Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats .30 Gibbs Project 2020

About a year ago I was also on my weekly vision quest through the local gun stores and pawn shops when I stumbled into an old set of reloading dies. They looked like standard garage sale junk, maybe even a little worse, wrapped in clear shrink wrap and simply marked “Reloading Dies - $19”. I looked a little closer and was surprised when I rolled them over and saw they were marked .30 Gibbs. After a brief discussion with the clerk about how it would be hard to find an idiot dumb enough to buy this old wildcat junk and an exchange of barely enough currency to buy a couple tacos (if you like cheap Mexican restaurants and went on a Tuesday) I was on my way.



They were placed in a cardboard box and put on my reloading die shelf next to the .358 Norma and other oddball stuff for “someday” projects when I grew bored with what I was currently shooting.
In about the same time frame I acquired a nice Remington KS take off stock that I used on another project. That project resulted in me sending the barreled action down the road after the rifle came out slightly heavier than I wanted. Hey, math is hard and in rifle looney world a few extra ounces can turn a perfectly satisfactory rifle into something loathsome that has no place in my safe. Although not the stiffest (that’s what she said), it had a nice feel to it (she said that too), and I kept it around for a future build.

Fast forward to the end of this summer and I was just about done wringing out a few summer rifle projects. I realized that I may have just enough pre-hunting season time left for one more project before the “Big Show”, Montana’s General rifle season, starts in late October. Worst case, I could get one started and resume next spring. The Gibbs had been in the back of my mind since I picked up the dies and it seemed to have a lot to offer, at least to those of us that tend to get excited by minutiae.

The potential ability to get close to .300 H&H and .300 WSM performance with cheap brass, easy to find rifles/parts, and four down in the magazine held a lot of appeal to me.
The simplest way to get a Gibbs, outside of inheriting one from your uncle, is to simply have a good shooting .30-06 reamed out to the longer cartridge dimensions by a competent gunsmith. I happen to know one of those but did not have any .30-06s that I wanted to sacrifice for the project. I did however end up with a Remington 700 with a bad .270 barrel.



An early morning run through the campfire classifieds resulted in a near mint older 700 barrel in .30-06, complete with factory sites, for less money then I would have paid to get sites installed. I rummaged through my work bench and found a nicely tuned 700 trigger, scope bases, rings, and had a proven Leupold Vari-X III 3.5-10x40 that had worked well for many years on a .300 Win Mag.

I rounded up as much random Winchester brand factory ammo as I had on hand (40+ piece of various weights and bullets construction) and used them to sight in the Leupold VX3 and then proceeded to make some chamber specific once fired brass.
I selected Winchester because I had virgin Winchester .270 brass (longer neck than the .30-06) available locally to fireform to .30 Gibbs but wanted to first test the rifle as a .30-06 to determine max velocity with 165, 180 and 200 grain bullet using once fired .30-06 brass. By keeping the brass the same manufacturer I figured it would be as close to an equal test as possible.

After max velocity was determined I would load up a few rounds to see what kind of accuracy was possible at upper end velocities. I was mostly interested in the 180 and 200 grain accuracy as that is what I planned to shoot and hunt with once chambered as a Gibbs.

After testing as a .30-06 I would have the chamber punched out and then duplicate the test with the same bullets and once fired (virgin brass fireformed in my Gibbs chamber) Winchester brass. I figured this test was as real world as I could get and if it failed I could scrap the barrel and re-use the parts for something else.

Exactly one day after dropping off my parts I had a complete rifle in my hands with properly indexed sights and crisp one pound trigger pull (more on that later).

To index the barrel for the sights the headspace was was tight enough that it allowed factory ammo to snuggly chamber and fire. The action fit nicely in the stock even after having been previously skim bedded for a different action and the inletting resulted in a fully free floated barrel.

The velocity tests started shortly after that. All test were completed using the same lot of RL 22 powder and Fed 210 primers. Of the powders I had on hand, RL 22 was listed in the Nosler book as producing the highest velocities for all three classes of bullets. Nosler data was also shown because it had the added benefit of including .30-06 AI data, which would be a helpful after rechambering.

The 165 Hornady BTSP was seated to the bottom of the cannelure which gave me a 2.662” CBTO with trimmed brass. I started at 61 grains and went to 63.5 grains, slightly over book max. At 63.5 grains I got an ejector mark and the chrono read 2894. 63 grains gave me 2869 and no indications of pressure. This is about 133 fps below the book max velocity but not unreasonable given a 22” barrel.

