Originally Posted by Dirtfarmer
Originally Posted by keith
I I met a gunsmith from San Diego that had a custom 257 with zero freebore and was shooting the 100g Nosler BT and Partitions at 3850. We shot the barrels out in 1600 rounds on chucks and coyotes. We got extra barrel life, due to the fact that the zero freebore added extra barrel life. .

I thought about a zero freebore Wby, but became concerned about someone shooting factory ammo and getting into pressure. As you know, Wby factory ammo is pretty hot. Freebore may tolerate hotter rounds than zero freebore, or at least that's what I've read.

If you know what you have, you can load accordingly. But, if a future owner doesn't know about freebore or the lack there of, he may get excessive pressure with factory ammo. At least that's what kept me from building one.

And, am curious how zero free bore adds extra barrel life.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and experience on this.

DF


I had one of my 270 wby’s rebarreled with no free bore. Gun smith ordered a special reamer for this. He used what he called a throater to set up the leade I wanted. He borrowed my modified case and chamber all to set it up.
The bullet I wanted to use was a 140 Fail Safe. We seated the bullet to the depth we wanted in the case neck.
Then he set the ogive at 20 thousands from touching. He used my chamber all to get this measurement.
You could not use factory ammo in this rifle. Load was 70 grains of rl22 with 140 Fail Safe. 3335 fps avg.
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