Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats 10.6mm x 375 Ruger wildcat

Tis been quite a while, but I've finished up my newest wildcat, and have some Kudos.

For Hornady's custom desk: Using their new custom dept. CNC machine, they cut my 10.6 mm F.L. reloading dies, without any trial cases. They already had the 8mm wildcat data in G code, so I purchased a cheapo set of Lyman 416 Rigby reloading dies, and had the F.L. trimmed .300". Then I formed a couple of basics down to .40 cal. and then ran them through the Lyman F.L. die. One with no expander button, and the other with the Lyman button. I miked both of these two and called in the specs over the phone to Hornady. This should have saved a couple of months, but I lost ground with the barrel, coming all the way from Germany.

I also called in the roll crimp that the Lyman seater put into my cases. ( the seater die was O.K., with the Ruger case, as is.) I did specify a 2.7 inch long case in the F.L. die, in case I need to go long in the future. This Lyman 416 Rigby Seater die will seat and roll crimp, a bullet into my wildcat case, which is made from a 375 Ruger Basic. Only the F.L. die, had to be trimmed back.

With some trepidation, I started to expand factory 375 Ruger virgin brass into my .416 wildcat, and it works with one plunge. Squeezing down the shoulders, and expanding to .416 seem to cancel each other out. It just takes the barest kiss in the case trimmer to make my 2.6" case length. This really beats working down from the cylindrical basics.

Kudos for Woody Woodall, at L. Walther in Georgia: I really had to press my case to get him to trim down his skimpy 1500 Bavarian Special Profile, to replicate as close as possible the infamous military action Rigbys, such as was made famous by P.H. Harry Selby. Excepting for the immediate area ahead of my R.Famage Colombian Mausers receiver, it's really close. Woody was afraid if my wildcat Express didn't head space on it's rather minimum shoulders, I'd re-cut it to .416 Ruger factory specs. So, he properly demanded, enough steel, for that contingency.

I've put just under 100 rounds through it in an old military stock, and twenty more, yesterday, to get it regulated, in it's new sporter stock. Every bullet down this new barrel has been a Speer 350 Mag Tip, from a box of N.O.S., found at a local store, at 60%/retail.

NE.C.G.: Because of my radical (featherweight) barrel profile, and Woody's bulge ahead of the action, the highest patridge front sight in their masterpiece banded base isn't high enough. But my stock is really straight, so I had to use their highest skeletonized single blade rear sight. This is only horizontally adjustable.

Fifty yards is O.K., but the 350's at 2400fps, only come back down to the fixed line of sight, out at 300 yards. We soldered a 1/8th inch steel sliver onto the blade, and I guess we should have went with 1/4 inch. I got the front base from Brownell's who were nice enough to pass me through to Mark at NECG, and I got the unlisted tall sights directly from New Hampshire.

Richards Microfit: I ordered an old classic 98% inletted stock with left hand wood. They specified select Bastogne, for the heavy recoil, and it's also a nice piece of wood. But somebody goofed and it came as a right hand number, and that was after the twelve weeks lead time for lefty orders.

My stock maker G.S. had to leave part of the classic R.H. cheek piece on to reinforce the missing wood in the now very streamlined pistol grip, that I needed to properly shoot it left handed. This stock has two epoxied cross bolts,and is completely glass bedded. It really cries out for a good checkering job, but there's no time left.

It's been stained to approximate Selby's aged reddish French Walnut stock, with the rounded style forearm wood. Only on the crown of the pistol grip, can you still admire the select Bastogne's veins.

A Gentry styled sling band is soldered in between the sights, and all three are hot wrenched using Swift 95-5 paste solder. All in all I used the services of two gunsmiths working up on the Camas Prairie. One did the action and barrel work, and the other did the stock, bluing, and sights.

Besides not having three trial cases for Hornady, I didn't have a chambering reamer, per se, either. So the one G.S. put an oversized pilot onto my PT&G 8mm Wildcat reamer and then finished up the job, with his own neck throat reamer.

