rkba2nd wrote on Apr 24^th, 2018 at 11:28pm:

You must have to expand the neck a fuzz for .34, eh?  Maybe I am a trouble free wildcatter 

Says the guy with a safe or three full of rifles you can't go down to the local gun shop and buy ammo for...  Charlie Dell claimed one gun with all the different load possibilities could keep a man busy for nearly a lifetime - experimenting with all the combinations.  Just 10 different components not counting the charge differences has about 3.6 million combinations - something to think about... 

I have to have wildcats to prevent insanity or maybe this is the insanity...

Krag, I had Hoch make a .342 base band Pope bullet.  It shoots BS a lot better than the Schoyen ML bullet that came with it. I did ML it a little just to see how it works, but not a lot. It is a offhand rifle but I have squeezed a few 250s out of it in the 90s. Bench takes a little work practice because of the long prongs on the butt.  I have shot it a lot offhand.  It weighs 16#.

Schuetzenmiester - thanks for the reply, it sounds like a really fine rifle. This is the kind of thing that keeps me interested. The mould I had made is very much like a Pope, tapered, but base band is not quite as large as a pope would be. Ought of curiosity, weighed it at 17lbs, not much heavier than yours, but more than I can hold and shoot offhand. Maybe 10-20 years ago?  Best regards Krag

Joe has been snooping around in PO A's books there are allot of interesting Wild Cats listed in those books and some completely burned out the throats with very few rounds shot. Worked with a fellow who built a 22-06.and it shot pretty good when the bullets would hold together long enough to make it to the target.

JLouis

I've only had one wildcat chamber and it was a Marlin 336 chambered in .30-30 Ackley Improved. I loved the caliber and rifle, and it was a wonderful mule deer combo.
But I've also got PO Ackley's book and it seems to me he simply took every cartridge known to mankind and gave it a sharper shoulder and put AI after it. I'm unsure how many of those cartridges ever saw enough testing by PO to really wring them out and confirm they were worthwhile at all. 
I had a good friend whose father worked for Ackley here in Oregon, and he didn't speak very highly of him. He said they often got into arguments over methods and procedures, until he finally quit and went out on his own.