The 180 Nosler Ballistic tip was seated .005” off the lands at 2.841” CBTO which resulted in a COL of 3.468” (SAAMI is 3.34”). The long Rem 700 mag box really paid dividends here as a book max charge o 62 grains gave me 2856 fps and no pressure signs which was actually 44 fps faster than the book max with a shorter barrel. There were no pressure signs. Regrettably I stopped there so not sure on the exact max my barrel would produce with this bullet. I was gaining about 20 fps per grain of powder so a max around 2875 or even a little better is not out of the realm of possibility.

The 200 Nosler Accubond was also seated .005” off at 2.845” CBTO (3.455 COL) and a book max load got me to 2715 FPS (book max is 2688). Like the 180, I was already running a compressed load and my chrono was saying stop so I didn’t push it even further. Still, I think I could have pushed a little more out of it before I hit any typical pressure signs.

What the velocity test showed me was that, at least with heavy bullets seated long (the light bullets can only be seated so long before you run into problems of insufficient neck tension), this particular barrel was capable of producing respectable velocities with bullets I would actually use on big game.

For accuracy testing I only tested the 180 and 200 grain bullets as they were the ones I would most likely hunt with. I did not test multiple powders. I simply used RL22 at upper end charges to assess if I though the rifle had potential to be a 1 MOA shooter. I was hoping for good dispersion and initial accuracy of 1.5 MOA or less.

With the 180 Nosler Ballistic tip 61 grains gave me a 0.492” three shot group. 61.5 had a flier and opened up to 1.813”. Both groups averaged 1.15”

With the 200 Nosler Accubond 58 grains gave me a 2.24” three shot group with one called jerk (remember that super light trigger), 58.5 gave a 1.14” three shot group, and 59 gave a 1.422”. All three averaged 1.6” even with a called jerk.



With both bullets producing at least one group close to or less than 1 MOA I was confident I could find a bullet, powder, seating depth combo that should get me to the magic 1 MOA mark. That was all I needed to make the decision to go ahead and punch the chamber out to a Gibbs. That afternoon I got online and had 4D reamer rentals send a reamer and go gauge directly to my Gunsmith.

Less then a week later I had a .30 Gibbs rifle in my hand with the .30-06 stamp nicely milled out/blued and .30 Gibbs cleanly engraved on the barrel. I was extati…exsta…ecstat…I was happy.

Brass was initially formed with a pass of well lubed virgin .270 brass through a .35 Whelen die and then necked down to .30 cal till the bolt would close with a little effort. In the pic below, .30-06 is on the left, .270 on the right. That little bit of extra neck is helpful.



This would be a great point in the process to anneal your brass but I chose to simply fireform. Some was made with 150 Hornady FB Spire points and a stiff charge of IMR 4350.



Others were formed with 12 grains of Bullseye, corn meal to the base of the neck or so, a quarter of a toilet paper square, and a pistol primer.



The brass formed with bullets gave sharper shoulders and the satisfaction of actually shooting something (the fireforming load turned out to be pretty accurate…about 1.25 MOA). The corn meal load had the benefit of being able to be completed in the middle of the night in my shop while my kids and neighbors slept peacefully. The barrel has a little water in the bottom (unnessary) and helped to contain any mess from the cornmeal loads.



I lost no cases with corn meal and bullseye but had some failures (splits right at the shoulder/body junction) with bullets. Annealing would have minimized those losses I think.
With brass fireformed to my chamber I repeated the velocity test.

The 165 Hornady had a very faint ejector mark at 68 grains and 3,058 fps. There were no signs at 67 grains and 3028 fps.

The 180 Nolser Ballistic Tip had some inconsistent results. At 65 grains I had a VERY faint ejector mark that I had to look at from several angles to even see and am still not 100% positive it is truly an ejector mark. That charge gave me 2932 fps. At 65.5 and 66 grains I had no marks and velocities of 2972 and 3005 respectively. Jumping to 66.5 I got a solid ejector mark and 3047 fps.

The 200 Accubond got a faint mark at 62.5 grains and 2812 fps. Two charges at 62 gave me 2750 and 2763.

Never, in any of the testing did I get a sticky bolt lift, hard extraction, or flattened primer.

