Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 243 Ackley

OK, I have a 6.5x55, 25-06,7x57, 30-06, 300WSM, and a 300 win mag. I am really thinking about building a .243 Ackley on a Mauser that I just aquired. Probably getting a 24in Shilen bbl and an ambi-thumbhole from MPI. Is this cartridge a good choice for shots out to 500yds? I am all ears, let me know your thoughts. Checking back later. Thanks!

The cartridge certainly has "the right stuff" and available bullet selection if you build a capable rifle around it.

It would be a lot better in an action other than a Mauser. The long lock time is a hinderance. A regular .243 Winchester would be just as good.

Please Tell Me What Lock Time, Has To Do with Case Capacity..

I do know a Mauser is about the last action I'd build it on, that for sure. But if you can saddle with a turd of thumbhole stock you might as well go all in.

Tell me about YOUR 243AI?

Well,c'mon guys someone talk about the cartridge......cause I have a 6mm 8 twist SS Bartlein here that I haven't decided what to do with......

Same boat here.

Ditto!!

It might be ok for a DG rifle. Wouldn't even think about an AI. This is the 21st century, and they sucked even back in the day.

Hell ya...easily. 105 VLD's, or 107 Sierra's combined with a 8 twist makes a nice Long range .243 or .243AI.

Wanna sell your Bartlein?

Good grief!......

I realize that a Mauser isn't as desireable as some higher dollar action, but that being said, I have built several sub-moa Mausers in the past. Amazing things, those lathes! Don't start the whole MPI thing again. Nuff said.

Swampman, I am making a Ti firing pin and going to try some different springs to take care of lock time. Good point though.

More on the cartridge, I have no experience with the 243 AI. Has anyone busted whitetail sized game 400-500 with it?

Seriously Bob, what are you wanting to know about?

This 243AI has went through a couple different stock set-ups but the barreled action is still same/same.

When I first got it back a couple years ago the first bullets I ran were the vld's. This was before R-17 and I was running R-22 at that time. I hit an accuracy node right around 3050fps(iirc). That load shot great in my rilfe and I worked up to 3150 with '22 but never could get to that next accurate node so I stuck wit the 3050 load. This is from when I tried them the first time.



Now when I originally got that rifle it showed up on the 12th of November (2008), I worked up some 100yd loads on the 13th, on the 14th SuperSeal110 and I went and shot some long range groups and on the 15th (opening day of rifle season here) I shot a buck with it.

This is the first group out of the rifle at 700.



Here's SuperSeal110 with the first 5 shots out of the rifle at 1000yds. The group was low and right but we were just working with rough drops from JBM. That's why we put them on the large target just to see how it would shoot. And that was with just a 1" Leupold 3.5-10x in Talley Light-Weights.



The buck I shot was pretty much an absolute worst case scenario for the VLD. He wasn't a big buck, just an average buck for the area we were hunting in. I was walking an old logging road in the afternoon heading back to a ridge that overlooks a good clearcut and I spotted him down in the cedars at prolly around 60-70yds. He was quartering toward me and getting closer. I usually carry a rifle with rounds in the mag, but on an empty chamber. I just chambered a round and shot him in the front part of the shoulder and the bullet went in about 3" through the shoulder and then came apart in the chest cavity. It was absolutely devastating and I just knew that when I walked down to him the shoulder was going to be a mess. It wasn't. ALL the damage was inside the chest cavity. If you do some reading you'll find that just about everyone who uses the VLD says the exact same thing, "they go in a few inches before they every start to open up, and then they open up violently". Now I'm going to give them a pretty good run this year and see how I like them.



Here's the specs.

