Any feeding or magazine issues rebarreling a Ruger Hawkeye 7 Mag to .375 or .416 Ruger?

I have been sitting on a barrel and stock but finally found a nicely priced stainless donor so may get more motivated.

The magazine geometry is different. In your area I would send only to Dennis Olson or Randy Selby. Both understand the issue.

Excellent. Thanks!

I have been in contact with Dennis on previous projects.

I loved my 416 Taylor. The best thing that ever happened to a 7mag. Sure some cases didnt make the transition but they were free. Certainly enjoyed leaving the empties on the mountain. If only they knew

The Taylor is on the short list for the 416. I already have a .358 NM so probably won’t do a 375 Taylor.

Right now I can find .338 brass easier than Ruger brass so that may sway the decision.

I love my .416 Taylor. Brass can be sourced more easily than the .416 Ruger. CWD4-whatever makes new dies if you can’t find old Lee/Hornady/rcbs dies.

Thanks. When I checked this afternoon C4HD had dies in stock and 4D had a reamer available for rent.

I’ve got a set of their dies for my 6mm SPC. Strange name for a company, but great dies.

My .400 Whelen dies came from them also. No complaints.

MkII M77 Rugers made easy going from 7mm Rem. Mag. to .416 Taylor
and from .338 Win. Mag to .458 Win. Mag., no feeding issues for me.
If the Hawkeye mag box is that much different for the .375 Ruger and .416 Ruger compared to 7mm Rem. Mag.,
maybe the parts could be ordered for replacement ?
That would be a good research project.
Dave Scovill was able to get the RSM sheet metal box for a .375 H&H and convert/re-barrel a MkII M77 Ruger to .375 H&H.

BTW, I re-barreled a 7mm Rem. M70 Classic to .264/.375 Ruger (aka .264 Ripmoor, my own version of wildcat), no feeding issues.

I just put 3 of the .416 Ruger into my .458 Win. Mag. made from a .338 Win. Mag. MkII Ruger M77.
Seems to feed smoothly starting into the chamber.
Ditto my .416 Taylor made from a 7mm Rem. Mag.
In my experience the Hawkeye and MkII M77 Rugers are identical in the mag box dimensions.
Polishing feed rails and ramp might be all that is needed.
Put some .375 and .416 Ruger dummies in your 7mm Rem. Mag. action and try it.

"CH Tool & Die 4-D": https://www.ch4d.com/

Yep, CH4D is kind of an odd name, but C4HD would be even more so, hehhehheh.

CH4D dies have been good for me on
.400 Whelen
.470 Mbogo
.458 Win. Mag.
.400/.395 Nitro Express 3" Aboriginal ... that last one is my own design of wildcat based on 9.3x74R brass.
CH4D has done a lot of 9.3x74R wildcat dies, sort of a favorite of the proprietor, I knew they knew how to do those,
back in the day ... we are all getting older, hope he is still kicking.
I have a .50-110 WCF set from CH4D just waiting for some use to see if they are any good.
If I see them collecting dust somewhere, I buy them, no worries for CH4D quality.

I beg to differ sir.... a 7mm mag would make a great 405 magnum since i wont be doing Africa anytime soon. plus you could also take varmints with 41 mag bullets, or any game with it.

A .405 Magnum off the .338/7Mag case would be interesting...a .400 Ruger also.

I did pick up a .416 Ruger the other day and will likely play with it some before sending it down the road. Will keep a few rounds on hand for testing actions for suitability for future projects.

Yeah, but the 416 Ruger is even better. Totally under-rated.

Whitworth .375 H&H up top, below it a 416 Ruger.

I think Riflecrank is correct, feeding issues would be minimal if any. Any issues would probably be more of an individual specimen variation.

This thread was a memory joggers for me. I have an unfired (except factory) early production stainless 375 Ruger take-off barrel, minus the front sight insert and rear sight assembly. And I have a stainless Ruger Mark II in 300 Winchester. If I recall correctly the 300 has had 20 rounds down the barrel since purchasing in the mid 90's. This might be a fairly economical path for me to an additional 375 Ruger.

The 375 & 416 Rugers are probably my favorite cartridges of those calibers.
I agree the 416 Ruger is under appreciation.

Yep, just get a 416 ruger. I thought you'd want a break from headaches like the brass and feeding issues you dealt with on your .400 Whelen.

8lbs 6oz scoped, 416 ruger is a carry all day Alaskan kinda gun.

I chronographed that 400 grain dgx bonded ammo at 2450 fps, it's a glorious load that cannot be outdone. Because it's simple and affordable.

Still some bs though, needs a b&c stock. It hits balsa wood like a fkn splitting maul.

The headaches are what keep it interesting

I chose the .416 Taylor over the Ruger because I didn't care to be hamstrung by having only one maker of brass. But if you lay in a good supply to begin with you're covered. Either is a good round.

