Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles .416 Taylor Project

I live around brown bears. As if to prove that point, 20 minutes before I sat down to type this, one ran down a street 75 yards from my house in a fairly crowded residential neighborhood. The potential for running into brown bears colors just about every outdoor activity I engage in around here for much of the year; Hiking, picnics, berry picking, deer hunting, backpacking, stream fishing, and so on. I've been fortunate to have many exciting encounters with these intelligent animals and never tire of seeing them. Problems with them are rare but serious when they occur. It's a very good plan to be ready to fight every time you go in the woods in Southeast Alaska's brown bear country. I've carried various rifles around here for nearly 20 years including the .375 H&H, 9.3x62, .45-70, and .444 Marlin. I've killed various brown bears with the .375 and 9.3. Experience hiking, hunting, and getting charged by brown bears has shown me that I like plenty of power in a light yet shootable rifle. The ability to shoot rapidly can be very important. My 9.5lb .375 is a proven killer but after a bout with tennis elbow from carrying it one handed around the action for mile after mile I no longer enjoy hiking it from sea level to 3000 feet or other all day ventures such as hiking or fishing. The 7.5lb 9.3x62 is just right for weight and kills things just as well as the .375. If forced to pick one rifle, it would have to be the 9.3 because it gives .375 performance in an '06 sized gun with greater capacity than the H&H.

But two things made me think a bigger rifle might be in order. First of all, I'm a rifle loony. I enjoy figuring out exactly what rifle and chambering would work for a need and then making it happen. Secondly, I've long wanted something .4+ in a bolt action just to have more smash at close range. I think about the worst bear to run into would be a huge old boar feeling predatory, guarding a food cache or nursing some injury. Studying Alaska history and talking with folks who've experienced these fellows indicates they are the worst ones to run into. They're big and strong, and they've had enough fights and injuries in life to feel pretty capable.

I tried a .458 once with full snuff 500 grainers. Recoil was there for sure. I would not plink with one! The worst thing to me however was the recoil was just to much for me to shoot the gun with as rapid a rate a fire as I would like. After reading up on Africa hunting history the ballistics of the .450/400 and .404 Jeffrey seemed to be exactly what I was looking for; plenty of power and low enough recoil for fast follow-ups. Problem was, neither of these could be easily made up in a fairly light weatherproof rifle. I decided on the .416 Taylor. .416 splits the difference between the .450/400's .405 and the .404's .423 diameters. .416 bullets are widely available, and .458 brass from which to form cases is available consistently.

But enough rationalizing, lets get to the project. Last year a scored a suitable donor here, a Model 70 5 digit classic stainless in 7mm mag. The original plan was to have Pac Nor rebarrel it since they do great work and were the only barrel maker who agreed to make up a suitably light contour barrel. Then they went and burned down. My favorite rebore guy, Jesse at JES said he doesn't do .416s. I ended up handing the job to Dan Pedersen of Classic Barrel and Gun Works. After some measurements, Dan confirmed there was enough meat in the barrel at my specified 20.5" length for the .416 rebore so I sent him the rifle in February with the assurance it would be done in early May. Dan called the first week of May, told me the rifle was done, and that he would be shipping it the following day. When I offered payment he said to just throw a check or MO in the mail once I got the gun.

The rifle failed to arrive when promised. After three calls in as many weeks, each with an assurance that the rifle would be sent the next day I grew increasingly grumpy. Shame on me for not looking at this before, but a google search revealed I was not the first person Dan has failed to ship a rifle to in a timely manner. My calls began to go unanswered, and Dan doesn't email. Then one day in June I found his website was gone. Gone as in there was no longer a website at that address any longer. Now you could say I was becoming more concerned and aggravated. I made a report to Prescott PD in order to have things documented. The patrol officer assigned to my complaint was very polite and competent but was also unable to track Dan down that day. I threw down my open-source internet skills and found a phone number for a woman who was most likely Dan's wife. I left a voicemail, waited a day with no response and then began texting her. She admitted Dan was her husband and said she knew of my rifle waiting to be shipped while mentioning unspecified troubles. I politely reminded her such was none of my business, but that the rifle certainly was so send it to me now. The rifle arrived a few days later. I sent the check and advised Prescott PD that same day.

