Long action, longer bullet. Mag length COALs with big bullets.

[Justin Utherdude]

Howdy y'all.

I put together a list of rifle chamberings that I want to build at some point in the future when a thought crossed my mind...

"Oh... I can't just load whatever projectile I want into whatever cartridge I want. I'm limited by the magazine length and some of the longer bullets probably won't fit."

So I thought I'd come here to ask about such things. I recently came across a post where someone was trying to build their first 338 lapua magnum. In the post, someone made compelling arguments to build a 338 norma mag instead. He said the op would lose about 75fps, but would be able to load full length projectiles into cip magazines... and might even be able to make up the fps with an ackley shoulder/40*.

It got me wondering if there are any other cartridges like this. I was looking at the MDT magazines and the 3.85" CIP magazines say that they have COAL limit of 3.74". Using Hornady a-tips and eld bullets as an example, would I be able to load the largest bullet in each caliber in the following cartridges while using 3.85" cip magazines?

Pardon the formatting, I'm copying it from notepad++. And y'all can ignore the 308, 45 raptor, and the barrett. I'm not worried about mag length ballistics on those. The barrett would be a wildcat custom job anyways.

So I guess my question would be: "What are the longest/heaviest bullets that I can put in these catridges and still have them feed from AICS length magazines.

--30-06 - CASE--
7mm-280ai
30-06
338-06
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--308 - CASE--
224 cheetah
7mm-08
308
45 raptor
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--300 win mag - CASE--
7mm-300wm
300wm
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338 lapua magnum
375-416 barrett
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Thank you for your time. Justin

 

[DaveTooley]

You can seat any bullet to mag length.

 

[ShaunBrady]

And guns will shoot more than one type of ammo. You could do a maximum performance single load only and a mag fed loading with the same gun and bullet.

You might find what's "best" on the internet doesn't matter much in the real world. Velocity and precision being 2 good examples. If you're not shooting 100 yard benchrest, it's usually pretty straight forward to stomp 100 yard groups small enough that they're not what's limiting scoring even if they're not "optimum".

I wanted to do a 7/300WM for a long time but never got around to it. Hornady brass and dies were both on sale just before 'Rona hit so I started a 7/300PRC project. The idea was mile plus performance from a CIP mag feeding reasonably sized gun running pressures that Hornady brass would last for 10 firings. I bought the reamer and built a gun. ADG did a run of properly headstamped brass not to long ago.