Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Neidner-Sukalle chambering -- what to do?

I just purchased an A.O. Neidner target rifle with a heavy barrel by William Sukalle. It was made before 1930, and seems to be chambered for the original wildcat .257 Roberts. I'd be interested in opinions on whether I should have the chambering modified to fit the post-1934 Remington commercial .257 Roberts cartridge or to the .257 Ackeley Improved.

I would do a chamber cast and have a set of dies made for the chamber it has now. Shouldn't be too expensive, likely the same $$ or less than having it rechambered, and you won't be screwing with a piece of history.

Very cool grab there! What action was it built on?

I would dearly love to see some pictures.

Large ring Mauser.

At the moment I only have the seller's pictures. I plan to photograph it myself soon.

http://zincavage.org/N-S1.jpg

http://zincavage.org/N-S2.jpg

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Horn buttplate & pistol grip cap

http://zincavage.org/N-S7.jpg

Pre-1930 Niedner stamp:

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Pre-1935 Sukalle stamp on underside of barrel:

http://zincavage.org/N-S13.jpg

Neat old rifle!

I vote with The Kid: Get some dies made for the chamber as-is. That's too nice an old, original rifle, and it will be easy to make cases to fit the chamber.

try the DeFlave technique- drop the pin on a 22-250 cartridge and see what happens.

Get the chamber cast before making any decisions. I vote also to leave it alone and conform to whatever it turns out to be. Mr. Niedner isn't around anymore to make you another one.

Another vote for doing a chamber cast and getting dies made.

The only way I would rechamber that grand old rifle would be if the cast showed it to be some unobtainable brass to make cases from.

I've got a chamber casting. (Just can't find my calipers, and am waiting for new ones from Amazon to arrive.) The casting looks exactly like the .257 Roberts drawing in Richard Lee's Modern Reloading, but the seller said that .257 Roberts wouldn't chamber.

What with one thing and another --the bullet part of the casting is miking approximately .257--, I think the inevitable conclusion is that the rifle is chambered for the old wildcat .257.

WOW! Thank you for the pictures, that rifle is OFF THE CHART for a cool factor.

I hope that you get some ammo made up and hunt with this great old rifle.

Do you know the rifleing twist rate yet? If 1 in 14, you will be slightly limited in your bullet choices, but there are still some good options out there.

If it happens to be 1 in 14 (I hope it is a 1 in 10) PM me and I will give you ideas as to some good deer bullets that will stabilize in that slow twist. I have had several 250/3000 Savage model 99's so twisted and lots of modern, high BC bullets just wont work.

Congratulations, and good hunting to the both of you!

Thanks for the kind words. Just the kind of comment that comes in handy for reading to the wife to convince her that buying another gun was really a good idea.

I ordered dies from CH4D. He had a set of .257 wildcat on the shelf. He had made dies, years ago, once before and when he makes a new die set, he always makes two. His notes said that the previous set was made for a guy who had a Neidner rifle made in the early 1930s.

I don't know the twist rate, I'm afraid, but Bill Sukalle was a very painstaking barrel-maker and a fanatical accuracy freak, so I suspect he used the right one.

So, you bought a set of .257 wildcat dies before micing your chamber casting? Let's hope the gods are smiling upon you!

1) Dave Davison at CH4D said he'd take the dies back if they weren't the right ones.

2) I did mike the bullet part of the casting. It mikes .257, and the casting looks just like the picture of the regular .257 Roberts in Richard Lee's Modern Reloading.

3) The rifle was made before 1930. Remington commercialized the cartridge and changed the taper of the neck from 15 degrees to 20 degrees in 1934. The seller said that regular .257 Roberts would not chamber and included a messed up .257 case which had not chambered.

I think the odds are pretty overwhelming that the chambering is going to be the old .257 Neidner wildcat.

I would have preferred to have just gotten the chambering modified so I could buy ammo, but I asked for opinions on several gun discussion boards and got about 20+ replies telling me that it would be sacrilege to change the chambering. Not one reply was in favor of modifying the chambering. Sigh.

Bullet and .257 load recommendations would be helpful.

I would love to provide some help, but you really need to know for sure the rifling twist. A very accurate barrel can be made that has a very slow twist to it, that barrel will simply be accurate with a lighter (more accurately SHORTER) bullet than the barrel with a faster twist. So, despite the barrel maker being good at his craft, he well could have used either twist rate depending upon whether the rifle was going to be used for Varmints and Targets or medium game like deer. A 1 in 14 twist barrel will typically shoot well with bullets of 87grs and under, although some will stabilize some 100 grain pills. A 1 in 10 will stabilize about any .257 bullet up to and including those weighing 117-120 grains.

For reloading data, just start with the starting loads for any 257 Roberts and add powder until your chronograph tells you that you have hit the book max speeds for a plain 257 Roberts, assuming that you do not experience any obvious danger/overload signs along the way such as flattened or cratered primers, stiff bolt lift etc. When one sees such signs, he is usually way past normal and safe pressures.

To check the rifleing twist, run a tight, slightly lubed patch into the barrel. Make a mark on the top dead center of the cleaning rod near the back of it. Push the patch through the barrel until the top dead center mark comes back to it TDC spot and measure how many inches the rod travelled before it came to a full circle. If it took only 9 or 10 inches of travel to make a complete circle, then you have a fast enough twist to use any bullet. If the distance between the TDC marks is 14 inches, you will be limited to 87 grain bullets with possibly some shorter 100gr bullets stabilizing well enough to shoot and hunt with.

Another method would be to load some lower velocity or starting loads for a regular 257 Roberts with 120 grain bullets then try to shoot groups at 25, then 50 yards. A 1 in 14 twist barrel will have those long bullets hitting the target somewhat sideways with an oval shaped hole, if they even hit the target at all.

I hope this helps some.

Since the Sukalle barrel is a very heavy barrel, and the rifle once had a Unertl type scope on it, I think it is safe to identify it as a target/varmint rifle, rather than a deer rifle. I will try to measure the twist rate soon.

The CH4D dies arrived today. He labelled them as ".25 Roberts," which I thought was an interesting, though highly ambiguous, nomenclature

Oh man when do you see an original like that.. A re chamber would render that thing just another Mauser. The chambering is everything on this one. I would find a period correct scope and have some fun..

Yep. And if this rifle was twisted 1 in 14 just load up some light varmint bullets and start smacking down the rodents and coyotes with it.

If you get tired of it, please PM me.

JD_Zincavage-

Ned Roberts wrote many articles about his .25 caliber cartridges in The American Rifleman in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Unfortunately, the magazine was rarely indexed then, and digging out the material is tedious.

However, I found the following information in Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading, 3rd edition, 2nd printing, copyright 1953, on pages 358 and 359. It seems to be pertinent to your questions, including loading.



I have no idea whether Sharpe is correct in his statement regarding the relationship between loads for the .25 Roberts and the .257 Roberts. Once you have some cases fireformed for your rifle, you can check relative case volumes.

Use your rifle wisely.
--Bob

Thanks, that's just the kind of information I'm looking for.

My first thought was to try necking down 7x57 cases, but I've gotten replies telling me that neck sizing regular .257 Roberts cases should work. I'm not sure what case could be fire formed.