Chranah
Well-Known Member
I'll start with the story, and end with my request for help:
My wife's grandad on her mom's side passed away 2 years ago. He was a career gunsmith. In his will, he wanted his 3 children to take turns picking firearms from his collection. My Mother in Law allowed my Father in Law to do the picking, as he is a shooter and knows what Papa had. My FiL included me in his decision making as well.
In the turn of events we ended up inheriting a beautiful old Mauser on a Mannlicher stock with 270-308 engraved on the barrel. We were intrigued, to say the least. Papa was a gunsmith after all, and this appeared to be a wildcat project of his. We thought he had taken a 308 and necked it down to a .270. We were so wrong.
I tried to chamber an empty 260 Remington case and the bolt would stop short about 1/4" from being able to close. Weird. .243 case? Same issue.
I ordered Cerrosafe and made a casting of the chamber. Wow! The dimensions of his chamber were way off from a parent .308 case. We now knew why the daughter cases wouldn't chamber, but we were stuck at this point. What to do?
A couple of weeks later, my In Laws went down to go through some of Papa's stuff. It turns out Papa had created and labelled a bag of goodies "270-308" for this wildcat. This was huge for us, and needless to say, I was excited at this news. There was even a dummy round in the bag of goodies that looked a lot like our cerrosafe mold. I had to wait a whole week before my in-laws came to visit and give me the goody bag.
Alas, we finally had the rifle and dies together, and to my relief, that dummy round fit in that Mauser chamber and the bolt closed!
With that confirmed, we then set about trying to figure out what all of the stuff in the baggy was for. Papa had a 308 sizing die, a 7x57 sizing die, a 300 Savage seating die, and some aluminum bolts with holes drilled up the insides and shoulders reamed out at the bolt head.
We decided to start using some spare 308 brass and run it through all of these dies in a trial-and-error fashion to see what they did to the brass. After we figured that out, we essentially had a mental map of how Papa used these components, and in what order, to create his wildcat brass. We were successful in re-creating the dummy round, so the next logical step was to create some rounds with a little bit of powder to fire form a few cases.
I tried the cream of wheat method of fire forming, but that didn't do much. Turns out the case length needed to grow forward quite a bit and the case was pushing off of the bolt face, thereby preventing the shoulder from forming all the way. I ended up creating some rounds for fire forming and left the bullets long so they would jam, preventing the case from jumping forward. It worked well. I did have to fire these cases 4 times to get a sharp shoulder.
My son is in a machinist program for his technical school and he's pretty sure he can make me some dies for it. I'm hoping to get that so I can actually size a bunch of brass and start creating a load and shooting for groups. I hope to hunt with this someday.
The assistance I need from you guys: That barrel is 1/3 Octagon and 2/3 round at 21.5". Can anyone help me identify the Model and possibly Year that this barrel was? In my research I believe it came from a Sporter Hunting Rifle. Because of the ramped front sight, I don't believe it's been cut.
My wife's grandad on her mom's side passed away 2 years ago. He was a career gunsmith. In his will, he wanted his 3 children to take turns picking firearms from his collection. My Mother in Law allowed my Father in Law to do the picking, as he is a shooter and knows what Papa had. My FiL included me in his decision making as well.
In the turn of events we ended up inheriting a beautiful old Mauser on a Mannlicher stock with 270-308 engraved on the barrel. We were intrigued, to say the least. Papa was a gunsmith after all, and this appeared to be a wildcat project of his. We thought he had taken a 308 and necked it down to a .270. We were so wrong.
I tried to chamber an empty 260 Remington case and the bolt would stop short about 1/4" from being able to close. Weird. .243 case? Same issue.
I ordered Cerrosafe and made a casting of the chamber. Wow! The dimensions of his chamber were way off from a parent .308 case. We now knew why the daughter cases wouldn't chamber, but we were stuck at this point. What to do?
A couple of weeks later, my In Laws went down to go through some of Papa's stuff. It turns out Papa had created and labelled a bag of goodies "270-308" for this wildcat. This was huge for us, and needless to say, I was excited at this news. There was even a dummy round in the bag of goodies that looked a lot like our cerrosafe mold. I had to wait a whole week before my in-laws came to visit and give me the goody bag.
Alas, we finally had the rifle and dies together, and to my relief, that dummy round fit in that Mauser chamber and the bolt closed!
With that confirmed, we then set about trying to figure out what all of the stuff in the baggy was for. Papa had a 308 sizing die, a 7x57 sizing die, a 300 Savage seating die, and some aluminum bolts with holes drilled up the insides and shoulders reamed out at the bolt head.
We decided to start using some spare 308 brass and run it through all of these dies in a trial-and-error fashion to see what they did to the brass. After we figured that out, we essentially had a mental map of how Papa used these components, and in what order, to create his wildcat brass. We were successful in re-creating the dummy round, so the next logical step was to create some rounds with a little bit of powder to fire form a few cases.
I tried the cream of wheat method of fire forming, but that didn't do much. Turns out the case length needed to grow forward quite a bit and the case was pushing off of the bolt face, thereby preventing the shoulder from forming all the way. I ended up creating some rounds for fire forming and left the bullets long so they would jam, preventing the case from jumping forward. It worked well. I did have to fire these cases 4 times to get a sharp shoulder.
My son is in a machinist program for his technical school and he's pretty sure he can make me some dies for it. I'm hoping to get that so I can actually size a bunch of brass and start creating a load and shooting for groups. I hope to hunt with this someday.
The assistance I need from you guys: That barrel is 1/3 Octagon and 2/3 round at 21.5". Can anyone help me identify the Model and possibly Year that this barrel was? In my research I believe it came from a Sporter Hunting Rifle. Because of the ramped front sight, I don't believe it's been cut.
