Thread: Resurgence of interest in the old "Three Oh"?

Originally Posted by erniec

Have thought of picking up a Ruger #1 in .303 if one came up for sale.
The test reports indicated they were not that accurate.
Has anybody got one and what is their experience of it?.

There is something to do about the barrel. They were apparently way too big from factory-like 314-315" something like that. Only read about it recently on an aussie forum. Ruger went off some spec that said that was the way to go instead of doing some proper homework

Originally Posted by csmiffy

There is something to do about the barrel. They were apparently way too big from factory-like 314-315" something like that. Only read about it recently on an Aussie forum. Ruger went off some spec that said that was the way to go instead of doing some proper homework

Maybe Ruger mixed up American convention with European convention. The Americans measure caliber groove to groove whereas the self-confident Europeans with nothing to prove duly measure calibre land to land and end up with a lower measure of the same barrel.

Thus .303 Brit is actually a bigger calibre than .308 Win and 7.62 (.30") Soviet is also larger (Russians are Europeans).

.303 barrels land to land are .303" and grove to groove more like .315 with variation in the latter.

.308 is .30" land to land and .308 groove to groove.

The Ruger Mini-30 in 7.62 Soviet(European) was originally shipped with a .30 (American) barrel causing some accuracy issues.