I did run some .416 ruger rounds through some of my magnum bolt face rugers. Some are CRF with no lip on the bottom of the bolt and some are push feed.

The .338 without a lip on the bolt face fed smoothest and seemed to control the round as it should. The others seemed to work ok also and likely wouldn’t need much work. I suppose the lip could be machined off also to make them CRF?

With the price of Ruger Alaskans right now this is one of the rare times a custom may make economic sense if you can find a reasonably priced donor. A stainless model 70 in .416 Ruger would be hard to beat for a using rifle.

Dennis is great, and he gets the work done and gun back to you in this lifetime.

My Taylor is a stainless model 70, rebored from 7 mag. It feeds just fine except that I found about one round in 10 would have the case mouth snag on the mouth of the chamber. A light crimp to the rounds makes them feed like butter.

Then it doesn't really feed fine, does it?

The M70 Winchester having a cone breech, a la Springfield, has an extractor cut in that breech
that may have a sharp edge or corner.
That may snag a cartridge on feeding.
Polishing, beveling, or breaking any less than smooth surfaces there is a must.

Yes,
The early M77 MkII that has the lip on the bottom
of the boltface,
the "weak sister" lip.
That lip can be machined off to turn the pushfeed into CRF.
When I was living in Eagle River, AK, in the early 1990s
a gunsmith named Kelly Olson did one for me.
Flawless, on a .338 WinMag.

At this point it does, as after some fixes it feeds fine. The problem occurred with Hornady brass. I forgot to mention that I also chamfered the chamber mouth, (just enough to knock the edge off) and haven’t had any issues with Winchester brass. So yeah, since I can’t make it puke now I’d say it’s fixed.

i have a brand new Ruger #1 in 416 Ruger that has never been shot your rifle and some cash we could make a trade maybe ?

The Ruger stainless Mark II, 300 Winchester feeds my 375 Ruger 270 grain Barnes LRX handloads to the point of no-go very smoothly. I just cycled a few magazine fulls through it.
This is the 2nd generation Mark II, with CRF.

The rifle I had when I started this thread has already found a new home. Sorry.



Excellent info. Thanks

I just this morning tried to run some .416 Ruger 400 Hornady DGS and DGX through a 7 Mag Winchester Classic stainless. Did not want to feed the top round at all. Rounds #2 and #3 fed great.

Where does the first round hang up?

This makes no sense that Hornady brass caused feeding problems and Winchester brass does not,
unless the handloading techniques boogered the brass.

I'm not offering any explanation for it, just reporting what all I changed.

It seemed tight in the magazine and then when I used enough force to get it to move forward the tip stopped on the left side of the breech. Same story with some TTSX handloads. May be as simple as a new follower/mag spring but I am not going to build on that particular rifle so not too worried about it. Seems the factory magnum Ruger actions/mag box/followers are closer to working with the .375/.416 rounds with minimal fuss.

Thread winner. Straight to the point of the question, informative, simple.

I agree with others the 7mm opened up to either 416 or 375. It would be the easiest to convert and easiest to find brass.

My son is an Alaskan guide. His outfitter he worked for, a very knowledgeable gun man, had installed a Ruger factory .375 Ruger barrel on a tang safety Ruger 77 7 mag. for my son to use in his guiding. Son brought that rifle along with us on a Kodiak Island bear hunt as a back-up rifle. On that hunt we realized that he'd have to use the rifle the following day to search for a wounded bear. That evening in our tent, I asked him if the rifle fed reliably so we took some rounds to see. They did NOT. I believe they were reloads. So based on that example of 1, I would say feeding COULD be an issue. Just my 2 cents worth.

Sounds like a terrible time to discover that! Hope you didn’t need it!

There was a lot of knowledge not put into practice before that day of realization.

One thing with the 416 ruger hawkeye or mk ll's is there is very little taper to the brass. Combine that with a sheet metal mag box that can be distorted or bent, simply by torqueing the action screws and it will cause problems.

Example: a 416 ruger in a boat paddle stock. If you didn't relieve the mag box before torqueing down the action screws, the cartridges won't set flush against the bottom of the rails.

416 ruger needs a perfectly straight mag box, and material must be removed from the bottom of the mag box, so that it's only held in place when those action screws are torqued.

You may even have to tune the mag box flat, if has been distorted.

Like many of you, I watch the feeding of my rifles like a hawk. When I'm done, they're to feed any fkn bullet I choose, no excuses.

The easy way out, is when your sloppy jalopy fkn jams (bear guide or not), you go and blame it on the profile of the dgx bullet or some other bllsht excuse.

