I have a 225 Winchester that I am getting ready to load for. This is not a Winchester, but rather a Savage model 340. I figured this should make a neat varmint gun. Most times when you read articles concerning the 225 winchester, they are based off a model 70. There have been several people who have questioned the strength of the 340 action. I was one who believed that had the action been unsafe, Savage would not have produced it. Some say the reason that Savage didn't produce them long was due to the fact that they realized that they were pushing it with those pressure levels. I thought it was more due to the fact that the 22-250 came along and pretty much killed the 225. Anyway, there are very few places that I know of that I can actually research the action strength of the 340. When you look at loads developed for the 225 Winchester, I found 2 sources with pressure data. Hodgdon shows pressure levels up to 50,000 CUP and accurate shows up to 60,000 PSI. This does seem high for the gun but I don't really know.
Here is the question I have concerning if this is BS. I was researching on the internet, (not sure where else), and stumbled across an interesting post in another forum. I can't remember what the forum was, but they were discussing the 225 specifically in the model 340. One poster claimed that at full pressure the action actually flexed rather severely. His case was that new brass shot fine and grouped well, but he could never get the 2nd firing of his brass to group anywhere near as accurate as first time. When he inspected his brass, he said it was bent and no amount of resizing could get it out. His claim was that the action flexed violently enough to bend the brass. Now if it were just one guy, I would probably have written him off as a bit loony, but there was another owner that said he noticed the exact same thing in his model 340 as well, and for that reason he shot some pretty low pressure stuff. BS or likely?
Some will say just go and test it yourself. The problem is that 225 brass is rather rare and expensive, and I only have 50 or so pieces to load. I do not relish the thought of ruining brass in order to test it, plus if the action is flexing to that extent it seems like I am sitting on a time bomb.
I did think of running lower pressure, and I will try that. In Hodgdon data, they show one powder that produces lower pressure and that is H414. That is with a 40 grain bullet. It shows pressures at 40-43k CUP instead of the normal 45-50k CUP. But if that powder does not work, (it does seem pretty slow) all the others listed are at the higher pressure levels. I am just not sure what to think, so I would like some input please.
Last edited by Jevyod; 05/09/19.
