Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats .270-08 ???

My wife shoots a switch barrel savage in .243/.308 I put together for her. I shoot a .270 and now she wants something different in a .27 cal. and wants to stay with her rifle platform. A bit of searching turned me on to the .270-08. I can get 6.8 SPC and .270 Win. barrels pre made at a reasonable price Would it be possible to take a 6.8 barrel and ream it out to fit a .308 length cartridge? How about cutting and setting back a .270 Win. barrel then chambering? Would one way be better than the other. Is it even possible? Or should I just start from scratch?

Richard

I dare say 270 Win take off barrels would be easy to come by; 6.8 not so much.

But I must say so even as a devout 270 Win fan... With a 243 and 308, why bother? 243 bullets finish around 100g and 308s start around 110...

One of my older friends now pasted used the 270-08 for all his hunting and he swore by it as being the ultimate big game round with 130 gr Partitions. He loved it.

While the .270-08 would be unique, why not just go with the .260 Remington (6.5-08) to bridge the gap between your .243 and .308? Lot's of great bullets available in 6.5 across a large range of weights. Brass is already factory available. I have all three calibers and the .260 can do just about anything that I'd want to do with the .243 and .308 from hunting to target. I doubt that she would be switching barrels much as shooting the .260.

I'd just go with a 7-08 for ease and cost. .277" vs .284". Not much difference, although I'm sure you have the idea of saving the cost of going to a new caliber of bullets. But 270-08 dies can't be cheap. I think you could get a couple boxes of bullets and some brass and a decent set of 7-08 dies for the cost of custom 270-08 dies. But I could be wrong. Also not sure that a lot of gunsmiths would have a 270-08 reamer on hand. But what do I know. I borrowed a reamer and payed for custom dies for a 25-204 a few years ago. LOL.

Back to your question. A pre-chambered 270 Win barrel (if that's what you're talking about) would need to have a lot of shank to be set back enough to clean up the chamber with a 270-08 reamer. Not sure how much set back, but check the drawings and see if you can guestimate.

Try 270 Redding = 3000fps with 130g.. in a short barreled lever gun!!

Here's the other short action 27's, they all work, dies are the always on the list of issues to pay attention to.

That 270 Redding looks awfully good, always thought it was an interesting round.

That is a might fine looking 99 in 270 Redding, JeffG. I'm guessing the beautiful stocks are maple....

The 270 Redding is cool also the 25 Souper.
The 7-08 and the 260 are wise.
The 308 is perfect, however

Yes, there are so many fine mid-range calibers that are EASY to set up for, these wildcats are purely self-indulgent economic stimulators

I like the 'Titus', just about an Ackley without fireforming.

Though the 6.5 Creedmoor cured my 270 Titus itch.

Yep.

I have a 270 Titus that is pure poison on game, but I wouldn't build one from scratch. If you're a rifle crank go with the 308 case rather than 300 Savage. If you're not a handloader, go with a 260 or 7-08.

That is a beautiful rifle, love the wood.

I have a complete 270-08 package built on a Remington 700 SA, rifle, dies, formed brass, load info, that I'm unlikely to use now that I've built my 270 Redding... in case anyone wants to start themselves down this slippery slope.

To answer the OP's question: Making a 270 Win barrel a 270-08 would require removing about 1/2" from the breech, then touching up the chamber with a reamer. Using a 6.8 barrel would require opening up the chamber with a reamer.
However, the point was made that finding a used take off in 270 should be easy and will save you $$. Even a Rem barrel will work if you want to put the time in it to shorten and re-thread and touch up the chamber.

I guess the 270 cal is not gay for a woman so I won't try to talk you out of it.

JeffG's pkg looks pretty good. Depending on the contour, you could shorten/thread and chamber that barrel for a Savage. You would have to decide if it would be cost effective to put work into his barrel or buy one that has some/most of the work done. Savage threads will not clean up Rem threads w/o shortening the Rem barrel.

If you had a finish reamer, I think that it would be pretty easy to do a 270-08 on a Savage 110 small shank action with a reworked Savage 110 or Marlin XL7 barrel. There is enough threaded shank on the Marlin XL7/XS7, Savage 110 series, and Stevens 200 barrels to allow for the barrel to be shortened by +/-0.6".

That said, building a 270-08 seems like an expensive way to replicate the performance of the 7mm-08.

As everyone said there are better and cheaper ways to do it, but I'll note for the record that Hart lists the 270 Redding on their website.