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Nononsense...
Sig220_Ruger77
Member Posts: 12,754 ✭✭✭
I have decided I am going to put an H-S Precision stock on my Remington 600. Do you know of a place where I could find one besides company direct(slightly used or preferably new)? I would really like it in "Black w/ grey", but for the right price I would also consider "grey w/ black" or "granite". Thanks again,
Jon
Jon
Comments
Jon
This is a good question for everybody to get in on. There's an excellent cross section of modern shooters and older classical shooters so the range of ideas should be large.
I'm not sure I have THE answer but I have a thought.
We're in a period of time where we have a huge selection of new and newer cartridges that feature fine performance and power. The rifle manufacturers have to concentrate on those chambers that will sell and sell quickly. The longer a particular chambering sits on someone's shelf the less money they make or in some cases the more they stand to lose.
There is also the backlash effect from the ongoing belted/beltless cartridge case argument. The onslaught of beltless magnum cases has surely taken a toll on the demand for the H&H cases.
I was amazed when I went to locate some .300 H&H cases and couldn't find any after a fair search. I did find some but it was from a third tier supplier that just happened to have some handy. Evidently the manufacturers of brass have put the case on the once every year to maybe even once every two years. The exceptions are RWS, Horneber and a couple of the custom manufacturers.
Best.
ADDED:
This is an illustration of cordite to go along with givette's post on the case design. It's a .303 British and not either of the H&H cases:
From Sierra's article on case design:
"Originally, this (belt) was an absolute necessity, owing to the steeply sloping shoulders of many of the first belted cases.
At the time of the belted case's introduction, England was still making the transition from black powder to smokeless propellants, in the form of Cordite. Cordite is a long strand double-based propellant, with the length of the individual kernels equaling the length of the combustion chamber. In production, small "bundles" of Cordite were inserted into a straight-walled case, which was then necked down to its final shape, and the bullet seated. As a result of this manufacturing method, most cartridges designed for use with Cordite have very long, sloping shoulders. Again, this proved to be no problem, as a large percentage of these cartridges were being chambered in single-shots or double rifles, and were of rimmed (or as the British call them, "flanged") design. At approximately the same time, the bolt-action was rising in popularity, forcing gunmakers to develop a case that would feed reliably from a magazine. This was the origin of the belted case design. Since then, it has been a traditional British practice to offer both rimmed and belted designs of the same cartridge, for use in either double rifles or bolt actions, as appropriate.
The first two belted cartridges to gain notoriety here in the U.S. (although developed decades earlier in England) were the .300 and .375 H&H Magnums introduced to American shooters in the early thirties. Since then, the belted case has served as the basis for a great many "Magnum" cartridges. In all honesty, the vast majority of these modern magnums have shoulders that are perfectly adequate for headspacing, leaving the belt to serve no truly functional purpose. Some examples of the belted case design are the old .300 H&H, and the newer .300 Winchester and 7mm Remington Magnums."
Best.
The origional "short mags" (300 Win Mag & 300 Norma Mag) are designed to be used in a standard (30-06) length receiver.
As the manfactures make more "standards" than "Mag" receivers, they are able to offer the "short mags" at a lower cost / higher profit margin (it only took a diameter change to the bolt face machining).
The buyers both bought into the hype, and liked the lower costs. Remember back in the 50's & 60's was the hayday of building customs off of surplus receivers (and you could do it for less than the cost of a factory rifle), and these receivers were alredy set up to handle the length, while to handle the H&H they had to be stretched.
IOW the "short mags" won out by shear numbers.
really improved [?][?][?][?][?] Sorry about the rant. Cheers Perry Shooter
As said further up this page, "hype, marketing" etc. The falling out of favor of the 300 H&H (originally appeared in the H&H catalogue as .30 Super) is not the cartridges fault.
Below is a synopsis of the cartridge as I see it, faulted though it may be.
When one hears (or heard at the time) the word "improved" for a chambering, and noticed that the "improvement" was a sharper shoulder, the ring-in-the-nose buying public started to look at the very gradual shoulder of the .300 H&H with increasing distain. Worries over premature throat erosion with the then available IMR grain-type powder not burning correctly in the gradual shoulder design spread like wildfire. Was there some validity? Can't say. But with the new powders available today, the .300 H&H Magnum will sing!
The .375 H&H (DOB 1913) and the 300 H&H (DOB 1926) was originally loaded with cordite sticks. Hence the gradual shoulder. These sticks were almost the length of the cartridge body. An early version of smokeless powder, if you will. Rather heat sensitive, and could increase pressure somewhat when fired under tropical conditions. That posed extraction problems that the hunter certainly didn't need when the wounded simba had you in his sights.
So, Mssrs. Holland & Holland chambered their tropical rifles with quite generous tolerances to combat the extraction problem. (Belted chambers are more "forgiving" than shoulder-headspaced designs.)
And lo, and behold, when SAAMI was created, they had to start somewhere...so they went to H&H and asked for their proprietary chamber dimensions, after H&H made the design change!
So, there you have it. Gradual shoulder. Bad. Sloppy chamber. Bad. These perceptions last to this day.
Are the new .300 H&H chamberings different than the original tropical/cordite dimensioned ones? I believe so. We can get by with tighter chambers now, due to the propellants available to us.
Tidbit: I have an English made .375 H&H. When I purchased it the booklet that accompanied the rifle said it was chambered for tropical use. I had to do a lot of digging before I understood what that meant. Nowadays, with the powders available, the chambering (and the statement in the owner's manual) is a throwback to a bygone day. Elegant touch, nonetheless.
The end. Joe
That being said, it is a global market place, where sometimes regional demand crops up. Think of it almost in terms of an election, where we have out true and tried favorates locally. On the other side of the pond, in Europe, and on the Dark Continent, the H&H might be more commonto find ammo for, than the newer higher performance based rounds. Why would one want to vote for a Bill Clinton, or George Bush to come there, when they already have a Winston Churchill?
EDIT:
Jon0322,
I think you are correct in the statement that there has been no competition to a point. There has been the 375, and 378 Weatherby Magnums. Recently there has cropped up the 375 RUM, and the 375 Ruger, and the Dakota version as well as several lesser known. It seems to be hanging pretty tough...sometimes it is hard to beat nastalgic.
I've shot a few .300 H&H's and I thought they kicked a little less than a .300 Win Mag. I knew they weren't frontline sellers anymore but I had no idea they were so hard to get ammo for. It just seemed to me that they would be going along as I always pass them on my way through my reloading manuals.
I may be a bit presumptuous but I think it may see a comeback. Not to frontline seller, but along the lines of other older cartridges that went away, but now it's fun to shoot the old stuff. Like the 45-70. A lot of people just had to go back in time and get something that shot and looked like it did in it's day. Then a bunch of them found out it kicked really hard and they thought they would pursue history with a .38-55. There are still a lot of modern rifles chambered for it and if taken care of they will be just fine to shoot in 10-20 years.
So, do you guys think that the "lack of competition" in the .375 H&H's class also played a bit of a role in this cartridge surviving better then the .300 H&H? Say the .375 Ruger(a standard length action) had come out around the sametime as the .300 Winchester Magnum, do you think that we would be saying the same about the .375 H&H? I myself, tend to think so.
Jon