New .260 AI

[EastTNHunter]

Very nice. I’m happy to tinker with Savage barrel swaps, but I would LOVE to have the knowledge and equipment to truly chamber/thread/true/assemble my own. True custom work is really cool, and I love to DIY

 

[Addicting]

Send me a price, I'll think about it. When would you be planning on putting the order in?

I called them today. They are not making any small caliber brass for 2021. They said maybe in 2022 they would make a limited run but as of now their schedule doesn’t have room in it for smaller caliber.

 

[p_ham]

I called them today. They are not making any small caliber brass for 2021. They said maybe in 2022 they would make a limited run but as of now their schedule doesn’t have room in it for smaller caliber.

Kind of what I expected with all the extra demand going. I wonder what they're considering "small caliber?"

 

[Addicting]

Kind of what I expected with all the extra demand going. I wonder what they're considering "small caliber?"

They didn’t elaborate, thought it was weird. I just dropped mine off at Pierce Engineering today to get it put together. Hopefully the hundred I already have FF will last me long enough till I can source some more.

 

[p_ham]

@Addicting so I fire formed some Starline brass yesterday, they're averaging 2.007" overall with the neck averaging .25" a little shorter than I had hoped but should be ok for match bullets. I don't think a Hammer would stay put.

I'm planning on rebarreling my wife's rifle to the same chambering, a longer neck would definitely be beneficial in that.

Here's 20rds during barrel break in, cleaning every 5 shots. Low right flyer was one that got hung up in the mag and pushed the bullet way in.
90gr Speer TNT 44gr IMR4064 **MAX in SAAMI chamber.



Also made a new mag follower and spacer. Fixed the nose dive issue and made loading easier.

 

[Addicting]

I monkeyed with some Lapua brass last night from my .243 that needed to be trimmed. It had grown to around 2.045. Instead of trimming it expanded the neck to .262 and used the COW method to turn it into 260ai brass. After firing it came out to 2.025 which is the best I’ve seen.

The ADG I have been using are roughly 2.015 on average. I don’t think the hassle of FF 3x shot 243 brass is worth it for the gain after this batch of 50 is done.

I ordered 100 new Lapua .243 cases to replace the ones I monkeyed with. Curious to see what they measure when they arrive.

 

[Addicting]

Just got a new batch of Lapua 243 and they measured 2.031. If you are still deciding on which brass to run.

 

[std7mag]

You could try Peterson brass.
Been hearing good about them from the match shooters lately.

 

[p_ham]

So I've been playing around with this gun a bit. Did my break in- so I thought.
With Starline brass, N555 powder, last week I ran a pressure ladder to see how far I could go, i had a nice flat spot around 2890fps with 145 barnes match Burners and a velocity spike after that. Stopping point found. Then I shot another 50 or so fireform loads and cleaned the barrel again. It's been cleaning up with 4 patches on average. I went ahead and removed what little copper fouling was there.
Today I loaded up a bunch of rounds to see what kind of ES I could come up with. I loaded incremental charge weights in the spread that gave me my flat spot. My barrel, which is button rifled, gained about 40fps for the same charge weight. I didn't expect that much gain as the barrel was lapped to a very smooth finish.
Groups were pretty good, with SD/ES looking better as the charge went up. My last .3 charge weights had an ES of 17 collectively with an average velocity of 2930fps. Definitely didn't expect that much out of this powder. I'm going to mess with seating depth now and see if I can tighten up the groups a bit.

Oh ya...I made a muzzle brake for it too. Testing went great so I'll kote it the same as the barrel next. Recoil is a little more than .223, less than .243, maybe 22-250 level? Ports are swept back 10 degrees.