Ah, the siren lure of the .404 Jeffery on a Mauser 98 action. I succumbed to that illness twenty years ago and after five or six years ended up with a gorgeous rifle. It was built on a post war FN commercial action with a 23” Krieger cut rifled barrel, then stocked in a piece of “broken fiddleback” Bastogne walnut. I sent the action, a bit of starter money and instructions to a gunsmith in ‘97 or ‘98. I had Krieger ship the barrel to him; he fit it and then opened up the action, all to the rear, so the locking lugs have plenty of metal to snug up against. He also milled the follower to accept the first round. Due to illness he was unable to finish the project, but told me he had it feeding well. I sent the metal over to Dennis Olson. The walnut blank was turned by Shane Thompson, who then sent it to Dennis. Turns out the first smith reamed the chamber short, but it was sorted out.
Thanks, Mike! It’s even fun just to have it in my lap and appreciate it. People at the range want to shoot it until they see the cartridges. Holds 3 down and one up. I stocked up on brass back when I started the project, so I have close to 100 pieces of new Norma brass waiting for primers and what seems like gobs of powder. Have a few of the original Barnes monometal spitzers (pre TSX) and had Tom over at Accurate Molds cut a 300 gr gas checked spitzer shaped mold for it. I was living in Alaska at the time and was curious if the .404 could be made into an all around rifle for the northlands. 400 gr at 2300+ in the brush (aka brown bear country) with 300 gr spitzers at 2700+ for more distant critters. Life happened and didn’t get a chance to put the theory to the test.
I did quite a bit with a 350 to 380 grain (depending on alloy) cast bullet from design data I sent for a Hock mold to be made. Ran it to 2400fps with great accuracy. A lot of fun but had an accuracy load at 1885fps that would have been a very good non DG load. I shot goats with this one but would have had no qualms about anything elk sized.
