How to load down a 340 Weatherby Mag?

Holey Moley, 3 pages on the 340 Weatherby (??)

I've got te get one. It must be a go-to gun as everybody seems to know something about it. Can somebody post some good 600 yard accuracy loads?
 
I Grew Up Reading This Stuff

It seems like Elmer Keith would have at least ONE article a year in what ever Magazine he was writing for at the time about the phenomena of a reduced charge in a high capacity case "detonating" and wrecking the Rifle. Him and several notables swore they had heard of it happenning.

They also tried many times to duplicate this in a lab, and to this date, I do not think it has been accomplished.

I mentioned this just to show that thisis certainly not a new topic, and has always been contraversial.......jackie
 
OK OK, I GIVE!

Hey pfranklin, looks like you've got'cherself a cheering section now......

Chuck 30-40 grains of 2400/4759 at it...... hell, throw in a hunk of Tyvek to "aid in frontal ignition"......

"It's obvious" that uninformed guys like myownself are only here to bust your chops and crimp your groove so go after the smart ones, get some a' dat powder "designed to burn @ 20-40,000psi" and just flang a chunk eh!

I'm done "being heard" for a while.

good "luck" hey


al
 
I give up too. I going to my cave and lick my cuts and scratches. Al, We should pick our fights better. The sad part is that we have never met the guy and he may not even get the 340 Weatherby.

Oh well!

Concho Bill
 
Alinwa
Before you go flying off the handle yet again read the posts in the order they are typed in.
I responded to a post saying that PFranklin was trying to kill himself that wasn't written by YOU yet you feel I am taking a swipe at you for some unknown reason?
He came on here looking ror a reduced load so I sense he isn't about to do something real stupid any time soon.He was given several major players to contact and replied back that that was his intention.He sounds like a pretty smart guy to me.
Other posters got to tangling about this and that and somebody posted that PFranklin was headed to the mortuary.He wasn't involved in any of it.

PFranklin
Contact The Expiper as he has been doing this for years and that data on the reduced loads better look familiar to him as he sent it to me yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Generaly speaking when you call one of the major players tell them you are using cast bullets as has already been posted.You can't get any real velocity out of lead without it melting on you so reduced loads are the norm.I am truly sorry you couldn't get a decent answer here.
Waterboy aka Lynn
 
Nicely done Boyd!

That should help.... load, bullet weight and all. :)

".340 Weatherby Magnum - 200 grain Speer SP bullet, 33.0 grains of SR 4759 powder, CCI 250 primer, Wby. case. COL 3.560". MV 1970 fps in 26" barrel. (Based on the Speer Reloading Manual No. 13.)"

al
 
Nice piece of research Boyd.

This is the what I have meant by reliable loading data.

I want to point out the disclaimer that the author, Chuck Hawks, inserted:

CHECK THE SOURCE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO USE ANY OF THESE LOADS. Despite my best efforts, sometimes typos and mistakes do sneak past the editing process. No one, certainly including me, is 100% perfect at transcribing data, so inadvertent errors in the data presented below are always a possibility.

Remember, before attempting to duplicate any of these loads please consult the source to verify all data. If you are a shooter and a reloader, you must be a responsible adult, so I accept absolutely no responsibility for your actions or the use of this data.


I meant to offend no one with my strong words. I ask that those who might have been offended understand this. Reduced loads is an area of danger if not done right. The most dangerous method of reducing loads is to try to pioneer a process. We should follow a road that has been well traveled not try to cut a road through the wilderness.

Safety first.

Concho Bill
 
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You Learn Something Every Day

The idea of using a really bulky magnum pistol powder to make up space in a Rifle case for reduced loads?? Who would have thought.

The way I understand this is while these are reduced velocity loads, they ARE NOT neccessarilly reduced pressure loads. I guess the way it works is the majority of the powder is burned in the first half of the barrel, and the barrels friction slows the bullet down a substantial amount to reduce muzzle velocity, hence felt recoil as the bullet exits.

Or, is something else going on.??...........jackie
 
Hello gents. I'm thinking of buying a 340 Weatherby Mag. It seems like a good middle of the road caliber in the sense that it can be used for a lot of different things. My question is can it safely be loaded down to 338-06 velocities with a case filler. If not no big deal., but it seems like I heard something about that once. I'd like to use it as my primary and have some edible blacktail left.

Lynn,

Read the original post, I don't think he got a load. He asked for 338-06 velocities and later mentioned light bullets. A 338-06 hunting load with a 180gr-185gr bullet clocks 2800-2900fps. There is no doubt the 1970fps 200gr load given will easily kill deer but his current rifle is a 280Remington so I'd guess he will not want to hunt with sub-2000fps/rainbow trajectory on his mentioned blacktail deer.

My point was/is that the 340Weatherby isn't a "good middle of the road" cartridge. I have no doubt that you can safely load it down to 2800fps with a 180gr but the 340 case capacity combined with the long freebore will not be a good match for consistency. My hunting load qualifications are that the rifle can make first shot consistent MOA hits on a warm 70 degree afternoon as well as a zero degree mountain morning over it's effective range. There are 340WBY loads with 250gr bullet and 2800fps that will do that but it's not as easy as many think because of temperature variation, same thing if you want to download your 6-284 to 6mmBR velocity and shoot 55-70gr bullets, you can do it safely but try to get the vertical out of your load at varmint ranges. Now he only asked about safety of a 338-06 load in a 340WBY but if he only wants to keep his shots on a pie plate at 200yrds, he can pickup a iron sighted surplus military clunker that will do that for less then the cost of WBY brass, bullets etc. expended to make it a do all rifle.

