Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Question for the .400 Whelen Crowd

The problem ain't fixed, till you get a stonger mag spring..

Back in 2004, my issued m249 machine gun wouldn't work with my back-up 30 round mag. It would only work with the belt-fed stuff. Gutted my back-up mag, doubled the springs and it worked flawlessly.

More recently, my witness compact 10mm jammed, even after wolf springs. Doubled mag spring from my second mag Problem fixed.

416 Rigby kimber: would spit rounds when u opened bolt. Stronger mag spring, problem fixed.

Too fkn easy dude......

Just found something that may be of interest...I like the idea of a crimp on the .400. My seating die won't roll crimp the short .35 Whelen brass and the Hawk bullets don't have a cannelure. I ordered a .405 Win Lee Factory Crimp die which did not work when putting the cartridge in the shellholder on the press. The shellholder contacts the press too soon and I would be crimping the bullet itself right in front of the case mouth (you can see in the pic below where I did just that with one of my dummy rounds).

Simple solution is to swap the shellholder for a quarter. Doing that I was just barely able to put a factory crimp on my short .35 Whelen Brass and the 350 Hawk. The QC brass is plenty long to crimp nicely with enough length to adjust the die for the desired level of crimp.

Great tip. Coin raises the slightly shorter case.
.400 Whelen 2.49" brass versus 2.58" .405 WCF brass.
Good that the .405 WCF LEE FC die does not touch and size down the shoulder of the fairly long-necked .400 Whelen.

If a case was slightly too long for a make-do Lee FC die, the shell holder could be left in place
and a washer-like hunk of steel fitted around the case to make contact for crimp in right place,
as long as there wasn't a shoulder issue.

I am going to see if I can order a .405 WCF LEE FC die right now if I can find one.

Howdy! Newly registered. I read through all 23 pages and there is loads of information in it...thanks all!

A 'smith buddy and I are in the process of building a couple of .400's and have run into a problem I did not see mentioned. In using the Qual-Cart 400 basic cases, the necks come up too thick. We know how to solve this but I was curious if any others have run into this issue?

Thank you!

You must have skipped over this on page 4 of the thread ?


Whatever Peter Cardona did at Quality Cartridge, his correction allowed us not to have to outside neck turn the brass, whew !
If your brass is messed up, send it back for correction.

Oh yeah, while I was ordering that .405 WCF LEE Factory Crimp Die from Midway USA, thanks again to Med River for idea,
I also found an off-the-shelf LEE trim die for the .458 WinMag, hubba hubba !

I did see that report. However, what we are seeing is not a donut but simply a thick neck. It's easy enough to recover from but I did not note any others reporting this. Just curious....

Thanks!

Well, excuse me for playfully calling it a terminal donut.
Not a donut.
Actually it was just excessive neck wall thickness in the terminal portion of the neck.
N-2 diameter at case mouth was greater than N-1 diameter at shoulder juncture with a bullet seated.
Just the opposite of a donut.
Same problem as you have.
Same solution I had,
send the brass back to QC so as not to have to do the laborious neck turning.

Ah! Sorry, I completely missed the joke. I read donut and decided that wasn't what we saw.

Also, I didn't consider this as you referenced a problem from 2012 whereas this lot of brass is from 2021 or so. I suppose it could be NOS or something but it's been 9 years...

Thanks for your clarification.

Having been playing with this rifle quite a while now. I took it to the Texas/Mexio border last month to look for a pig but was mostly focused on getting my 10 year old daughter one. I re-scoped it with a 2-7 Leupold with thick crosshairs for a little better low light and night time setup versus the 1.5-5x 20 that had been on it.



I had set the zero to be dead on at 100 yards as that is where I anticipated the pig shooting to be at. After 1800 miles I took it out to test zero and was pretty darn happy...



My 10 year old did the same with her .243 and we were ready to hunt...



The outfitter had indicated that he didn't have a lot of pigs but tended to have big pigs. What we saw on camera confirmed that. Mostly boars on the property and Addie focused on a nice two tone boar. Took some patience but we managed to find Addie her "Dream Pig" so all was good...



Not sure why I am shooting a .400 when an 85 TSX out of a stubby .243 kills them pretty darned dead, lol.

I may have finally settled on my favorite way to make brass. QC is obviously the easiest and is headstamped properly. However, I have not been particularly happy with the consistency of the primer pockets (some virgin cases are very tight and some are fairly loose and don't hold up to very many firings). My QC cases do have the "reverse donut" issue mentioned above also. Not enough to interfere with chambering but it is annoying when you pay $2/case.

I have formed a lot of cases with the reverse .41 caliber bullet method as well as Cream of Wheat. Both work. Using virgin Hornady .35 Whelen cases I was getting some excessive case stretching as I ended up with a few cases separating on the 2nd or 3rd firing. I figured it is better to do most of the forming with a die so I can better control where the brass flows from and to during fireforming. Also, I am at the point with the rifle where I just want lots of trigger time with actual hunting loads in field positions. Having a fire-forming load strictly for making brass and a separate hunting load isn't as efficient for my limited range time and finite supply of LR primers.

An expander die that will straighten the whole case out would be great if I had one. I tried a .416 Ruger die but it doesn't quite get the shoulder where it needs to be. I fiddled around and settled on using a .40 S&W expander die to expand out the case mouth down to below the neck shoulder junction on a virgin annealed .35 Whelen Hornady case.