From this testing, it looks to me like my rifle should run 165s comfortably to 3000-3025, 180s around 2950-3000, and 200s to about 2750-2775. To me these are respectable figures from a factory 22” barrel and represent about 125-150 +/- fps gains over the standard chambering for the 165-180 class bullets and about 50 fps for the 200 class bullets. I am very happy with what I saw from the 165-180 class bullets. I was a little disappointed with the 200 grain bullets. I guess at some point the law of diminishing returns comes into play and there is only so much RL 22 you can jam in a case this size with a heavy bullet.

I plan to work up an accuracy load soon with the 180 Nosler Ballistic Tip and Accubond. For me, that is where the rubber will meet the road. My Ruger 24" .300 Win Mag can shoot 180s much faster but its best accuracy is at 2975 with a 180 TTSX. That rifle does not care for 180 accubonds. This rifle with the 180 TTSX has been my go-to elk, bear and deer load the past several years and I know what it is capable of. If I can get good accuracy at upper end velocity out of the Gibbs and the 180 accubond I would come close to duplicating my .300s velocity but with slightly higher B.C and in a much lighter, handier package.

To be continued…

Nice write up and good looking rifle!

Your loads with the 165gr Hornady, "68 grains and 3,058 fps. 67 grains and 3028 fps" That was with RL22 powder also?
Thanks

Mark

Yep, about all I could cram in there.

Sounds interesting,.

That was quick. Good to see positive results. It seems your expectations were met. Wondering, if you were inclined that way, if you could improve velocity a little more on the 200s with RL26?

I am guessing I probably could. Biggest challenge there might be getting some RL26!

Ditto on the RL 26 availability. Glad your are posting your 30 Gibbs results they are interesting. MB

Nicely detailed project with before and after chronograph readings, most interesting.

Great write up. Thank you.

I tried some 165 Accubonds with Superformance yesterday. Velocity is close to RL22. I hit faint pressure (very faint ejector mark) at 64.5 grains and 3004 FPS. RL22 got me comfortably to 3025 before hitting pressure with a 165 Hdy BTSP.

Similar with the 180 Ballistic tip. Started hitting pressure at 2988 (64 grains Superformance). The same bullet and RL22 got me right around 3000 at comfortable pressures.

Looks to me like either will work, just depends on what the rifle likes once I start working on accuracy. For some reason I just can’t seam to get the 165s moving as well as I would think. 165s and 180s both seem to max out around the same place.

Just got in a new Leupold VX3i 4.5-14x40 SF-ZL 30mm. I mounted it yesterday and boresited. Got some office work done early so I could be at the range at daylight. Using my fire forming loads it was the easiest sight in I have ever done. First shot at 25 was about 1/2” low and a hair left. Went to 100 and put two within a half in of each other at 3” high and 1/2” left. Adjusted down four clicks and over two. Next shot hit 2” high and within 1/4” of center.





Went out to 250 and commenced dusting clay pigeons. Looks like the Gibbs and my firefirming load are heading to eastern Montana tomorrow to go antelope hunting!

That’s a sweet set up. Thanks for the write up!

Yes great read ,Congrats and aGreat hunt thks !!!

Yup, that’s a cool danged set up buddy! I dig the rifle and cartridge. I’m using the 30-06 with 212 ELDs at 2720 with Staball 6.5 in my 22” M70 Featherweight and it’s been a complete blast. Hits out at distance have been really easy and man, it’s a pleasure to shoot. I’d bet the Gibbs would be a bit more juice on that.

Good luck with it. It looks great. Great write up.

I like to punder too, but why?

I have a long track record of poor decision making. Not sure why my choice in cartridges should be any different

The Gibbs went to eastern Montana for the antelope opener. Between us and our friends we had seven tags and 1.5 days.

My standard MO is to get a kid or my wife in position and then take whatever out of a herd that offers a clear shot after they shoot theirs. This is a meat hunt first and foremost for me and I am not picky.

It didn’t take long to find a victim. Got my son set up on a buck and his dropped at the shot from his .25-06. The herd milled a bid at 275-300 and a little guy cleared and gave me a slight quartering face on shot. The 150 grain Hornady flat base from my fireforming load found the boiler room. The buck made a 40 yard dash and piled up without drama.



The combo worked great but didn’t make much brass

Dropping it off this week for a cerakote job. I think tungsten will look sharp with the black stock.

Out of stock right now,but already formed .30 Gibbs brass.
https://www.grafs.com/retail/catalog/category/categoryId/740?

Thanks. I looked a quality-cart website a couple weeks ago. They said they would have a run when there was sufficient demand. I am not unhappy with Win .270 brass but would be handy to have some properly head stamped and ready to go.