Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Improving 264 Win mag

I took my .264 out yesterday for it's first time. It has a Kreiger 1-8" twist 27 1/2" barrel and seemed to love the 129gr Hornady SST's with 67.5 grains of Ramshot Magnum powder.

I brought the Chrono with me but couldn't get it to read in the shade and was too tired from putting up deer stands all day to set it up again in a new location.

I won't venture a guess on the FPS but I bet they are zipping along pretty good.

Terry

i don't use that powder, but my computer thinks you are running about 3130 fps @ about 50k psi. seems mild.

Thanks Toad, that does sound tame. I couldn't find any load data for that powder in .264WinMag so I called Ramshot and they gave me a recipe 64gr starting and 67gr max. with the 129gr SST bullets. I ran it on my software which is a little primative and it said I was around 60K(PSI) pressure with my maximum load. I never saw any pressure signs, but I was 1/2 a grain over the maximum figure given to me by Ramshot so I figured they had to be moving pretty good. I'll be shooting it again before hunting season and will get some shots chronographed. The groups were pretty impressive considering it was a brand new barrel. Most groups were under an inch. I will probably leave the load alone reguardless of what the chrono say's.

Terry

i could be wrong. i am not a computer whiz and these things take accruate input to give meaningful results.

but, like you, i let the rifle tell me what it likes. the .264 is not very forgiving to load for.

Personally I don't think that you need an 18 power scope to get to 500 yards. I would go with a 4-12 or 4.5 to 14.

Re-barrel it to 300 Win or 338; biiiiiiiiig improvement.

MM

338 for sure. Why don't you like the 264?

Here is my 338 Wildcat



338 Gaillard is my long range beauty. 416 Rem Mag Parent case FF, 38 degree shoulder & 10 Thousandths case taper, 215F Match Primer, 91gr RL25, 250gr Sierra HPBT or GK, with a MV of 3070 FPS will put the hurt on anything.

Here is my new 264 Win Mag.



Still working on a good load.

Mantana-Man has given you some great advice! I played around with the .264 win mag years ago and we pushed it to the limits and beyond using a 26 inch Douglas premium barrel.

However, I went to the .300 win mag and never looked back as far as hunting big game afar with this combination using a REDFIELD (4 x 12) rifle scope back in the late 60's.

Now down the road, I missed that 6.5 bullet and put a new stainless barrel on a worn out model 70 30-06. It was a very nice rifle for general hunting needs.

Then I decided to take on a project of using the 300 Win mag case and necking down to the .264 bullet. This became a real long range rifle with an attitude. The .264/06 is more fun to shoot at the bench but the long range Boss is that .264/300 Win mag combination.

FWIW:

I get to 600 yards without a lot of trouble with a 308 and Leupold 3.5-10x40.

A precision barrel, a very good trigger, and a rigid high quality stock are necessary. Optics, are icing on the cake.

Heck, 300 meters, with a fixed 6x scope is pretty easy.

Remember, a 12x17 inch target with a 6x scope is like shooting a 72 x 102 inch target with a single power scope.

It ain't hard to see something that big (72 x 102 inc) at 500 yards.

Its quite hard to hold dead center on it though.

BMT

I have had 2 264's both with pretty beefy barrels, IMO they are the most temperamental round I have loaded for. I always dreamed of launching 140's at 3200 fps, however I can't get that speed out of either gun with any accuracy, ramshot mag is the best all around powder which IMO is still a tad fast to be ideal for it. If I had to do it all again I would do a 6.5-06 or 6.5-284.

Very Impressive.........that'll git 'er done.

As far as the 264 goes, they just generally aren't easy to work with........don't know if it's a combination of twist/velocity vs bullet weight/length or what, but life's to short to mess with it when there's lots of stuff available that just works better.

MM

Rebarrel to a 7 STW and shoot the 140's at 3550-3600 with a minimum SAAMI chamber with practically zero freebore. Our Pac Nor 3 grooves set up this way get more velocity than that, with bullets touching at 100 yds.

Friends-

I too am a .264 WinMag fan. I have a standard .264 WinMag, as well as, a .264 WSM.

Having read this thread, I do have a question.

