Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 257 Roberts Ackley Improved - Worth the effort?

Like John I have had several Roberts rifles with long throats...and can add on top watching friends work loads with a few others. Most of mine had 22-23" barrels.

I have seen about the same thing he has with the 115's,and velocities in excess of 3000 fps. 120's did about 2900+,about what we see from a 270-150.

100 gr bullets went 3150-3200.

Comparing this stuff to data for the Improved I never got around to the Improved version.

I'm not convinced about wildcat cartridges (except for unknown to me specialized purposes). Today, the range of commercial cartridges covers everything from small game to elephants with a lot of overlap. If I want more energy, I'll go with a larger cartridge (perhaps the 260 Remington in lieu of the 257 AI?).

Of course, this ignores the fun of having and shooting something different, but then I might be a spoil-sport. Just my opinion.

This is one of the wisest postings I have read in many years.

I screwed an old 308 barrel onto a surplus Venezuelan 7x57 Mauser action and had it reamed out to a 30-06 AI, back before the days of internet forums or electronic load data.

The only load data I could find was a forty year old Speer manual. I learned more about this hobby of reloading from that project than I have from everything else I have done all put together.

Today half of my meager collection consists of wildcats, and the other half are rare enough chamberings that load data was nearly nonexistent when I purchased the rifle.

I picked it up, technically used, about 5 years back,but it only had 20-40 rounds through it. Miscommunication between owner and gunsmith = too short LOP (13-5/8") = benefit to me.

-1953 Pre 64 M70 action blueprinted and full action gone over by Kreiger, then again by Glen.
-#2ish 24" Krieger barrel with long cone to balance out the rifle.
-Calif English, Dakota, Special Selection, 2-3 grades higher (Glen Morovitz, the 'smith stocked for Dakota for quite some time)
-9 lb 1 oz but feels much lighter since the balance is perfect
-Sunny Hill BM
-Action completely glass bedded, no pillars, un godly tight wood to metal fit.

It likes heavier stuff (115 BT and 120 PT) with IMR 4350/4831/H4831.

Was offered a chance to buy it's twin sister in 375 H&H this past summer but, alas, fund poor.

Finally killed something it 3 months back with the 115 BT.

Gorgeous rifle.