NEF .357 Rem Maximum

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Last Post 31 July 2008

CBA Member

Balhincher posted this 28 February 2008

My NEF single shot was recently sent off to have a .357 magnum barrel fitted. I really wanted a .357 Rem Max but they no longer offer that chambering. My plan is to have the .357 magnum barrel rechambered to the longer cartridge.

Deer hunting laws in Indiana were changed for the 2007 season to allow hunting with rifles chambered for pistol cartridges. Legal cartridges must shoot a bullet at least .357 in diameter and have a case not longer than 1.625" The .357 Rem Max almost exactly matches that length and is the longest legal 38 caliber round that may be used. Ed Harris has written about a reamer for .357 magnum that produces a throat that is favorable to shooting cast bullets and may improve accuracy. My question is whether that same taper on a reamer would be advisable for the .357 Rem Max chamber? I would also like to know if anyone has a recommendation of a gunsmith who uses such a reamer that I could contact to do this work.

I have a T/C Contender with a 14” barrel chambered in .357 Rem Max and it shoots very well with the factory chambering using jacketed bullets. Using WW296 I get around 1900 fps. In the longer barrel of the NEF rifle I would expect a little over 2000 fps and this should be a nice load for whitetail deer. A heavy cast bullet should also make a good deer load and with the right throat I'd like try finding such a cast load. Any comments or suggestions about this project would be welcomed.

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CBA Member

Ed Harris posted this 28 February 2008

When I was at Ruger I experimented with a .357 Maximum reamer having the .38 AMU style 3-degree forcing cone direct from the .379 diameter case mouth, with no ball seat. We used it to lengthen the chambers on some Ruger No. 1 rifles in .357 Magnum. These shot well with .357 Maximum factory loads and also shot accurately with .357 Magnum ammo. The cost to have a reamer custom ground to this configuration would probably be around $150-$165 from Clymer or JGS.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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Standard Member

CB posted this 28 February 2008

I remember reading about that in some articles in a Fouling Shot.. Something about a fix for some accuracy problem, was to change the throat angle or something... I thought is was pretty interesting.. If I could only remember where I saw it...

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CBA Member

6pt-sika posted this 28 February 2008

Now a 357 MAX in an H&R Handi Rifle would make a nice cheap “Rook Rifle” :D

Or even better yet a 32 Miller :dude:

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Match Director

linoww posted this 20 March 2008

Ed Harris wrote: When I was at Ruger I experimented with a .357 Maximum reamer having the .38 AMU style 3-degree forcing cone direct from the .379 diameter case mouth, with no ball seat. We used it to lengthen the chambers on some Ruger No. 1 rifles in .357 Magnum. These shot well with .357 Maximum factory loads and also shot accurately with .357 Magnum ammo. The cost to have a reamer custom ground to this configuration would probably be around $150-$165 from Clymer or JGS.

Friend Bobs #1 357 has a better throat than mine does.I heard you re-throated customer send back guns that had poor acccuracy.Is that true?? Anyway both will shoot 2” and a bit better than 1.5” at 100 sometimes with 250-290g bullets at about 1300 fps.It sure pushes over stell targets at 200 yds.

George

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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CBA Member

Ed Harris posted this 20 March 2008

linoww wrote: Friend Bobs #1 357 has a better throat than mine does.I heard you re-throated customer send back guns that had poor acccuracy.Is that true?? Anyway both will shoot 2” and a bit better than 1.5” at 100 sometimes with 250-290g bullets at about 1300 fps.It sure pushes over steel targets at 200 yds. Yes indeed! When I first came aboard at Ruger they were getting California Highway Patrol Commemoratives back from people who got them and complained about accuracy with the SAAMI chamber using lead bullets. Ronnie Brooks had ten rifles waiting in customer service in which he'd fooled with bedding, rebarreled and exhausted all the usual cures, with no luck. A couple guns had been back more than once and Mr. Ruger ("the Old Man") wanted them fixed!

I told Jay Jarvis, then VP for Engineering at the Newport, NH facility that I had the .357 Mag. reamer with the .38 AMU throat which Ellis Lea and I had used for the American Rifleman article. Jay was familiar with the .38 AMU and its special chamber from his time working at Winchester's Alton IL ammunition plant when he was QA supervisor there. I would bring the reamer in and let Ronnie ream the guns on night shift and test fire them. We would be out nothing for the effort and would be way ahead if it avoided having to rebarrel or continue fooling with them. Jay agreed and had “before and after” targets shot with Remington .38 Wadcutters and .357 158-gr. JSPs. All of the guns shot better, with both ammos. The average extreme spread was about half after rethroating as it was before. Before reaming wadcutters keyholed from some of the .357s, but afterwards none shot wadcutters worse than 2 inches at 50 yards, despite their long jump, .357 Mag. 158 JSPs were just over an inch, this firing at 50 yards from sandbags with 10X scope.

When it came time to experiment with .357 Maximum, we ground the fixed rim depth stop off the reamer and fitted a moveable depth stop on the shank so we set the depth to run the chamber in deeper. Reaming the throats to 3 degrees Basic became a standard “fix” from then on. Earl Raymond on days or Ronnie Brooks on nights hand-reamed several hundred customer service returns with it when I was with the company.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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Match Director

linoww posted this 20 March 2008

but afterwards none shot wadcutters worse than 2 inches at 50 yards, despite their long jump, .357 Mag. 158 JSPs were just over an inch, this firing at 50 yards from sandbags with 10X scope.

About any cast RN bullet shoots well in mine with 4.5 of 700X at 50 yards.The Laser Cast 158RN shoots as well as any of my carefully cast slugs.It will hold about 2.5"-3.5” at 100 in calm weather.WC's shoot pretty well,but not at 50 yds.I would say about 1” at 25 is the norm.Keith style SWC bullets seem to be the hardest to shoot well.It seems they must have an undersized ft band similar to the Lyman 358156 to help alignment.It makes me wonder what a good quality heavy barrel .357 would be capable of at 100 with the heavy bullets I like to shoot.The Ruger #1A CHP models are pretty darn skinny on the forend and barrel and yet they shoot pretty darn good.

George

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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CBA Member

Balhincher posted this 29 July 2008

After talking to the helpful people at Clymer today I may want to get them to make me a reamer to open up the .357 Mag chamber to .357 Max. Ed, your description of the improvement in accuracy by using the AMU throating has convinced that the reamer I order should produce that kind of throat. I remember seeing a drawing you had for the chamber dimensions but after sifting through my stack of “Fouling Shot” newsletters and browsing the CBA Forum, I've been unable to find it. Perhaps you (or anybody reading this) could remind me where that drawing can be found. And since I know very little about this operation and absolutely nothing about how to order a chambering or throating reamer, if you could give some tips on that it would be appreciated.

Thanks for your helpful suggestions.