank.
 
The .300 Savage is also considered well suited to heavy weight cast bullet loads at medium velocity. You may want to find a slow twist barrel to get the best from the heavier .300 Savage loads. I think 190 gr bullets are the average for the .300.
 
PS
Quote and a lot of military .303 was way hotter than that
Which is a major reason there are so many loose boltheads out there.
I don't trust Milsurp .303 ammo, much of it was intended for Long Range Machinegun fire, and has been known to damage rifles.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote broncholo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 06 2010 at 11:44am
If you look very carefully you will discover that the diameter of the .300 Savage is actually .308 inches , same as the .308 , (which was modeled after the .300 savage).
The military thought they needed  room for a bit more powder so they moved the shoulder a little
to make more internal volume.  They wanted the same power as the 30-06 , but in the smaller case size of the .300 savage.

The enfield would only need to be re-chambered to match the shoulder position and angle of the .300 savage shell.
These two bullets are as close as can be without being identical.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote LE Owner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 06 2010 at 3:25pm
Quote The enfield would only need to be re-chambered to match the shoulder position and angle of the .300 savage shell.
These two bullets are as close as can be without being identical.
They are extremely close, but the Savage case is about three and a half milimeters shorter than that of the .308/7.62.
The .303 at about 56mm is about 7 1/2mm-8mm longer
The accidents the Boers suffered involving 7x53 cartridges fired in 7X57 chambers are a demonstration of just how something as simple as having too much neck for the case can cause a serious situation.
The Shorter case necks (no one seems to know just where those 7x53 cartridges came from) allowed the bullets to bump up to chamber neck diameter and strip off a ring of jacket metal in the neck, the next shot telescoping into this ring and trying to push what was then an oversized double thick band of hard metal into the throat.
Apparently there were a number of bloody Kabooms.
The problem led to the Boers using a thick coat of lube on the bullets , which seems to have worked after a fashion( An incompressable fluid between neck wall and bullet preventing full expansion of the bullet base), but led to a number of extra judicial executions when the British troops believed the greenish goo to be a poison (which it may well have been in a way, the lube carrying infectious matter into a wound.   
 
Anyway If a .308 is to be rechambered to .300 Savage, the barrel should be set back a thread or two first. Gunsmiths performing the 7.7x54R conversions routinely set the Enfield barrels back to cut 2mm off the chamber length.
 
With chamber pressures of the .300 Savage no higher than those of the .303 it makes better sense to simply rebarrel an old SMLE or No.4.
 
The only problem I'd have with owning a .308 chambered Enfield is that while I'd feed it only cartridges of known pressure levels , more custom taylored handloads than anything eles, some heir in the future might try it out with the hottest milsurp 7.62 Machinegun loads , which are often unsuitable for most rifles of greater strength than the now elderly Enfields.
Using a .300 Savage chambering, any reasonable loads taking advantage of .30/.308 components ,which are easier to find and of greater variety than .303 components, can be kept withing the SMLE rifles safety margin, and its unlikely that any factory ammo would exeed that margin.
 
Since successful handloading for the .303 Enfields usually requires fire forming anyway,making cases for the .300 wouldn't be that much more of a hassle.
 
Not sure but I think a .300 can later be freshed out to .308 if the owner changes his mind later on.
 
I had been thinking more along the lines of a .308 Enfield wildcat, which would be nothing more than a .308 with shoulder set back by about 2mm, neck length could remain the same.
Then surplus 7.62 NATO cases and components one would use for the .308 could be used to assemble loads at the SAAMI pressure limits for the .303, but a standard .308 or unaltered 7.62 wouldn't chamber.
 
With a growing interest in reloading the .303, (till recent times UK Enfield owners almost never handloaded) proper components are becoming as easy to find as those for the .308. So really theres not much if any gain to be had in rebarreling or rechambering to another cartridge that does almost exactly the same things when kept within the design safety margins.
 
Rebarreling for a smaller bore does offer possibilities though. The 7x57R or 6.5x57R would be nice, though OAL for the latter is a hair too long for the Enfield Magazine it can be handloaded to the proper length with no problems.
 
 
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