Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Is anyone loading the 250 savage ackley with the 30 degree shoulder?

Just that. Would like to know if they have used it on game. Bullet weights, OAL and feeding experience. Cheers! Alan

Alan C;
Good evening, I hope the day down in Lodi behaved and you're well.

Honestly I had to look up the .250AI 30° as I didn't know it was "a thing" somehow.

The first AI in the safe was a .22-250AI 40° and I'm aware of the 28° one as well.

Our youngest daughter used a .250AI 40° on something like 8 local mulie and whitetail bucks and I used it on a couple more doing some load testing.

She started with 100gr Hornady Interlock Spires and ended up with 80gr TTSX.

It's still in the safe in case she takes up hunting again, but hasn't been used for years now.

Hope that helped a wee bit, but again it's 10° off your question.

All the best.

Dwayne

Thanks Dwayne, I’ve read a little about the 250 ai. I have a Sako in 243ai 40 degree shoulder. Good cartridge. Maybe someone with the 30 degree will appear.

I've had one 250 AI, whether 30 or 40 degrees, I couldn't say. I still have all the brass and dies.

Are you maybe talking the .25 Creed?? All Ackley`s improved cases were 40 degrees, if I`m not mistaken...We have seven of various calibers.

I've had 2 250-3000AIs with 40-degree shoulders in a Ruger 77 RSI and a Savage 99CD.

The cartridge didn't feed well in the Ruger, so I rebarreled it to 25 Souper to get the same performance and eliminate the feeding problems.

The cartridge fed fine in the Savage, but I decided that I wanted more performance from that rifle, so I rechambered it to 25-284.

What would a 250-3000AI with a 30-degree shoulder do, practically and performance wise, that the SAAMI specs 6.5 Creedmoor doesn't?

I’m planning on doing the 6.5 creedmoor in a savage 99 that was a 308. I have a savage 99 that is about a 1954 chambered in 300. It will have a max of 2.6 OAL cartridge capacity. I am not a 30 cal fan on deer size game. I can’t leave nothing alone is my problem. My savage 99s in 22 HP I will not touch or the 3 -250 savages I own.

I have a 99F in 260 that is a rebored/rechambered 243 and it feeds fine, but the 243 and 260 have the same parent cartridge, so their case specs are very similar.

I don't know how well a 6.5 CM will feed from a rotary magazine that wasn't designed for it, so I'd suggest looking into that before you spend too much money on your project. Rotary magazines can be a challenge, which is why most of my Savage 99 conversions were done on the detachable magazine actions from 99Cs and 99CDs.

Good luck with your project. I'm a tinker and tinkers aren't happy unless they are tinkering in an effort to improve whatever they're working on.

Alan C;
Good morning sir, once more I hope your day has started on the right foot and you're well.

As 260Remguy said, from my reading and limited experience with them in a 1920 or maybe it was a 1922 vintage 99 takedown in .250, the rotary mags can be a wee bit finicky.

In the dim past I fooled with a couple .308 99's that had the DBM and feeding was not an issue I had with them, hitting in the same area was a much bigger issue, but I digress.

We've hunted with a 6.5 Swede in our family since I made up a sporter for my now late father in '85.

Our eldest daughter inherited that rifle and uses it for her primary hunting rifle to this day and I was impressed enough with it's performance that I spent way too much money on having a near new surplus Swede barrel installed on a 98 action that was a .270.

Oh and yes, I do like the fast twist Swede's performance on deer better than a really slow twist .270 barrel did on about a half dozen local mulie and whitetail bucks.

For sure I'd try to find some 6.5CM cases and try them in whatever type of magazine 99 you're working with. That'd be a prudent first step I'd think.

Lastly, on deer, I'd say we could observe a slight edge to the 6.5 120/130gr bullets "rocking" a buck a wee bit more than either the 100gr or 80gr .250AI. That said, the little .250AI killed a couple good sized mulie bucks at 250 yards plus other whitetail and mulie bucks closer and never needed more than one application.

Hope that made sense again.

Good luck with the project whichever way you decide.

Dwayne

Thanks Remguy and Dwayne. The advantage I have is I have a lathe, milling machine and surface grinder. The ultimate for the guy that likes to tinker. I will keep you all posted in my projects.

Yo. 257 Roberts 40 degrees and 250-3000 40 degrees. M98 Roberts is functional, 250 is barreled on a 788 but needs stock work and bluing. 250 will be a blacktail rifle up here in the Pacific NW.

87 grain Speers, a death ray on White Tails when I lived in the Georgia swamps. Mostly from stands along power line right of ways and in tree stands back in the swamp. Find the acorns and the deer will show up.


Roberts is still in Georgia for the times I visit during hunting season and do not want to pack a rifle cross country.

The new name for the 250 Savage AI especially w/ the 30* shoulder is "25 Creedmoor". Semi-popular with the PRS crowd, using fast twiist barrels & 130+gr bullets, like Blackjack. Take 6.5CM brass, one pass through a FL 25 CM die, and you're done! Some of the RCBS versions off Ackley Improved cartridges had a 28* shoulder rather than Parker's 40* shoulder. Remember, the 6.5CM was a necked down T-C 30, a long necked 300 Savage, in reality. Mark&Belle

Thanks Neighbor ! Got enough projects for this year. Need to dig out my cartridge books. Just looking for something different. Maybe the 7mm creedmoor will increase in popularity? Cheers,Alan

How much difference do you figure there is between the 30 and 40 degree versions?

mathman;
Top of the morning, I hope that wherever this finds you that it finds you well.

If anyone has the answer to your query I'd be interested in reading too.

Way back in the day - and let us be honest I'm going off of an increasingly sketchy memory bank here - I believe I read that when they were developing the 6.5CM that they played with many different shoulder angles.

Also I want to say I've read that for instance the .243 was known for strange pressure variants which could be mitigated to some extent with the shoulder angle and neck length?

Maybe?

When I ordered my .22-250AI barrel from IT&D back in the day, the chap asked me if I wanted a 28° or 40° and of course my reply was, "I didn't know there'd be questions.... I didn't study....."

Back in those halcyon days when Canucks could order rifle barrels from the US, the US dealers could ship them up here and neither of our governments or their various minion agencies thought we were going to overthrow the world by building a coyote rifle.

All the best.

Dwayne

To be honest I think there's very little ballistic difference, and the OP could simply look to the many citations of the performance of the 40 degree version which has been around for years. The 30 degree version may feed better, but I don't know.

Yes, the question is based on feeding and OAL of cartridge. Thanks for all the reply’s.

I shoot both a 22Creedmoor and a 22-250AI 40. Load data is interchangeable between the two.

I also have a 250AI 40. I use Peterson 25 Creedmoor brass which works beautifully. I haven't seen a need to adjust the load between fireform and the second firing based on the minimal change in shoulder geometry.

It's a sweet little critter zapper with 90gr Cutting Edge Raptors.

I have a 250AI (40 degree) that feeds fine in a M70 compact classic and a 6.5 Creedmoor that feeds well from the rotary mag in an ex-.308 99 Savage. although the Savage doesn't care for the plastic tipped bullets.

The 250 Sav Imp (30-deg) and the 25 Creedmoor share almost exact same case capacities. The average below-the-neck volume is .265 cu in for the 250 Sav Imp and .267 for the 25 CM, while the 250 Sav Ack Imp (40-deg) is .271 cu in.