Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles .257 Roberts....Long or short?

What is the best action length on a .257 Roberts. Need some help deciding. Advantages...disadvantages, etc. It appears the long action is best for reloading and getting the best ballistics from this caliber....true, not true. Any help appreciated from some of you .257 fans.
Thanks

I recently built a .257 Roberts on a Model 70 long action, previously a .270, so that I would have some leeway in bullet seating. It has a 24" Douglas barrel and I asked Douglas to match the contour of the original barrel so that it would be a drop-in to the original stock.

That being said, a .257 will fit into a short action and some guys like short, light, handy hunting rifles.

You want 3 to 3.1" in the mag. Some short actions can do that for you. I know you can pull the spacer out of the M70 magazine and get 3.1", though i haven't done it i have seen rifles that have. Probably the more sensible thing to do, though, is to just go with the 260 Rem instead. It is simply a better cartridge given the bullets we currently have available.

257R can fit on either action as stated above and the velocity "shortfall" from going short is nominal.

If you'd like to go CLASSIC BOB you could get a commercial Mauser action for which the cartridge was designed and have the best of both worlds? McGowan barrels has some lightweight, strong commercial mauser actions for sale on their website right now...

Shong.

Short - 2.8"
Shong - 3.1"
Long - 3.4"

I think a fine Bob could be made from a Swede action.

My short action Roberts works fine(COAL is 2.815" for hunting rounds).
Plenty of room for H4350 and 115/117's and depending on the bullet the ogive easily clears the case mouth.

I would buy another short action, 3.000" sounds about perfect but 2.800" won't cause any problems. Maybe if you sit around and gaze at loaded cartridges it might cause you mental problems.

Crap! Maybe that's my problem!

This will freak you out!

grin

Old pic of a 110 Accubond and 115 Ballistic Tip at 2.815" COAL.

Wacenturion,

This subject comes up so frequently on the Campfire that I've put together a standard answer to post:

I've owned at least a dozen .257's, including short-actioned factory rifles, custom rifles built on Mauser 98 actions (including one on a Mexican action, supposedly just perfect for the .257), a NULA Model 20, a pre-'64 Model 70, and a Ruger No. 1B with a 26" barrel and a throat so long that no bullet under 115 grains could be seated anywhere near the rifling. Right now I have three .257 Roberts rifles: a Remington 722, a Kimber 84M Classic Select Grade, and a custom 98 Mauser made by Bill Sukalle in 1947.

The only one that gained any significant velocity over any of the other rifles was the Ruger No. 1B. It could get 3100 fps or so out of 115-grain bullets. But even the short-actioned Kimber approaches 3000 fps with 115-grain handloads, and the difference in the field would be pretty much zip.

I haven't noticed any difference in accuracy, either. The rifles with the best barrels have shot the best groups, regardless of the action length. Probably the two most accurate .257's I've ever owned have been the 722 and the Sukalle, but the Kimber is quite accurate too, and has a noticeably lighter barrel.

Oh, and my wife I have used our various .257's to kill a semi-load of pronghorn and deer, including some big bucks, at ranges out to 400+ yards. Now, no doubt some other round would be more suitable at 500+ yards, but so far I haven't felt compelled to shoot at any big game animal past 500--other than one pronghorn buck that somebody else wounded. And I killed it at around 550 yards with my 722, depite the short magazine.

My only real experience with a Roberts is with Ingwwewife's Rem 722 in a Bob ( Short action)
Everything she points it at dies....so far so good!

There is a custom Winchester M70 in 257R in my area for sale,
long action with a varmint barrel, not a bad looking rig.

If you shoot factory ammo, either will work.

If you handload and want to get the most out of the Roberts that you can and have a barrel that allows you to seat the bullets out, long is the way to go. Some of my Roberts loads are well past what the action on my Remington M700 short-action .308 Win can handle.

My Ruger M77 is a long action with a long throat. SAAMI pressure for the Roberts is conservative at 54,000PSI and, quite frankly, I pretty much ignore it as my Ruger action is designed to handle cartridges like the 63,000PSI .25-06 and 65,000PSI .270 Win. The velocity gains with long bullets seated out to base of neck and with higher pressures are pretty significant and are not something I would attempt with the bullets seated further in to meet standard COL or a short action M700's magazine restrictions.

If your going to shoot factory ammo SA is fine.

If you are going to build either use a LA or if using a SA make sure its throated such that you can get to the lands with the bullets you are likely to use.

My one experience in trying to shoehorn in a intermeadate cartridge in a SA.. I had the SAAMI spec cut and at the limit allowed by the magazine (.035" off the lands) I can shoot groups in the .75" range, If I seat out another .030 to get within .005 of the lands and single load, the groups shrink to about half that(good enough that the limiting factor is likely my bench technique)

Thanks everyone for all the responses, appreciate it. Initially I was going to go after a Remington 700 Mountain (short) or a 700 1982 Classic (long). Then I see that Winchester has a 2012 Shotshow addition .257 Roberts long action. The problem of choosing gets confusing. Weight wise the new Model 70 is listed at 7 lbs. and the 700 Remington Mountain is general around 6 1/2 lbs., thus no real noticeable difference in weight between the two. Barrel length is the same at 22".

Yeah could go another caliber, but that not in the equation as I have always wanted a "Bob". Last question....is there any down side to a long action, outside the weight issue on some guns?

Again...............Thanks!

Mule Deer knows what he's talking about.....PERIOD.

2.825" COL in a short action Remington will do EVERYTHING a 3+" Roberts will do in any long action. You won't know the difference and the deer will die with the short action just as fast as they'd die with the long action.

If you're going to buy a long action, seems to me you'd be better off with a .25-06 instead of a Roberts....

You can get 3,100 fps or more with a 100 grain bullet in a short action Roberts. If you need more than that, IMO you might as well step up to the 257 Weatherby.

Can always go with the Kimber 84M in the Bob, either a Montana or a Classic Select. They work just fine...

I have a M77RL in 257 Robts with the 3" box much better for me than the 2 SA bobs I had. I use the 100 gr Horn SP, atleast now I can seat them to the cannelure which I couldn't do with the 2.8" box. Maybe that is not important to the next guy but it was to me. Magnum man

Left hand Winchesters only come in long action (except for the WSM's but the bolt face is wrong) and I've been contemplating this same thing - converting a .30-06 to a .257 Roberts, 6mm Rem, 6.5X55 or something on a medium length case. I made up a pseudo .257 Bob round by necking down part of a 7X57 case to see if it would feed okay. Yeah, it feeds just fine.

The M70 magazine handles 3.4" COAL and my 3" faux Bob doesn't look too swallowed up at all. One has to remember that Model 700 magazines handle 3.7" COAL and most .270's and .30-06's run around 3.34" or so, so there is about as much extra mag room in those as a long action Model 70 would have with a .257 Roberts. That long action does give you tons of leeway for seating depth. Plus if you are fortunate enough and have the time to really shoot away the throat of a Roberts the longer mag let you chase that throat until the bullet no longer fits in the case.

Thought about the .25-06 since it is a long action and in a way it makes sense, but I like to gear stuff toward a specific performance range. Having "more" doesn't make it better. There is the argument that one can always load down, and you can, but you still end up using a tad more powder than the smaller chambering and as a general rule of thumb most accurate loads tend to be toward the top end of the performance range anyway.

Long story short, I wouldn't worry about the minute differences in a SA vs. a LA. You can find those differences in the dictionary under the heading "pure gack".