Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Honey Love = 280 Remington??

Rin -

Since you & I are on the same page...I deduct you're responding to Keith.

the most extreme example is with aa4350, but there are others. i mentioned imr7828 in another post. in general, at the muzzle, all things being equal, there is no significant difference between 270/280/30'06, and the only significant advantage of the 7rm over the 280 is 200fps. conversely, the only advantage of the 280 over the 7rm is powder burning efficiency. all things taken equally, the assumption is that the 7rm will maintain the 200fps whenever they use the same powder, but in reality, because powders react differently in different chambers, there are cases where the 200fps advantage is negated

Rick and I have known each other since the....Ooohh.....the 80's sometime and before PC's and the Innanet, corresponded frequently by phone.Maybe 2-3 times a week.I don't personally know anyone more experienced with the 280 Remington and it's derivatives(including the Improved versions),either at the loading bench or on game, here and Africa....add the 270 into the mix and he has had a passel of 7 Rem Mags to boot.I got my early leads on the 280 from him,and let him do the honors on the Improved versions.He said "don't do it...ain't worth it..".His favorite old 280 is a custom by Monte Kennedy that sits with a worn barrel....I keep telling him to screw on a new tube

He is right about guys using dumbed down data to compare cartridges,a common trap.

Sometime in the 80's I attended my first SCI convention in Las Vegas and bought my first 280, a beautiful custom on a LR Mauser action by a little known, but very talented guy named Kevin Campbell.IIRC he is mentioned in Jim Carmichael's book on rifles.Carmichael was shooting editor of OL by then;wrote up his exploits world wide with the 280.

The rifle was a shooter,but I found I could not get Carmichaels velocities with the 140's in that Shilen tube with IMR4350;barely 2900 fps...IMR 4831 was faster but accuracy suffered.H4831 was on par with the IMR version....what to do?

I dredged up a copy of Layne Simpson's article on the 280 in Rifle Magazine(May-June 1980) in which he worked with (IIRC) three 280's with 22-24" barrels and both standard and long-throat versions...a good article and worth reading.Simpson got the cartridge to do some tricks by playing with longer tubes and throat lengths, a common practice back then and you could do the same with the 7 Rem Mag as well.

What emerged from this article was (a)280's follow the same script as any other cartridge in that your barrel and throat dimensions can have an effect on velocities,and (b) MRP looked like a very good powder for the cartridge,but by then it was getting sorta hard to obtain.

RL22 was pretty new back then;reported to be similar to MRP(even if not exactly the same). I started working up loads and quickly found about 3050-3080 with the 140 NPT,140 Bitterroot,and 140 Sierra.(I have since taken those loads further in other 280's to over 3100 but never felt it was smart to do so).Anyway RL22 gave goo velocities and fine accuracy with a variety of bullets.I mostly used the 140 partitions and Bitterroots on whitetail, mule deer and black bear with typical results....just exactly the same as with my 270's which is why I liked it so well...

This was all great fun but at the same time I had a 7 Rem Mag or two and it was handily faster and easier to find velocity with everything from the 140's through 160 gr bullets,with the 160's commonly doing the same velocity in the 7 Rem Mag as the 140's do in the 280....with 140's I was easily hitting 3250 in the 7 Rem Mag,an this load with a 140 Bitterroot was a bomb on game.

These discussions about the 280 go back decades and it has always been fashionable to quote manual data and cherry pick to make a point.We can look at manuals all day long but the chronograph is the acid test and the larger capacity case wises usually win the day.If it doesn't something just ain't equal.

We can knit pick and talk about less powder,longer barrel life and less recoil as well, which is generally true,but that Shilen barrel was toasted in about 600 rounds while my Douglas and Kreiger 7 Rem mag barrels were good for 1500-2000 rounds or so.Differences in recoil between a 7 mag and a 280 are pretty trifling.

Since then I have had another custom by Sterling Davenport on a G33 Mauser,a Remington MR,a couple of Rugers and a couple of M70 FW's....all gave similar results. As ChipM points out above the 280 is a very good cartridge,especially if a guy does not want to climb into the magnum class of 7mm's,and for me fills exactly the same niche in a lightweight rifle that the 270 does.Given choice of bullets,I really don't care a lick for the differences between these two fine cartridges.What I can do with one,I can do with the other.

As ever, Very well said Bob !

My take on these comparisons has always been to First view the .280 as a larger cased 7x57, that is loaded to a higher pressure standard.
Second the .280 has a smaller diameter bullet than the .30'06 but they are loaded to the same pressure standard. Recoil is similar with same weight bullets.
The 7mm caliber just seems to hit a sweet spot of sufficient area combined with better sectional density than the .308's, which yields the muzzle velocity for a flatter trajectory and better retained energy.