Aren't the .264 STW and the .264 Thor, one in the same cartridge? I thought they were but, I could be mis-informed.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. TC1 (Terry) have you posted pictures of your .264 Win Mag and have I missed it?

wookie316, where & how do you take those pictures with the perfect white background? those are like studio photos.

Hi Mark, I've posted some pictures of it here before. There isn't anything about it that makes it memeroble though. It's a Ruger M77 MKII with a 27.5" 1-8 twist Kreiger stainless fluted #4 barrel. It has a Timney trigger set at 2 lbs that is soo sweet and it sits in a McMillan classic stock with a bad camo pattern. It has one of those Weaver Classic extreme 2.5-10X50 scopes on it they were giving away at Natchez shooting earlier this year. I wish I would have bought several more. They were a steal! John Farner did the work on this rifle.

This is my 4th Ruger M77 MKII rifle and the only one I've ever owned that would shoot! I've always been snake bite when it came to these. When I found one chambered in 7Mag in a pawnshop that looked like it had been used in WWII I figured there was something worth having about this gun even if the barrel was probably shot out. I bought it for a song and here are the finished results.



I'm amazed to hear so many people having trouble getting these rifles with this chambering to shoot. My experience with them is very limited but I had no trouble at all. If you saw my reloading bench, gear and techniques, probably the nicest thing you could say is "He's not very meticulous"

IMO, the .300 winmag and .338 mags aren't substitutes for this cartridge. The 300 winmag takes a 180 gr bullet to match the wind bucking ability of the .264winmag with 140gr bullets. Any of the .338's to get close to the ballistics of the .264 well, they become recoil monsters! That's the beauty and charm of this round for me. It makes a very long range rifle for medium size game and has very little recoil. A well mannered beanfield rifle you might say.


Something else I've read about this round is everybody states they don't make a powder slow enough for it. I wonder why this is never brought up when talking about other rounds of this nature like the 257WBY for instance? I'm just wondering out loud, there maybe a good answer for that.

I think the biggest valid complaint about the round is the extra powder you have to burn for the small gain in velocity over a 6.5-06. Well, that's the sad truth about all magnums and if you wanna go fast you gotta burn a little extra powder.

All in all, I think I'm going to really like mine.

Terry

Thanks for the advice but I dont want a 338mag, just want to get the 264 going.But I have narrowed my scope selection down to either a leupold 6-18*40 or a tactical weaver 4-20*50. I believe the 264 has great potential. I know a lot of people hate it but thats the way it is.

a couple of mine...

first the heavyweight



and the midweight

I bought an original Winchester 70 Westerner back in the early 1960's. It was extremely accurate right out of the box, in fact I used it for long range varmint hunting as a stunt! The original rifles had blackened stainless steel barrels to hold up better.

Thing to remember is that Winchester loaded the cartridge with a double diameter bullet that was slightly under bore diameter from the ogive to just above the canelure. Measuring an original factory cartridge will confirm this. This was done to reduce pressure of the heavier 140 grain bullet in the standard throat. The reduced diameter acted as a freebore of sorts. I found this out when handloading for it.

If building one today, I'd select a boat tail bullet around 140 grains that fit my needs and have it chambered for that particular bullet seated to conform to magazine limitations. A longer throat than necessary would act the same as freebore to reduce pressure if desired. Barrel would be stainless steel 26" minimum with a 1:8 twist. Some say that cryogenic barrel treatment improves barrel life with these over bore magnums. Powders available today offer far more flexibility and barrel life. Main thing is that the .264 Magnum is a very accurate cartridge when fired in a properly set up rifle, and kills out of proportion to its bullet diameter.

I use the Leupold 6-18x 40mm scope on a .220 Swift for varmint, it does everything my Bushnell Elite 4200's and Nikon Monarch's do with less bulk and weight. Good scope.

Welcome to 24hr Campfire,home of the 264WM cult.My 1in9 barrel works with 140 SSTs,but a faster twist would shoot the heavier Woodlieghs. My gunsmith opened the throat to a normal length on the barrel.I haven't had any of the spikeyness that I had with the orginal barrel.This would be very good thing if you use the ADI powder we call H-1000,in the stardard chambering,it can get ragged at +60,000psi. Hogdgson lists it max psi lower than H-4831,a give away.Retumbo has worked for some as well,just not me.