I just got my sst HW now in 30/40 Imp. This rifle was one of my first SS rifles, bought in 1985 from a guy in Conn. but, I found out a few years later, after Ken Fox saw it, that it was built by Russ Barns, in So Cal. Ken told be that Russ built it as a CBA rifle and Ken had a sister rifle in 38/55.

It has a Peterson stock and a A&M barrel. Well in about 1988, I started shooting it in local CBA matches with it and to get better loading density, I put a foam wad, down on the powder. Within 100 shots, I "rang" the chamber so, I had to set it aside, until last Sat. During the week before, I decided to machine a reduced capacity case out of some 5/8 Aluminum Bronze that I have.

The Imp chamber has a 30 deg shoulder .450 in diameter. Much to large a capacity for PB bullets so, I did the following:

The case head is .300 thick, reamed .302 back to that point. The front .300 of the neck is reamed .310, to allow the neck to seal the chamber and I installed a small rifle, primer pocket. The case capacity is 2.27CC, very close to my 32/35 of 2.22cc. A note regarding the .300 case head. My decapping pin, wasn't long enough so, I had to re-machine the Lyman pin hold, to expose more of the pin.

I wanted to shoot it BAD, so, I took it to the match, w/o any load developement but, since it was close to my 32/35 in volume, I used my best load of #9 powder for it of 11.2 gr (that load had shot a 248, 20 years ago) and then rounded it up to 11.5 gr. I used my RL 182 gr spitzer, that comes to a almost complete, sharp point. Listed in my drwaings as the 1.155 long, Ron Long bullet.

My results are posted in the Macth Results section. It was doing pretty good, until the the last target, the score target. The groups were 1.346, 5 shot and 2.468, 10 shot (it had 2 fliers at 6-9 o'clock) but the score was 239 3c, with one in the 21 ring @ 10 o'clock (first shot) and the rest strung from the 23 bottom - 23 top, at a angle of 7 - 2 o'clock and I'm not sure what that indicates after shooting two round groups? Any Idea's?

I had made 2 other machined cases for the chamber, before I was foolish enough to use the wad and they did pretty well at 100 but, this is the first 200 yard result.

Frank