338: The 280 is a very fine cartridge...IMHO one of the best for a standard action and 30/06 bolt face....hard to go wrong

To keep my brain as straight as I can with this stuff, I like to keep cartridges in context.

it's not completely unfair in the case of the 280 because it's data has a 5000psi/2000cup handicap

Fortunately it's only the data that's handicapped.

Anybody see any reason the 280 should not be loaded to pressures equal to the 270, I've never seen a loading book explain why?

The Remington 740 semi-auto that the .280 was introduced in required consistent pressure levels to cycle reliably.
Apparently this is what necessitated the reduction to 60,000 Cup

Paradoxically, the 740 was also chambered in 6mm/.244 which is loaded to a higher pressure level. Perhaps it had the necessary consistency.

I would like to add my 2cents here. I have found the easiest way to gain velocity in a 280 is to add barrel length. I have been shooting a 280 since 1983, and my brother bought one shortly after that. Mine was a 26" barrel, and my brother had a 22" barrel. I run 57gr of IMR 4350 behind a speer 130gr BT, and push it at 3250FPS, and this is a pretty easy load. My brother runs a max load and I do not know which manual, but he is getting 3000FPS. I will not mention what we chronographed my 162grBT at, but rest assurred it smokes out of a long barrel. I have not had my new barrel on a chronopraph, but I added a couple of inches of barrel. If you are going to have a stand rifle, why not make one that is cheaper to shoot, powder is getting pricey these days. I have had the best of luck with the 130 gr speers. I have lost count of how many deer that bullet has laid out right where they were shot. My brother has killed a number of mule deer as well with the same bullet. I do get 7MM performance from my 280, but I get it by adding extra barrel not extra powder. All of us handloading need to use good sense, non of us wants to experience action failure first hand. Good luck

Don't care how much water it holds. I do care how much powder it'll burn though.

The same gun was also chambered in 270.
So are you saying the 270 has a more consistant pressure level than the 280?
Personally,I think not.

BobinNH's experience far outweighs mine but our bottom line thoughts are indistinguishable. Mine were arrived at more by common sense and physics than my limited experience with a .280. I do have 30 years experience handloading my 7mm RM.

There is a reason I ended up with a .300WM, three .30-06s, two .308s and a .30-30 and why I sold the two .308s for an AR with a .300 Blackout barrel. The .308s, while good rifles (the Remington BDL was awesome accurate), simply didn't do anything I couldn't do with the .30-06s. The .300 WM provides a nice performance enhancement over the .30-06s, albeit at the expense of more powder and recoil. As a rule I load the .300WM a weight heavier, too, 180g vs 165-168g.

The story is much the same with my .280 and 7mmRM. My Ruger 7mm RM has a 24" barrel while my Ruger #1 .280 Rem has a 26" barrel. For my loads, the 7mm RM easily outpaces the longer-barreled .280 with the bullet weights I've tried -- 200fps for 140g. Other factors being equal, case capacity will rule the day.

If the .280 hadn't been in a package (Ruger #1) I'd wanted for some years, and if the price hadn't been right, there really wouldn't have been any significant reason to buy the .280 other than I'd wanted a .270 or .280 for some time as well. If not a .270 or .280, how else was I going to fill the "gaping hole" between my 6.5-06AI and my 7mm RM??? (laughing)

.270, .280, .280AI, 7mm RM, .30-06 -- for most hunting requirements one will do what the others will. Some do their thing using less powder with less recoil, others offer a bit more reach using more powder and with more recoil. In 31 years of hunting Colorado I've never needed more than a .308 Win. All are good.

YMMV

Don't recall where I read that, but that was the gist of it.

I believe that the 740 was also chambered in 6mm/.244 which was loaded to a higher pressure standard than the .280 & .30'06 are.

Was the .270 chambered in that same initial version or later ones with better gas metering?

Looks like the .270 chambering didn't show up until 1981 in the later 7400 model.

Tell me that read the manual warranty isn't permanent.

Brian Pierce covered it in this months Rifle Magazine(Jan/Feb issue)....says the 270 was not offered until after they tweaked the gas system and called the new rifle the 7400.

It really doesn't mater much one way or the other;the 30/06 was loaded to pretty mundane pressure by the factories and it never hurt its' popularity.The reason the 280 never got much traction was because it ran head on into the popularity of the 270....and a few years later, the 7 Rem Mag sealed its' fate.

No reason not to load the 280 up to full potential.It's a great cartridge in its' own right.

No reason not to load the 280 up to full potential.It's a great cartridge in its' own right.

Absolutely, it'll do what ever any of the cartridges above will do regarding harvesting game.
I like it because it's a 270 with a larger choice of bullets.

More minutiae? Geez...

Honey Love !