Expands the case out a fair bit to allow necking down and forming an appropriate shoulder to headspace off of and minimize brass flow (I think...I don't know much about metallurgy and such)





Imperial sizing wax outside, inside and a little on the expander for the first case or two is your friend...



From there I simply run it into my .400 Whelen FL sizing die far enough for a snug fit in the chamber. Occasionally I would have a case that had to be backed out and re-lubed. The result is a band just below the shoulder junction that is about .458"



The difference in case capacity between this and a fully formed case is negligible. I shot some 350 and 400 Hawks with enough H4895 to get velocities where I expected them to be with legitimate hunting loads.



Cases end up short (they averaged 2.415" to 2.420" before firing) but they are nicely formed and I will be practicing at the range with a load producing a similar POI, trajectory and recoil impulse as my actual hunting loads.

Nice.

I appreciate how much you get all your kids out hunting!

Well I ended up pushing my Whelen project down on the priorities list to instead build my young boys their first rifle...figured getting them out hunting this year was more of a priority.

I have a Krieger #5 contour, 16 twist, CM, 403/411 blank sitting here if someone is looking to build a 400 and needs a barrel.

I just modified a fired case to make it work in the Hornady COL gauge. If you wish to do the same, I found the 5/16-36 tap to be the correct thread pitch and a 19/64" drill bit gave a nice pilot. Anyway.....

Did some playing around with the bullets I have on hand and found that the reamer (4D Reamer Rentals) we used on this rifle is almost ideal for the 360 North Fork. Lands are right around 3.392" with that bullet so no problem taking advantage of the whole Winchester length mag box. The 350 Hawks have to be seated shorter due to their shape (about 3.115" on average) but due to their much shorter bullet length 1.187" vs 1.395" they don't actually protrude into the powder space much more (about 0.045" if I did the math right). The cast also have to be short on OAL but still only go into the powder space a bit more than the NF.

Where the wheels fall off a bit is with the 400 grainers. A 400 grain Round Tip Hawk hits the lands at about 3.125" COL and a 400 grain FN LBT cast at around 2.8". They are both ending up way down in the case. If you plan on a .400 build and want to maximize the cartridge for 400 grainers I would recommend getting a throating reamer to set it up for the bullets you want.

For me, I think the 360 North Fork is going to be my be-all-end-all bullet for game and the Hawk is cheap enough for practice at comparable velocities and POI. I may still play with some powder combos to see if I see much change in accuracy/velocity. However, for all intents and purposes, Mainer's suggestion of a stiff load of RL 10x under the 360 NF gets me all the velocity and accuracy I need for 200 yard hunting (it hits 1800 FPS right around the 200 yard mark). That level of performance matches the original intent of the build. I do plan to do some expansion tests at 250 and 300 yards just for giggles and on the odd chance my dream moose is standing at 201.5 yards instead of 199.

When I get serious about flinging 400s I have a .416 barrel blank here and will just build a .416 Ruger. That is a significant and easy step up and will keep Mainer from being disappointed with all the "hobbiest B.S." as I think he put it so eloquently once Actually he will still probably get excited because the factory Ruger .416 rifle is the easy button. Unfortunately, they are also dang hard to find and north of $2K when you do (I just sold one well north of that and the buyer was happy to get it).

The only thing I have left to do is get the open sights regulated to match my hunting load and this project will be officially put to bed. The rifle does string a bit which I believe to be due to some flex in the forend creating contact. I should probably open the barrel channel a bit but fit is so nice as-is I hate to mess with the aesthetics for a nominal and unnecessary accuracy improvement (my notes show the NF around 1"-1.5" and the Hawks at 1.5"-2".

Medriver,
Yep 350-360 grain bullets are just right. Was enjoyable to shoot with rl 10x handloads, from an 8.5 lb scoped rifle.

In the 416 ruger, I'd like to use the same bullet weight.

But the 400 grain factory dgx bonded stuff is just too simple to pass up. 2450 fps from a 22.5" barrel, over the chronograph.

I must be obsessed with the 400 Whelen…

I’ve had two built that were disasters. One ridiculously expensive switch barrel on a GMA action and one on a Sako 85. The first builder was over his skies and promised the world, he had some great sample rifles but he couldn’t deliver the work? The second was just the wrong action choice, the smith told me he had built one on a Sako 85 but he latter admitted it was a 35 Whelen and the magazine just doesn’t work well with that fat a cartridge.

I’m having Mark Basner build me one on a Win 70 and I know he knows those rifles and I’m sure he’ll get me a great 400 Whelen in a safari express style rifle with synthetic stock, express sights, barrel band sling swivel, and a 1-8x24 Swaro z8i. I’m confident it will be amazing. It’s going to Alaska with me in 2024.

But … I still jonesing for a classic wood and steal 400 Whelen on a 1903 Springfield to bring to Africa. I hunt Africa twice a year and it would be really fun on pigs and PG as well as hippo and buff.

If you were having a 400 Whelen built on a 1903 Springfield today … what smith would you use?

pm on the way.

Be sure to post up some pics of your Bansner .400 when it is done. As much as I like mine. I think a barrel band sling swivel and a banded front sight would have been nice. I have a .458 project going and already have the banded front sight piece procured...just need to get the barrel band swivel piece and decide on the rear sight option.

I have a few pics of the rifle before finishing. How do I post them?