Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters belted vs. non belted mags

The Weatherby radiused shoulder in effect acts very much like the 40-degree shoulder of so-called Ackley Improved cartridges. Unless the handloader makes the mistake of pushing the shoulder back during resizing, the Weatherby rounds usually show very fine accuracy and case life.

The big problem for a long time with the Weatherby rounds was the so-called "free-bore," which is nothing more than an extra-long throat. But even free-bored chambers shoot very well if the throat is just over bullet diameter. I own a couple of Weatherby Vanguards in .257 and .300 Weatherby that with the right load group substabtially better than most factory rifles out to at least 500 yards, as far as I've ever put them on paper.

Oh, and the cases are belted.

I just wish I would have said this�.

The belted case was designed for a specific function and that is hunting dangerous game, by headspacing on the belt it allows a good deal of taper on the case, thus "extraction" is always a function as long as there is a thread of brass holding a seperated brass to gether, and my personal experience bares this out....Not so with non belted cases it seems.

IMO it is erronous to belive the belted case functions better(chambering a case) than the non belted cases..however that has become an accepted fact by many because on the surface it makes since a tapered case feeds slicker than one that is not. I would be hard pressed to make this claim as most properly set up rifles feed both equally well as far as I can tell.

If one resizes a belted case to a crush fit or close to a crush fit, the same as one would a non belted case then case life is about the same. This function will stop head seperations until brass has fatigued in both types of cases.

As to "accuracy", I will suggest that for "hunting purposes" one is as good as the other, and I will also say the belted case has been around for a long long time and has proved itself in the hunting fields of the world as much as the great 30-06 has proven itself in the hunting world.

The discussions of belted vs. non belted has about as much realivance to me as the 270 vs. the 30-06 has, had, or will ever have...

I love my 300 H&H, my 416 Rem, my 338 Win. and my 375 H&H, all belted, but I also think the new Ruger non belted case in 338, 300, 375 and 416 Ruger happen to be one of the best designed cases to come along in decades, and somewhere in this sceanario I have to squeeeeze in my cute little 9.3x62, I couldn't leave her out of my goodies list...:)

I see plenty of room for both, and both will always be with us at least in my lifetime they will. I would not have wanted to be without both cases.

Fired vs Unfired was for shoulder datum line to base of case (where you read the caliber) measurements.
dan