I bought a Brown Whelen pre-64 Win 70 at a gun show. When I got home cartridges wouldn't feed. There were more problems than I wanted to deal with, I had the barrel set back and chambered for a 35 Whelen and the problem was resolved.
I cannot imagine taking a rifle hunting without testing it and the ammo at a rifle range. I do know people that only shoot one shot to see if the bullet lands where it did the year before and that's all they do. I think that's better than doing it with a rifel they never shot before though.

About those sheet metal mag boxes getting distorted,
recoil battering of bullets into front of box
can put some dimples in it that
might snag bullets and cause a jam.
Ruger, Winchester, CZ, Weatherby, etc.
I used to get gunsmith to solder a steel plate onto front of box.
Then I discovered that I could epoxy a plate on there myself.
Tight epoxy bedding contact allover front of box can help, but is a bit fussy.
If you have a lot of rifles needing it, fussy is not good.
Old dimpled box fronts can be hammered flat again,
or replaced in toto.
Best not to fire rifle with ammo in the mag box until the reinforcement is done.

I rebarreled my left hand 7mm remington stainless mark2 to 375 Ruger with no other modifications and it feeds perfectly

Smart man, you're way ahead of the the guys that choose ego over common sense. You don't take the easy out, you actually do the work to make sure a modified 41 caliber rifle is legit before heading into bear country.

Dumbest excuse so far: DGX bonded "bullet profile" caused a modified 416 ruger to jam.

Thanks, mainer.
I also like to make sure the magazine follower
stays firmly attached to the magazine spring.
There may be some high class gunsmithing tricks
for doing that,
but I find J-B Weld can be used there too.

Lesson learned, this is how I pay insurance on wooden stocks:



I gave the same treatment to a CZ 550 Magnum walnut stock with better grain in the grip and have perfect confidence in it.
I would recommend this for any really powerful rifle like a .458 WM+.
It is, afterall, more powerful than a SAAMI .458 Lott.

Other important securities to be considered in magazine-repeater bolt action rifles:





Not all rifles have bottom metal built like a bank vault,
but some can be rebuilt like a brick dunny:

On topic,
this was my 7mm RemMag Ruger M77 Mark II
converted to .416 Taylor.
I have tried the .416 Ruger feed-dummies in it and it seems to be good.
No surprise.





I leave it as a 26"-barreled .416 Taylor for nostalgic reasons,
especially since I have one of those new-fangled 20"-barreled Ruger Hawkeyes,
and a 24"-barreled Ruger No. 1, both in .416 Ruger.
Who needs a .416 Rigby if you have a .416 Taylor or .416 Ruger ?
Oh, yeah, a nostalgiac.

The factory .416 Ruger rifle in the Hogue stock with 20" barrel weighed 8.0 lbs.
Switched to unaltered canoe paddle stock it weighed 7.0 lbs.
With gussied up canoe paddle (recoil pad and laminated wood grip panels, etc.) it weighs 7.5 lbs.
The barreled action is 5.5 pounds. Scope (Leupold 1.5-5x20) and rings shown weigh 1#3oz:



This Ruger No. 1 weighed 8#2oz as it came out of box, with no slip-on recoil pad at 13.5" LOP:



Some trivia about the .416 Ruger of last century, before the one from 2009:

The re-barreling of 7mm RemMag rifles to any cartridge based on the .375 Ruger case
or another H&H-based case is always a good thing.
One less 7mmRM rifle in the world is always a good thing.
Doing good has no end.
My favorite is of course the .458 Winchester Magnum done on a Ruger M77 Mark II 7mm RemMag donor.
Flawless.

Even a Ruger M77 Hawkeye in 7mmRM should be rebarreled, immediately or sooner.
Can't decide on .375 or .416 Ruger ?
How about splitting the baby ?
That is what I did to a 7mmRM Hawkeye, turning it into a .395/.375 Ruger with 24" McGowen No. 4 sporter:

A .264-caliber barrel worked wonders on a 7mm RemMag Winchester M70.
Turned it into a .264/.375 Ruger aka 26 Ripmoor:







But I digress ...
I could tell a story about my history with the 7mm RemMag on a Dall sheep hunt.
It ended in multiple catastrophes through no fault of my own.
I was the innocent dupe accompanied by three other "hunters" into sheep camp.
Two took a tumble and got air-evaced on same day we flew in,
ferried by a Super Cub on floats to an alpine pond called One Shot Lake.
The third "hunter" stayed with me and ruined everything for me, not himself.
What a prick !

I would have to investigate statutes of limitations before mentioning any names.
Or, I could write some "faction" with the names changed to protect one innocent "hunter" in the group.
I blame the jinx on my having brought along a 7mm Remington Magnum "sheep rifle."
A rifle to be used by sheep, a rifle for sheep.
Like a .458 Lott.

Great stuff and always entertaining RC. Thanks!