The first thing I noticed was the cartridge stamping on the barrel. It's a total slob job:



Maybe an apprentice did the work? The muzzle was also colored brown from the heat of cutting or crowning and there were marks on the barrel from where it was chucked in a lathe. These were no signboards for good craftsmanship within so I broke out the Teslong for a look inside. There was some encouraging looking stuff in there and some truly concerning stuff:



By now as you can imagine I was feeling really "good" about this project. But one thing I learned upon getting the borescope is that I have a couple rifles that are proven, consistent shooters which come to find out have some horrific looking bores. So I pressed on. But no kidding, this thing was so bad it would snarl and grab bits of patches. I spent an evening with Kroil and JB bore paste smoothing things out until a patch would survive a trip down the bore. Then I took to fitting a NECG banded front sight



The best way I've found to do this is to mount an old hunk of barrel or suitable piece of dowel in a vise, coat it with valve grinding compound, and then work it on the barrel/dowel equally by focusing pressure on the four points of the compass alternately. The water soluble compound is preferred because it allows easy, frequent checks on the progress of your work


More to follow................

Horrible workmanship and service.

What a bummer!
Is there a silver lining? Does it shoot like a house on fire?
Cringeworthy, but I enjoy your writing. Good work.

If nothing else, hopefully you save someone else from the same ordeal.

After getting the sight fitted to the barrel I decided to try stippling, aka matting. This is a classic old technique for finishing parts such as sights and receiver bridges. It eliminates glare and I like the look. It seemed this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I used a ball peen hammer and a fairly sharp punch to do the work. I found it's pretty simple and easy to do by holding the punch lightly over the work while gently tapping it so that you keep the punch moving across the surface. If one patch of work doesn't match up with the rest, you just go over it until it does. I held the sight in the vise by first slipping it over the old barrel piece in order to hold it securely without crushing it. I think the next time I do this I'll attempt an unpunched border around the perimeter of the sight, just for contrast.



Next up was rust bluing. For those who haven't tried this before, it's incredibly simple, easily done at home, and looks good. NECG supplies this sight with a nicely polished finish to begin with so there was no polishing needed. Here's what you need to do this, along with distilled water and a pot:



The bluing looked good after six or seven cycles. Next up would be mounting the sight to the barrel.

Dang, very cool project and sorry you had such a time with the rebore/rifling. I feel for you!

It does look like it'll be a thumper though. Can't wait to see the finished unit!

I believe you are on the right track with the 416 Taylor with a caveat.

You mention the 450/400’s. I have some experience with the 3” version. It is supposed to move 400’s at around 2100 fps. It is surprisingly comfortable to shoot. There are effectively two 404’s. The old loads were a 400 at 2100 but more “modern” loads approach 2400. There is a big difference in recoil. With a 400 grain bullet you feel every 50 fps increase.

I would load your Taylor with a TSX, either the 300 or 350 to about 2550 or 2300 respectively. Pressures are modest and the recoil levels will be much like the 450/400’s. I find those much more comfortable than a 375. These ballistics are close to the old 400 Whelen without the brass problems associated with that cartridge.

I have been thinking of doing something similar for myself. I’ll be starting with a new barrel however.

You are correct sir! I'll get to load data in a bit.

Very cool project sorry to hear about the piss poor service that’s super frustrating!

I have always thought a .416 Taylor an awesome idea based upon your exact situation here; any 7RM or 338WM rebored upward and VIOLA!

Looking forward to hearing how this turns out thanks for sharing!

Next up was installation of the front sight. I've used acraglas before but anymore I prefer Loctite 620 because it's a consistent product and temperature safe to something over 600 degrees. The thought being this might come in handy in case I want to have a rifle ceracoated some day. 620 is formulated to bond cylinders and works very well. My tests on scrap indicate it would work well on even a non-banded front sight such as the other NECG or Williams units. Myself and friends have mounted sights this way on some hard use rifles and have not had any failures yet with either adhesive, but I think the Loctite may be stronger. One disadvantage to the Loctite 620 is a much shorter working time compared to acraglas. You've only got about 30 seconds before it's set.



The first step to mounting the sight is to have a vise on your workbench which is level. My garage floor is sloped for a drain so it was necessary to shim my vise slightly to get it level. The next step is to mount the barreled action in the vise and make sure it's leveled. As you can see in the picture the barreled action needs to be leveled vertically and horizontally. Then the sight is put on the barrel to confirm final fit one more time and pencil in witness marks so that you can quickly get the sight set with the Loctite. Once the adhesive is applied to the barrel and sight, you slip it into place lined up with the witness marks and quickly confirm with a small level placed atop the sight as pictured.