I guess everyone saw his mention of "filler" and jumped on the squib load bandwagon. I spent too much time on smokeless power in 45/70 cases to try to put tiny charges in big rimless cases with great results, but each to his own and it depends how much your time and possibly eyesight is worth .
 
Once we had tons of propellant to get rid of. Prescribed method was to spread it out on the ground in a row no more than three inches deep and so many wide and light it. Well, we had plenty of room, plenty of time, and no adult supervision so we tried to get some of it to hi-order (detonate). We put it in piles, we put it in holes we stacked sandbags on top of it. No go. It just burned. (We never tried more poundage at one time than the range was rated for). Somebody somewhere must have thought it would blow or they wouldn't have made the rules the way they did.
 
In my Hodgdon no. 27 manual there are no 180 grain loads. The lightest load given is for a 200 grain SP, 77 grains of H4350. It has a listed velocity of 2,777 fps. out of a 26" barrel, with a C.O.L. of 3.560" They used Fed 215 primers.
 
I saw a nice Marlin 336 in 35 Rem at the pawn shop today. 350 bucks askin'.
 
There are several br scientists who shoot at the same club I do. All are really bright, probably have forgotten more than I'll ever know about handloading and shooting. Most of them are helpful and modest. One or two have let it go to the head. That sort of hubris makes me wonder. I don't know. They seem a bit lopsided.

One thing I do know is there are more safe recipes than the manuals account for. If you've ever monkeyed around with wildcats or read about them, you know. There are many adventurous yet well reasoned guys out there. They still have both eyes and ten fingers. It may be a controversial thing to say, but manuals are written for a large variety of rifles and levels of intellect and therefore may be somewhat conservative. A well reasoned, cautious, alert approach to creative problem solving is realistic, in my view. This is why I axed the question. Somebody out there has to have the answer, if there is one.

Hodgdon says Trail Boss. Fill the case to the bottom of the loaded bullet and that's your max. Minimum is 30% less. Good for about 1600 fps, depending.

The Speer data mentioned above came up also. There's an old Speer manual on the shelf. Will check into this one.

Will check the Lyman manual, too.

Johan at Accurate says 35.0-50.0 gr of 5744 under a 225 will get 1975 to 2650. This would be perfect at about 2300.

Still gathering info...

Any of these will work velocity wise, well maybe not Trail Boss, 1600 falls into a pot of gold. Deer hunting where we live is a short range affair, so uber accuracy isn't necessary. Eager to turn it up to 11 tho, see how hard it kicks and how small I can get it to shoot. It's at the smith now having the Accubrake cut off. Judging by the exit scuff... well anyway, the rest of the rifle is sound and straight.
 
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Hodgdon says Trail Boss. Fill the case to the bottom of the loaded bullet and that's your max. Minimum is 30% less. Good for about 1600 fps, depending.
Does that mean you talked to Hodgdon? I'm wondering if they still stand by their long-time rule of using a 60%-of-max load of H4895. Specifically, are they now recommending Trail Boss for reduced loads generally (which would be a big switch from just a few years ago) or did they conclude that for your particular application, Trail Boss would be better than H4895 even though H4895 is still as useful as it has always been in this application?

Just curious about the current thinking from the manufacturer. TIA,

Ben
 
Ben
I'm not Hodgdon but Trail Boss has been a really huge success with the light loads.It fills a case extremely full for the amount of pressure it producesand doesn't detonate on you.You can even use it in a 50 bmg sized case.

If you go to the 300 Whisper forum or any of the cast bullet forums were lower velocity loads are as common as they were 150 years ago and it is the powder of choice.
Waterboy
 
Once we had tons of propellant to get rid of. Prescribed method was to spread it out on the ground in a row no more than three inches deep and so many wide and light it. Well, we had plenty of room, plenty of time, and no adult supervision so we tried to get some of it to hi-order (detonate). We put it in piles, we put it in holes we stacked sandbags on top of it. No go. It just burned. (We never tried more poundage at one time than the range was rated for). Somebody somewhere must have thought it would blow or they wouldn't have made the rules the way they did.

papapaul,


:)

I gotta' agree wit'cha here, none of those things would make smokeless propellant detonate ....... of course NONE of those things would make dynamite nor even C4 "plastique" detonate either! ;) Things don't "detonate" from burning. Burning, even rapid burning, is called deflagration. Even black powder requires a perty large pile, like a keg or the hold of a ship, before it "self contains" and goes boom. A dull boom. In fact there are very few mixtures which actually "detonate" from flame. "Flash powder" or AN/AL will crack like HE and is fairly tightly controlled because of it (it's freakin' DAN'rous if handles impolitely) but you don't find this type of mixture laying about on store shelves. And the argument as to whether flash actually detonates or not rages daily.

But you take a pile of smokeless powder and whack it with a blasting cap or some home brewed acetone peroxide or ammonium picrate and it'll slap like the worlds largest wet towel........ and take metal apart like tissue paper.

al


Oh, and as far as the "somebody somewhere musta' thought....."

Yeahh, folks generally fixate on the unreal "safety issues" and miss the real ones.....

In My Opinion
 
Almost like it was made out of nitroglycerine or something. Wait a minute! It IS!


P.Ps. For a thread which was dying on the vine, this thing sure has picked up steam!
 
Papapaul
If the people who have never downloaded a single cartridge in there entire life
would have let those who do it all the time respond you wouldn't have this mess.
It has started all over again on the 600/1000 yard forum as well.
Waterboy
 
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