Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors .348 Reloads?

With ammo hard to find, do your reloads need to be crimped? Not shooting targets, but hunting rounds?

I always crimp my lever gun rounds. Doesn’t need much but the Lee FCD does a great job.

This.

I have an un fired Mirkoru Win. Mod. 71 in the shop being converted to a .348 Ackley Improved as I wanted a more velocity for the 250 grain Alaska Bullet Works bonded bullets. That and I only hunt Alaska and plan to hunt moose, caribou and bear with it. Any way if the smith ever finishes it I will fire form some brass and send it to Whidden for a resizing and seater die. I am also calling Lee and asking them if their regular .348 crimp die will crimp the Ackley Improved case. I think it will, but if not I will have them make one up.

I have always crimped my lever gun center fire ammo if the rifle has a tubular magazine. I believe that and a full case of powder is a good idea and helps to avoid the bullets being pushed into a case from recoil.

The Lee FCDie will crimp your 348 Ack Imp cartridges. I have both the 348 WCF and the Imp
rifles. The 348 Ackley is a perfect cartridge for Alaska as it gets into action much faster than a bolt gun-and its a 35 Whelen basically in a lever
action rifle. It is also wise to use 3450 or some other slow powder that will fill the case.
I have killed moose with a 348 Ackley using a Hawk 270 gr bullet. Also have a few
experimental Hawk 348 FP bullets that are 300 gr. Amazing sectional density and perfect for bear. But the Ak Kodiak 250 bonded core is the way
to go-or Woodleigh. The extra case capacity makes the 250 gr bullets about perfect. I prefer the original Win Model 71 or the Browning version.
Any later rifle with an extra tang safety is useless-and may get you hurt. Both Winchester and Marlin
should have known better. John Browning knew his rifles -no extra safety in the designs.

For what it's worth, another Lee Factory Crimp Die user.

Always crimp.

The final step.

Off topic but I just saw one of North61's videos stating that Hornady is no longer making any 348 bullets. It seems I may have been one of the last people informed as almost all the online retailers are out of stock.

Thanks, Dinny

I had to grind the bottom of the collet down essentially the same amount that the AI case is shortened from the factory 348 case.

If you think about how the die works, this makes sense.

Now that I have shortened the collet about 75 thou, it crimps the AI case fine.