Here's a pic of the start of a screw up on my part. It turns out I put too much adhesive on the sight as pictured. When I slipped it on green stuff went everywhere and proved to be so distracting to me that I left the sight off kilter from my witness mark and the adhesive set up with the sight off center. Looking down the barrel was an embarassment! It seems part of every project for me is figuring how how to redo or mitigate errors such as this. It turned out to be an easy fix by using a propane torch to heat the sight until I could wiggle it of with a crescent wrench. The unfortunate part was that the wrench scratched and marred the sides of the sight so I had to polish the marks out and reblue the sight. Thankfully, most of the adhesive residue was easily removed and what was left didn't interfere with the blue job. It turned out pretty well.



Next would be load development.................

Killer details. Thank you!

Sorry to hear about the poor service from the smith, but I am enjoying the build along. Looking forward to seeing it all come together.

After getting the sight done I bedded the front of the action with Marinetex. I replaced the factory action screws with hex head screws from NECG. I have them on other rifles and find them to be of excellent quality. The hex hole on the head of the screws is quite deep and seems impossible to strip out. They all come a touch long but it's a simple matter to trim them to proper length using a hacksaw and file. The primary reason I use these screws is because you can put witness marks on them which allows reassembly of the barreled action in the field in case you have to break the rifle down for emergency cleaning. I've had this happen twice, once due to mud, and once due to a salt water dunking on day two of an eight day trip. In either circumstance to have left the rifle assembled and dirty would have invited disaster. I've found that if a rifle is well bedded and the torque can be replicated thanks to witness marks the gun will be zeroed or very close to it upon reassembly, Next I mounted a proven Leupold VX II 1-4 in Talley low QDs. By proven I mean to say this scope previously served on a .375 H&H without issue. I would never stick an unproven Leupold on this sort of rifle.





The .416 Taylor is simply the .458 Winchester necked down by running the parent case into a Taylor die. The biggest hurdle to my project was locating reloading dies. All the major makers no longer have them in production and they seem rare as hens teeth on the used market. CH4D will make them on a custom basis but luckily I was able to obtain a Lee set from a member here, and recently I obtained a set of RCBS dies locally. Both work equally well. The next issue was loading data. I found some ballpark data for H4895 in an old A-Square manual, and Gunner500 here provided some of his data using CFE223. I decided to try 400 grainers from Barnes and Swift to start, and loaded up test rounds ranging from well below up to listed maximums in what data I could find. After setting up the chrony and shooting some previously known and consistent .22 ammo through it to verify things, I sat down and tested the .416. It turned out that my starting loads were close enough to maximums that I decided no further pushing of the envelope was necessary. This is because my rifle has a handy 20.5" barrel. The data I found featured 24" barrels. Therefore, taking into account the likely +/-25 fps per inch of barrel lost or gained (A 24" barrel would provide about 87.5 more fps in this case) I decided to go no hotter. All listed below are the average of 5 shots:

400gr A-Frame

66gr H4895 2271 fps
75gr CFE223, 2298 fps

400gr TSX

66gr H4895, 2264 fps
75gr CFE223, 2290 fps

Of note, there was inconsistent COL and therefore feeding issues with the CFE223 load with that long Barnes bullet. I'm convinced this is due to spring back due to the compressed powder charge. Even using a drop tube for the charges didn't help the issue. For a rifle made to use on dangerous game, the liability of inconsistent chambering ammo is not worth the measly bit of velocity gained.

I found the velocity I was getting exciting! I'm an American! More velocity is more better!! Accuracy with the above loads seemed adequate but not stellar, with groups ranging from 1.75-3" at 100 yards. One detriment to accuracy testing is that I discovered my recoil tolerance! With these loads from the bench the first several are workable but by the time I got to eight or ten, the thing really kicked like a bastard! I had to give it a rest for a couple days. On my next range session I did some drills with a timer and brought along the 9.3 and .375 as well. The .416 was much more manageable offhand but my rate of fire was noticeably slower than with the other two rifles. I really value rapid fire, having found it useful before on multiple deer and in dealing with bears, so this slowness was disconcerting. I like a rifle to be light enough to carry up and down mountains and through some really miserable brush. This rifle was light enough to carry easily but I was paying the price in a reduced rate of fire so I decided to return to my original idea of duplicating .404 ballistics. I would have to return to the reloading bench.

