The summer-long financial crisis is starting to ease at last, hopefully allowing me to pick back up with the .450/.400 Nitro project soon. Finally having cash in hand won’t help me much if components continue to be made of Unobtanium, though, so we’ll see…
Aside from a new recoil pad, the only other change in store for the gun itself is a slight tweak to the safety. Ruger No. 1s have a shotgun-style tang safety, and the front end sticks up just enough to hang up on the rim of big rimmed cartridges like the .450/.400. The solution is slightly trimming back and rounding off the front edge of the safety, just enough for clean ejection.
Then there’s load development. The goal is developing handloads that exactly duplicate original Kynoch ammo (400 grain bullets at 2125 fps). I’ll probably bite the bullet and order one box each of Kynoch solids and softs so I can run them over a chronograph. At $14/round it’ll be expensive knowledge, but it’s a necessary step if I’m going to exactly match Kynoch’s ballistics.
I’m also going to try to figure out why Hornady’s quoted ballistics are 75 fps off from the standard velocity for this cartridge. 75 fps isn’t a huge difference, but given the inflexible nature of regulation in double rifles it’s an odd discrepancy.
Of course, all of that is contingent on Reloder 15 and Federal 215 primers becoming available again, and who knows when THAT will be…
My guess for the discrepency? Barrel length. If Hornady did the testing at 22″ and the “standard” is 26″…
http://www.powdervalleyinc.com/
Powder Valley has Reloder 15 in 5lb cans. I recently bought two. And they have it on the shelf at my local Sportsman’s Warehouse. Can’t help you with the primers, though. Can you use CCI 250′s? I have 5,000 and can spare some. My current .308 load is RL-15 and CCI BR4′s. I was using Varget and CCI250′s.