I felt that this .416 caliber would be the max for this case that I designed as an Americanized 8 x 68 Schuler, with the help of Dave Kiff, at Pacific Tool and Gauge. The top of the shoulders are only .483 inch, using the tapers we agreed upon. I must have tried Dave's patience, with this over sized, and stouter 270 Win., retro looking, wildcat cartridge.

It turned out to be really serendipitous when I came up with a one half inch long neck in this .416, as I had only ordered a 3/8th's inch long neck in the much smaller 8mm bore. If I do the 375 next, it's neck will be very close to 7/16th's inch long. But everything between 8 and 10.6mm still uses the same PT&G GO Gauge.

So having said and done, I feel that I do have the long awaited, 416 "Baby Rigby", that will duplicate the old Factory ballistics of the much larger cartridge. I'll operate at .416 Taylor pressures to get there, but I have about 2 more grains of H2O in my fired case, than does a Taylor.

Only the original Rigby, the belted 416 Weatherby, and my wildcat have the correct half inch long necks. These are correct, IMO, since for the last hundred years, the bullet makers have been putting their cannelures, one half inch above the .416 caliber bullet bases.

All of these .416's benefit from a good roll crimp into these cannelures, and with these three cartridges, you don't push the bullet, down into the powder space of the cases.

In closing, I have the same volume as the 300 Win Mag belted cases, the half inch long necks of the Rigby's, and mine fit right into standard length Military Mauser actions. Albeit, I fudged, just a bit, by chambering this into a R.Famage Colombian 30 cal. action, that had been bubba'd. I did have my G.S. repair the botched front of the mag. box.

So now I can use the notch in the top receiver ring at the front, and the stripper clip slot in the rear, to drop a 3.5" O.A.L. round straight down into the magazine. It's still not long enough for a 375 H&H to fit, and I want to keep it that way.

Since I'm 65, I have diverged from the Selby Mauser specs, to put a simple medium height scope mount, low scope safety (left handed), and Brownell's custom bolt handle, onto this rifle. I was dubious about using any open sights, but a brand new set of prescription, yellow tinted, shooting glasses, have rolled my eyes back to my early forties. Now, I can actually see these NECG sights.

My stock maker G.S. has blue blackened everything metallic, and installed a Timney trigger, matched to my light rifle's trigger pull, of 3.25 lbs..

Final Kudos to Cabelas at Post Falls, Id. for keeping an aluminum two gun hard side case at the front desk for a week and a half, so I could pick it up and circle over to the ICE office outside of Spokane, Wa..

A week ago Thursday, all I had of this .416 was the barreled receiver in the white. The ICE officer, was dubious of whether this was a real rifle, but he recorded it anyway. What a difference a week makes!

Unless something drastic happens, this wildcat, and my Ruger LH 270 Win. will be in the Cabelas hard case, on a Delta Flight to Cape Town, RSA., in early May. This has been really close, as I have had two really long waits on this year long project.

The first wait was with Woody getting my one off barrel from Germany, via his mythological air freight, and the second delay was waiting twelve weeks for the Richards Microfit outfit, to end screwing up my order for left hand wood.

But my two G.S.'s came through, and I have the metal I designed from scratch, and the now, really streamlined, wood stock, put together, recorded with the Feds, and ready to fly away, on my 'bucket list' Safari.

Yeah its only for small and fast plains game, but some of them are tough enough to use either my Rem. 338 Ultra Mag, or this new .416 std. length wildcat. Interestingly, the Ultra Mag. with older Speer 275 gr. semi spitzers, and this new cat, with Speer 350 gr. Mag Tips weigh within two ounces, per box of twenty, of each other.

Both are just under a kilogram each. ( 33 oz for the 338's, and 2.17lb. for the .416's.) My bare rifle weighs 8 lbs., and nine ounces, empty. And Mr. Selby was right, they really do balance, "very lively".

I'm making up, in weight, by using 270 Win. Federal ammo with 110 gr. Barnes TTSX bullets in my light rifle. The new international airline rule is for no more than five kilograms of ammunition. So you run over the new weight limit, well before you get up to the R.S.A.'s two hundred rounds, for two rifles.

I'll try and put up some photos, here, when I return, "God Willing", in late May.