Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats What to do with a .411 Mauser Barrel?

Hello To all,

I'm new to the forum, but wanted to dive right in with both feet, so to speak.

A few years ago I bought a fine FN Mauser commercial rifle, it had double set triggers, beautiful maple stock, an older el-paso weaver scope- and it was chambered in a true wildcat, a .411-240 Weatherby- I got the gun, some handloads, and a set of 41 Magnum dies. it was quite finiky, using the belt of the weatherby case to headspace, and only having the ability to necksize the cases with the pistol dies- also even then .240 Weatherby cases were more rare than hen's teeth to come by.
The rifle quickly headed off to the gunsmith and had a .220 swift heavy barrel installed and the .411 barrel was lost into the 'gunparts closet'.

Now after a few years I've rediscovered my treasure, and been thinking of something to do with said barrel- what do you'all think of a .411-7.62x54? rifles/actions should be readily available, the cartride would headspace on the shoulder, and both the action and the ammo should be easy to accomodate and feed through the magazine? I think nowadays .411 bullets for the .405 winchester are available, as well as pistol bullets, and bullet molds for casting.

anyone heard of anything similar to this before?- thanks in advance, Desert shooter

Rimmed cartridge, would headspace on the rim, right?

Otherwise I have no opinion. Good luck.

Check out a guy named Grenadier on Accurate Reloading. Has the drawings and reamer. You can find out anything you want to know from him.

Thank you much for the info papat, much appreciated!

I'd take enough off the back to do a .400 Whelen.

I've thought about the 400 Whelen, except for the case belt, (which never really fed from the magazine reliably) it was pretty much what the original owner had accomplished. I've built a couple 35 Whelens on 98 actions (one scoped, one peep sighted) and love both of them, but still food for thought- I read the thread on accurate reloading about the .405 Grenadier, it looks really interesting- and just about what I would want, for a next project.

Kinda interesting in the wildcat world- if you dream it, someone else has already done it

Of course, it is always great to be at the 'daydreaming stage' and not at the 'oh what kind of money pit did I get myself into?' stage of such projects

This. Whack off enough to lose the belt recess, re-thread, re-chamber. '06 brass for re-forming is about as common/available as you can get.

Another vote for the .400 Whelen.

Why not a 405 Winchester. 300gr Hornady at 2200fps sounds plenty potent to me.

+1

.405 WCF sounds interesting too, readily available ammo, brass, and dies. without looking into a lot of dimensions and such, what actions would readily ft the 405WCF, besides a pricey win 1895, or a single shot? has anyone done one on a milsurp action? the siamese mausers are pretty hard to come by too-

one plus for the 400 whelen is it would work in a 98 action, or an 03' if I cut down the barrel as gnoahh, and elkhunternm suggest.

I'm curious but will never know why the rifle wasn't a 400WH and was cut for the 240weatherby case to begin with- but I think the problems with the belted case is why I got a deal on it in the first place- it was a a pawnshop's table at a gunshow

By the way gnoahh, love your signature quote- that is an excellent john prine song

How about a .411 KDF. Plenty .458 Win Mag cases about, just neck down and go shoot.

That's my thoughts too,

I have a 400 Whelen which shoots fine with 0 headspaceing problems,,, but it'll only take a hint of a problem and it's sent off to be KDF'd !

400gr @ 2400fps as opposed to 2150fps,,

Another vote for the KDF...

Rebore to 450 Marlin?

True Brazos, it would headspace on the rim- you're dead on correct. I should have been better at stating that it would get away from headspacing on the cartridge belt, that proved so troublesome

If you went the .411 KDF, you 'd need a gunsmith who knew how to tweak the feed rail configuration, too. Not that is a killer, but another step to think about. No flies on the .400 Whelen, for sure.

Ed

Did the OP ever move forward on this project? Seems like an old thread, but with gun loonies, sometimes it takes a while to make a decision...

My vote would have been for a 404 Jeffries or something like that. IIRC, isn't the Jeffries case beltless? Which is why it is used for the basis of the new Nosler Magnum cases? (and many others)

Bob