Letters containing questions for answering by Nick Harvey must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Mail your letters to: The Technical Editor, 3 Reef Street, Hill End, NSW 2850.
LETTER OF THE MONTH
.25-06 Ackley Improved
Q I have had my .25-06 rechambered to .25-06 Ackley Improved. I intend to use this rifle primarily for deer hunting with 115 to 120gn bullets, but am having difficulty finding any loading data for this cartridge other than in Ackley’s Handbook, which is 60 years old and uses powders which are no longer available.
Is there any other source of data for this wildcat? If not, can you suggest some starting loads?
John Waters
A When a standard .25-06 is fire-formed to the Ackley version, two principal changes that take place are a steepening of the shoulder angle to 40 degrees and 4.8mm (0.19”) expansion of the case body to a diameter of 11.7mm (.460”) at the point of the shoulder. This results in about a 7.5gn increase in water capacity of the case, or around 11.5 percent. Based upon the larger internal capacity, it is possible to increase powder charges by about 5-6 percent, which would translate to about a 2.5 to 3gn increase with slow powders such as AR2209 and AR2213sc behind bullets of the same weight.
Therefore, a separate table of loads for the .25-06 Ackley isn’t needed. One can simply use load tables for the standard .25-06 Remington. Start 3gn below
