Little help with bottom metal selection

Would a 3.850" Wyatt box work with a Hawkins Obermeyer floor plate and corresponding Hawkins LA Magnum follower with leaf spring?

Hawkins lists a BDL floor plate that will drop into an M5 inlet. If I used the Wyatt's box and Hawkins follower would THAT be acceptable? A little heavier than Hawkins Hunter system, but not as much as the standard Hawkins M5.

.300 Dakota said:

Would a 3.850" Wyatt box work with a Hawkins Obermeyer floor plate and corresponding Hawkins LA Magnum follower with leaf spring?

Hawkins lists a BDL floor plate that will drop into an M5 inlet. If I used the Wyatt's box and Hawkins follower would THAT be acceptable? A little heavier than Hawkins Hunter system, but not as much as the standard Hawkins M5.

Click to expand...

Sounds like I should call Hawkins AND Kelbly.

Epiphany! I AM making it way harder than it should be! Keep my Hawkins M5 Hunter, chamber in .300 PRC or .30 Nosler and wildcat reduced loads using 4350-ish burn rate powders. Load density will suffer, but it solves the problem.

Lol. Almost anything is possible. Depending on Wyatt's box, may have to use they're followers. Best thing is to lean on your smith, or contact Kelbly for options. Maybe repost in gunsmithing section.

Contacted Hawkins. Spoke with Tyler whose main advice was "stay away from belted cases." When pressed, he said the M5 Obermeyer with Wyatt's CIP box and Hawkins magnum follower would feed belts better than the Hunter series. I think we had surmised that.

Then contacted Manson to see if they had any short-throated PRCs or .30 Noslers, or even a .30/7mm PRC. Or .308 Norma. Nope, nope, nope, and nope. 5 months lead time.

Looks like I'll be running another 7 PRC or wasting a bucket of powder in a huge case with short barrel. Not sure the wildcatting idea is feasible because of the freebore.

I'll tell you what would be good is a 7 LRM. GOOD LUCK finding brass.

Tiny Tim said:

Lol. Almost anything is possible. Depending on Wyatt's box, may have to use they're followers. Best thing is to lean on your smith, or contact Kelbly for options. Maybe repost in gunsmithing section.

Click to expand...

Roughrice said:

I have a 7 SAUM on a long action and had to manipulate the centerfeed lips because the shorter case to wants to slip up out of the mag lips before being "guided" through the feed ramps.
I still have a bit of issue if I cycle too fast.

Had the same problem with 6BR out of standard short action.

However, they both worked out but I'm never super confident that it'll work 100% of the time.

Click to expand...

Would this issue go away with a CRF action, I'm wondering?

I have a long action Bighorn Origin action which is a controlled feed bolt.
I first tried a Rem BDL and had issues so I put a Kwick Klip DBM and adjusted feed lips a bit and worked good.
It was a "too much and not enough" fine tune which took some patience and I haven't had any jams in the field but am still not 100% confident.
After some research…I think M5 cut BM's may work better but I'm ok with it in my inlet for now.

My factory Rem Model 7 cycles flawlessly.

I'm my opinion, these short fats feed about as good as they possibly can in some configurations but but will never feed as good as the standard cases in short and long actions.

Roughrice said:

I'm my opinion, these short fats feed about as good as they possibly can in some configurations but but will never feed as good as the standard cases in short and long actions.

Click to expand...

True. Is that possibly because there is nothing designed from the beginning for them. It seems we have basic action and feeding standards that haven't truly changed in a hundred years (refined and standardized). Do you think that may change some of the feeding issues we see? Just asking an "out of the box" question.

Well…
I think due to the basic standard action design , we are building long magnums, short magnums, long standards and short standards and they just can't operate the best with all cartridges.
Furthermore, cost efficiency of manufacturers building case specific actions would be upside down and we'd have to pay.
Well experienced smiths can get the short fats to work very well.

I'm no expert on this, but what I see from the OEM's is that they always make a rear spacer or occasionally a front spacer on shorter rounds. I think it is to assure feed lip to cartridge position if the cartridge moves under recoil. To my way of thinking is rear loading(placing cartridge anll the way to the rear) and enough mag spring force should make this ok and is making it ok on my customs. Accurate mags and I suspect most center feeds have enough spring force to do this ok.

That said, my worst mismatch is 3.4" oal in a 3.6" mag. It feeds ok, but not great. I think that a magnum follower and spring would help as it is the follower that seems to get misaligned sometimes when loading. It is a std Win 70 BDL with 06 length plastic follower. Spacer removed to make 3.6" mag.

nksmfamjp said:

I'm no expert on this, but what I see from the OEM's is that they always make a rear spacer or occasionally a front spacer on shorter rounds. I think it is to assure feed lip to cartridge position if the cartridge moves under recoil. To my way of thinking is rear loading(placing cartridge anll the way to the rear) and enough mag spring force should make this ok and is making it ok on my customs. Accurate mags and I suspect most center feeds have enough spring force to do this ok.

That said, my worst mismatch is 3.4" oal in a 3.6" mag. It feeds ok, but not great. I think that a magnum follower and spring would help as it is the follower that seems to get misaligned sometimes when loading. It is a std Win 70 BDL with 06 length plastic follower. Spacer removed to make 3.6" mag.

Click to expand...

Eric at Blue Mountain Precision is whipping me up a pre-fit for the new Kelbly with a 10-twist 20" Benchmark barrel in .300 SAUM. Everything from the barrel configuration to the tooling is special order. I'll have it in time for the south Mississippi rut and load development at the rate he goes. I'm going to pick his brain next about bottom metal... So I've got another one to try to feed. It was the perfect performamce level and case capacity for what I wanted out of the rifle. I went in with the mindset that I'd use it as a single shot if I had to. Light bullets for dramatic shorter range DRT kills on whitetail, and capability to stretch far with 190-gr Speer Impacts or 190 ABLRs. Perfect size for climbing treestands in brush or carrying over long distances. I can run TAC, N530, Varget, Norma 203B, or even 4166 in the gun with the lights and it will lose much less velocity/inch of barrel than a larger case. I'm going to MAKE it work. Decision is made and paid for.

I'm reviving this thread with a little more experience and updates. Eric at Blue Mountain made me a 7 PRC pre-fit from a 26" "3B-sized" Hawk Hill barrel to run in the McMillan stock. I incorporated Wyatt box with Hawkins BDL Obermeyer bottom metal and Hawkins Magnum LA follower.

Here's the crazy thing. My original 6.5 SAUM set in a Mesa (Pure) Precision (AG Composites) stock with Hawkins Long Action Magnum M5 DBM 3.770" magazine works FLAWLESSLY on thos cartridge. Kelbly states this action is designed for BDL. Hmmmm....

Always looking to shave weight, but may have to go back with the M5 Hunter. My stock is an M5 inlet. Otherwise, I'd be looking at a Hawkins M5 BDL, but the CIP Wyatt box would be WAY too long. May need to look into the spacers (or make my own).