Folks,
I had occasion to shoot with a fella who was using a 444 Marlin chambered Winchester timber carbine who was having problems feeding the Hornady Lever Revolution ammo, especially the last cartridge. Being a friend of mine, he asked me to look at it and let him know what to do.
I took the rifle and thoroughly checked the chamber, rails, cartridge elevator, magazine follower, etc. and found no problem other than the Hornady Lever Revolution ammo would not feed correctly. I then got a box of plain jane Remington 444 Marlin ammo and it fed perfectly every time.
Upon examining the Hornady and Remington cartridges the reason for the problems became clear. The OAL of the Hornady ammo was 2.580 and the Remington ammo was 2.531. The SAMMI spec is 2.570 and the Hornady ammo was out of spec by 0.010, which in this case was causing feeding problems.
Another thing I noticed was that the Hornady cartridge case length was much shorter than the Remington cartridge case length. (2.066 as compared with Remington's 2.226 for a difference of 0.159)
Can someone here please explain to me how Hornady can sell this non SAMMI spec ammo as 444Marlin and worse yet, why nobody but Remington to my knowledge makes plain jane 444Marlin cartridges. Of course, this just begs the question of what is the case length of the Hornady unprimed brass for reloaders and is it also 0.159 shorter than spec.?????
Any thoughts / opinions / facts or ideas are welcomed to reply to my question as I wish to gather as many viewpoints as possible and truly find out how this can occur. Thanks.
Flower Child
