Improving the 303 British Cartridge

[Hummer]

This is also a Humpy Design. It is called the 306 Confederate Sabre. So called because the front of the case is the same dimension as the 30.06 Springfield and the case head is obviously a 303 British.

This design allows for 6 more grains of propellent to be added to the 303 Case.

Most wildcat cartridges require a massive outlay of cash for the loading dies.

The dies for this care are converted 30.06 dies. Just cut off .200 from bottom of 06 dies and you are ready to go.

This is a good conversion for P14 Enfield actions to make them into a long range rifle when rebarreling. I do not use P14 barrels for anything that shoots. All of them are bad and noted for barrels splitting starting at the muzzle and working towards chamber. (This info is from declassified British Ordnance Archives I have a copy of dtd WW1 time frame).

Should someone want to build one up Dave Manson has my print for the 306 Confederate Sabre.

 

[KBCraig]

Well, damn... just when I was already sure I liked you because of your comments about accuracy of full auto fire vs. rapid semi-auto fire, now I find out you're a .303 British fan too!

The Lee-Enfield No.4 series were the greatest bolt-action battle rifles ever devised. The only thing that could have made it better was the use of rimless cartridges, to avoid rim-lock. India took advantage of the 7.62x51 NATO cartridge in their 2A/2A1 rifles, but it was the No.1 platform.

 

[Hummer]

KBCraig, Actually I designed several new cartridges off the 303 Brit round. 6.5 Confederate Sabre that is loaded with 6.5X55 dies unaltered, 7MM Confederate Sabre. If you get to Britain and take a tour of the Royal Armouries Museum you will see all three on display there as I had a friend who was Curator of RAM and he asked me to send him dummy rounds for a display of other cartridges that were take offs from DADDY 303.

I also have a Custom 303 Brit reamer made up by Dave Manson where the base dimension is like .454 and the throat has been shortened to where the bullet contacts the rifling this month instead of next month once it gets moving.

I walk five miles in the mornings and I made this one up and mounted a 308 stainless target barrel from another rifle and setting barrel back to new rifling. I wanted it heavy for the exercise aspect of carrying it and it weighs 9.5 lbs. When I got this action the ears were already ground off and the stock had already been re-contoured to the way it is.

I built up another one with a No 7 contour Douglas blank and have it in a Boyd stock but never finished the stock. Then I got rear ended which apparently has ended my competition shooting as I was going to make this rifle into a 1000 yard rifle (26" barrel). Now I don't know what will happen to it.

Putting a new barrel on a P14 calls for a extra large dimension barrel as the threads are larger than most US bolt guns so I made an adaptor with P14 threads external and 16 TPI threads internally and it works like a champ. I cut both threads on same set up so they would both be parallel. I also changed the P14 striker to a M1917 striker and opened the striker opening in bolt face for the larger diameter striker.

 

[Picton]

Love my Pattern 14. Love my unimproved .303 too, though I applaud your efforts.

My barrel shows no signs of splitting, though my rifle was probably never fired much; it missed the Weedon repair somehow.