Trued Rem700 S/A that this is its 3rd barrel.
Rock Creek Fluted SS Rem Varmint Countour 1-9"twist at 24"
Throated to put 105Amaxs in the lands in a factory Rem mag-box

The way it's pictured above is how it was originally set up with a MannersT2 and HS DBM bottom metal. So I ran that T2 for quite awhile before I traded it off. Then I dropped the barreled action into an A5 and still used the HS DBM bottom metal and shot it like that up until about two months ago. Here's what it looked like in the A5. This 5-shot group was one shot with it at 1000yds. I had also swapped glass at some point around this time. I pulled the 1" leupold in favor of a Leupold Mark4 30mm 3.5-10x40 w/M1's and put on a set of Seekins' 30mm al rings and one of his 20mao rails.



About 2 months ago SuperSeal110 was selling an A5 with Rem Varmint contour inlet and ADL bottom metal that he had ordered for his 243AI build and I snatched that one up since I really wanted to switch this rig to ADL.

So this is what it looks like now in the ADL A5 and I'm still running the same 3.5-10x40 Mark4 as well.

Shot this one a couple weeks ago at 705yds.



I've just about 1000rounds through it now. I don't really know where I'll end at with barrel life but am hoping to get 2000-2500 out of it....we'll see. When this barrel is gone I'm going to re-barrel again to 243AI. It'll be another Rem Varmint contour but I'm going to skip the flutes and have it cut to 23". It should balance about the same and I'm not worried about any kind of speed difference 1" of barrel will make. Mostly the change is just because of the cost of fluting. I don't feel it's worth it to put the money for fluting in the next barrel is all.

I thought i shot all my 6mm 105VLD's up but was looking through my bullets the other day and found a few left. I loaded some up to feed from the mag and they were jumping .040". I run 44.5gr of '17 with moly'd 105Amax's and these VLD's I had previously moly'd, so i just backed off to 44 gr and shot them on paper and they went into 1/2"(ish) at 100. I'm gonna load up the last 20 or i have on hand and shoot them at distance and see how that load holds up. If it holds up then I'm done with load work up. The 44.5gr 105Amax load is chrono'd at 3250 so I'm thinking I'm at around +-3200 with the 44gr load.

POI was just a hair left of where it shoots the Amax's.

[img]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f281/brdeano/Shooting/IMG_20110316_172815.jpg[/img]

Excellent post, Brad. Your .243ai sure shoots good. I'm hoping mine shoots the same.

Awesome rig! I guess that answers my question about the .243AI and distance. Can't wait to get started on my project.

Brad: Thanks, that's what I wated to know about because I'll likely use a Rem 700 action....and I'm interested in a 6mm for use with the heavier Bergers and the Amax bullets....this will be for woodchucks and varmints, here and out west.Maybe deer and antelope as well.

I assume yours is a short Rem 700?

And how do you form the AI case?

Do you feel the velocity advantage is enough more than,say, a 6XC to be worthwhile,comsidering the bullets I'll be using?

Nice buck BTW.....

Works pretty well at killing stuff out to at least 600. I do not think I have taken any animals other than crows past 600 but both of the pictured above were between 500 and 600.

500 yds is nothing for that or the standard .243 round, heck I do that with my .223...course thats just on p-dogs.
A pal is having a benchmark bbl made for his Ruger action. He wants a harder hitting round than his .220 swift and he shoots that to 600+ all the time.
I just dont think a 1/12 twist is going to be what he thinks it will be after its done & said.
Im going to have a .243AI bbl made for my Savage action when I get the current build done myself.

Bob, mine's on a S/A 700, all the specs are listed in that long post (grin)

I just FF with max(ish) loads of the parent chambering. I really don't know about the 6XC so I can't say. How fast are they getting the 105's up to in it? I'm running them at 3250 via '17 and moly. Some guys don't like the FF thing and bitch about wasting barrel life, but I'm still working on the same inital 100 pc's of Lapua brass I started with (minus a few I've lost here and there). I just don't buy into the wasting barrel life argument. This batch of brass could very likely last as long as the barrel. I've not yet had to trim the brass yet either, I don't clean primer pockets, barely ever tumble them.......I just like to load 'em and shoot 'em. (grin)

The 6mm-284 would be better IMO. That pile driver firing pin in that Mauser isn't going to help your accuracy but it will ignite a primer.