Surely you must mean Allen recess, not hex head?

",,,,,, return to my original idea of duplicating .404 ballistics. I would have to return to the reloading bench. [/quote]"

DARN, More time at at th reloading bench, Don't throw me in that brier patch !!! ENJOY

Thanks for sharing your project, good stuff.

I'm anxiously awaiting your next post! RJ

PA, congrats on the 416 T. I'd take that any day of the week over the 416 ruger, so I wouldn't have to use that sht hornady brass or cartridges. Could actually resize higher quality brass!

I always scratched my noggin, pondering why the 416 T wasnt a factory cartridge.

Drop down to a 350 grainer at 2400-2500 fps. You'll recover from recoil quicker. Those 400 grainers are clumsy overkill.

Put a mauser together for my fathers african hunt
Used varget and woodleigh bullet took care of his cape buffalo

After my initial round of load experimentation I leaned towards Mainer's sort of thinking and ordered some 350gr TSXs with the intent to see how fast I could drive them. Member Bobmn kindly supplied me with a fired .416 Ruger case so I could use Muledeer's Rule #1 to figure some stuff out. Rule #1 states: Potential velocity increases or decreases at 1/4 the rate of case capacity in cartridges of the same bore diameter. I first weighed fired each case dry, then filled the cases with water, pushed a bullet in to the seated depth, removed the case, and then weighed it with the remaining water. The water capacity of the Ruger was 84.3 gr and the Taylor was 74.0 gr. The Ruger therefore has 13% more capacity. 13 divided by 4 is 3.25% so therefore the Taylor should be capable of 96.75% of the Ruger's velocity. Swift's manual shows top velocities for 350s between 2500-2400. After making adjustments for 3.25% less, and my rifle's shorter barrel I could figure on a safe velocity between 2400-2450 with 350s.

Then I got to thinking about what exactly I was after with this rifle. The whole point of the thing is to hunt brown bears, defense against brown bears, and to hunt deer in brown bear country. I went back and ran some numbers for a 400 grainer at 2150. The 400 grain bullet would provide a useful trajectory to 200 yards without much trouble. Upon reflection I realized it's been a long time since I shot any critter beyond 200 yards. Even my furthest mountain goat was killed at 230 yards. I realized with the 350s I would basically be trying to recreate the .375 I already owned. There's nothing wrong with that except that I was after more smash up close where problems are likely. I've had occasion to kill charging brown bears at 15,12, 7, and 2 yards. The one at 2 yards was actually jumping up at me when the 300 grain Nosler .375 smashed into it's chest. With those experiences indelibly in my mind I decided I'd want the 400 grainer in those situations rather than the 350.



Based on the seemingly better availability of the Barnes over the Swift, I decided to go with the former, and loaded up some test loads, which as it turned out began and ended with 62 gr of H4895. This load averaged 2,152 with 20fps variation, average of 10 rounds. Recoil is right on par with the .375 H&H shooting 300s at 2550. In a fluke, I had one three round bug hole group, but this is more typical:





Sighted .75 high at 100, the big Barnes is 1.5" down at 150, and 6" at 200. By the time it slows to it's lowest expansion velocity of 1600 at 250 yards the bullet drop is 14". This is plenty flat enough for 90% of my hunting.

So as it turns out, in spite of the horrible looking barrel the rifle shoots well enough, especially considering its bore diameter. Speaking of the barrel, I forgot to mention that I treated it with DBC at the start of this project. In spite of this, it's a copper collector. Pictured below are some of the furrows and tears after what for most rifles would be a thorough cleaning. Some cleaned up well and others are stubborn.




Based on my sample of 1, I'm leery of recommending Dan Pedersen's reboring work. This rifle will work for me, but I'm left wondering if my good results are more of an accident than anything else. In the future I'll likely experiment with 350s and the Swift A-Frames, but for now I'm happy with a handy 7.75lb open sight/8.25 pound scoped bear gun. There are streams to be fished and deer to be hunted with things just as they are, ballistically speaking.