Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why does AI job require a setback barrel?

My last $.02 and then I’m broke.......
I’ve owned both Ackley handbooks since forever and schemed and dreamed of personalizing several of my own rifles. Three thoughts have always kept my money in my pocket....

Initial cost/setup/dies/etc....
resale, if I decide to move it....
and inheritance- neither of my sons reload or are very interested in hunting. Any AI’d firearm I left them would be an albatross.....

I’m better off to spend the money on a hunt somewhere.

Good points.

My perspective comes from owning or testing rifles chambered in some of those exotic rounds, including improved rounds such as the .22 K-Hornet, and several "Ackley Improveds," (even though Ackley himself did not include some of them in his books) including the .223 Remington, .257 Roberts, 7mm-08 Remington, .280 Remington and .35 Whelen. What I found is that none of them made any noticeable difference in ballistics, when their "parent rounds" were loaded to the same sort of pressures. Oh, you could sometimes see another 100 fps on a chronograph, but there was zip difference in the field, even before we started twisting turrets.

The only difference I could actually see was less case stretch, but as noted earlier that advantage pretty much disappeared as newer cartridges started featuring steeper shoulders.

Many years ago I asked Vern and Arnold Juenke why they used a 45 degree shoulder for their Saturn Custom line. They both said that the high pressures and velocities stretch cases, and case life was the real consideration. Hype and competing with Roy Weatherby's marketing was the "lure" pulling in buyers. Saturns were the king of hyper velocity then. The barrels and chambers had a long jump and slow twist rates to achieve the velocities they claimed, and they were honest figures. I owned a 25-270 ICL Ram that I used to take my desert bighorn and had a sweet 7X57 ICL Tortilla for a while. I replaced it with an HVA 7X57 AI my friend the pawnbroker sold me for a song; it has a faster twist, and I like 150-160 gr bullets in a 7mm.

Case life for those who blue-pill is the only honest rationalization for "improving" old standards. Back when the 300 H&H was a hot item the ICL/AI/Weatherby shoulders made sense.

Heh... the Ackley Imp. debate continues off topic, yet again, from the original post.

While we're throwing a couple of pennies around, here's mine.

In another life & time I owned & operated a gunshop evenings & weekends, doing gunshows once or twice a month. I picked up a nicely done, but really ugly custom 257 Ackley on a Mauser action in a fancy '60s style really shiny stock with exaggerated rollover cheekpiece, whiteline contrasting forend, swollen pistol grip, etc. for a little more than the cost of an action at a show. At least the bluing was nice. I always thoroughly cleaned & test fired used guns before selling them.
A. to see if they were keepers
B. to be sure there was nothing wrong with them.
The 257 was fun to mess around with & I even bought dies for it. This was B.C. (before chronograph), so no idea of the true speeds, but accuracy was pretty decent at or near full throttle. Someone else wanted it much more than I did so it went DTFR. Buy low, sell high is a good thing if both parties are happy. Besides, it was an eyesore.

At another show a few years later I got, along with some cash, a factory barreled 700V & a 26" Douglas re-barreled Ruger 77 both Ackleyed in 22-250 & 30-06 respectively in a trade for one decent used Remington 700 BDL in 308. There were problems with both other than terribly copper fouled bores, the headspace being GROSSLY excessive in the 22-250 & the '06 just didn't shoot very well. Adapting my loading procedure & some experimenting turned the 22-250 into a 1/4' gun at unheard of velocities this side of a Jaybird or a CHeetah. The '06 came alive as well after removing all the glass bedding material from places it didn't belong (inside the trigger mechanism, etc.). Dies & brass came with both guns, so there's that too. This was all early 80s to mid 90s so there wasn't all that much new & exciting other than 35 Whelen in a factory rifle happening. I decided to rebarrel a Stainless Stalker to 338-06. The 'smith who took on the job wanted to split the cost of the reamer & since the other Ackleys had turned out so well I opted for a 40* 338-06. Maybe a 100 to 150 fps more with 210 Partitions while back then dies for the standard or the Ackley 338-06 were the same price, so no extra cost. The 280 Rem seemed like another good future Ackley project at the time, & maybe even more so now that Nosler has since made it legitimate.

I still have all three. They're paid for. They work very well (338 is a liitle funny). Brass lasts a long time even at the speeds I load them to (Why drive a hotrod in 2nd gear?). I like them, & wont really care too much if the calibers inconvenience whoever inherits them if I'm dead. I'm unsure about spending a pile of $$ to build a new Ackley today, but I think Douglas or your local gunsmith may be affordable. There's no reason to be afraid of buying a used one either, especially if dies are included in the sale. Think of it as an adventure... & it ain't yet another Creedmoor or SAULSD. What's with acronyms for everything these days?

Blacktail,

Like John said this is a viable method, provided you use something like the lee crimp die to make sure the bullets stay put.

If it were my rifle with this issue and I decided NOT to set the barrel back, knowing that crimping & jamming into the lands can raise pressure, I would use a lower powder charge load to fire form the brass into the extended AI range, and then go from there with reloading based on bumping back the shoulder.

Once it’s formed to the chamber as long as you don’t reset the shoulder it would be fine... just bump the shoulder vs full sizing it.

Although, Given I’m a gunsmith I’d reset the barrel anyway...

I’m still liking my .300 Holland & Holland Improved......aka .300 Weatherby and it’s little 7mm brother and a 3rd cousin twice removed .35 Whelen. Happy Trails

^^^^^^
Do this and you have no problems.

I


Spotshooter. I agree.

My old .270 had excessive head space and I didn’t know it. Not until I loaned it and It wouldn’t reliably fire factor ammo. I had no idea, since I just partial sized cases from day one and never had an issue.
I had the head space corrected by Mike Harris and had a heck of a time chambering my left over reloads.
The barrel stamping showed that very little movement was involved in getting it back to specs.
The factory cases in the long chamber would show very slight firing pin strikes, as it just pushed the case ahead.
Making .270 cases from new 30-06 brass would always leave a small donut that gave a firm head space, that would iron out upon firing. All this in a 700..... a controlled feed action probably would have held the case to fire and I’d have never know there was a problem.......