After close to 30 years of entering the Maine moose lottery I finally drew a tag this year and that gave me an excuse to make the .35 Whelen I've wanted. I sent a good condition Remington M30 in 30.06 out to JES reboring and in less than two weeks he rebored and rechambered to .35 Whelen.
I did a break in procedure of shoot and clean for the first 10 shots and then 5 and clean twice using factory Remington 200g ammo. I then went to factory Remington 250g ammo and got excellent results (all at 100 yds).
I was ready to go but thought I would try a few shots with some factory Federal ammo that used 225 Trophy Bondeds. I touched off the first round, I got slammed, smoke from the breech, had to use a small brass hammer to get the bolt open, primer gone and the case head was a mess.
After that I went back to using the Remingtons and all was fine still shooting small tight groups.
When I got home I inspected the 20 fired Remington 250 cases and they looked good, measured within specs,
Neck diameter...unfired .380, fired .388
Behind shoulder .433 vs .442
Just above rim cut .463 vs .464
Rim .465 vs.465
OAL of case 2.484 vs 2.488
If anything, smaller than specs.......
There's a mark on all the fired cases above the rim on the fired cases, it's diameter is .468 vs .464 on the unfired cases.
Some friends suggested it was probably a bad cartridge from Federal so I called them, they asked for photos, asked for the 3 boxes of ammo I still had. They tested them and wrote back...
"Examination of the P35WT1 that we received has shown that it met all Federal Cartridge Company and industry dimensional specifications.
We then fired the ammunition to test pressure and velocity and found that your ammunition had an average pressure of 51,143 psi and an average velocity of 2578 fps. The max pressure for this round is 58,000 psi and the average velocity of this round is 2600 fps. This ammunition fell within the specifications for this round. We were unable to duplicate the issue of a blown/ backed out primer that you original had. This leads us to the conclusion that this was an isolated incident and could be the result of a comparability issue between the ammunition and the firearm. If this happens again in the future we recommend having the firearm head space checked out by a certified gun smith."
They did send 4 boxes of new ammo to replace mine as a courtesy.
So I am still wondering what this could have been. The fired Remington cases showed no signs of stretching (though 1 had a split neck) and the specs on the fired cases seem to be within limits. I have not checked the headspace and will do so but it seems that it would be OK from the fired case dimensions.
Any ideas?
At least it didn't affect my hunt, taken Tuesday, 10/11 at 5pm using the 250g Remington stuff, 742 lbs dressed, 41"....
thanks,
Rob
