Thread: 375 Lunatic

Looks like there is a slight wind advantage to the 375 at 1000 yards, but the 338 has the edge in elevation. At 2000 yards the advantages are much the same. I was hoping the BC of the 400CE bullets would come out slightly higher than .90. Im not sure the advantage is worth the extra cost of the 375 projectiles, that 10 shot group has $40 worth of copper in it! I guess at the least you haven't really lost out building the 375 vs the 338 version ballistics wise, and perhaps gained a little barrel life.

Looks good Greg, Cant wait to have a play with it.

HH,
Na, nothing special with the gain twist. They sure tear up conventional jacketed bullets though! We fired a 350gn SMK down it and it took half a day to get the copper out of it afterwards! It doesn't foul at all with the monolithics. We have used a few Bartlein gain twists in 7mm before, but they were less than 1 inch of gain from one end to the other. These radical gain twists are s'posedly for the monolithics, but I'm not sure they're really required even for them. Will need more testing to establish that. Can't fault the accuracy produced with this amount of gain twist so far anyway.

SakoKid,
No, it sure as hell ain't practical as an all round hunting rifle if that is what you mean. But is it fun - hell yes!

LR,
Yep, you're pretty much on the money. Comparing directly yesterday's results with the list BC for the 300gn Berger at 3250fps in our 338 Lunatic, the wind advantage doesn't start till beyond 2000 yards. If you use Terry's .91 BC which converts to .455 G7, then the crossover is beyond 1500 yards. We actually get more than .418 G7 out of our 338 Lunatics, but until we've done more testing with the 375, I wouldn't want to split hairs more than this.
There's a 35% theoretical gain in barrel life, but that is pretty much offset by the extra cost of the monolithics, at this stage anyway. And there's a larger frontal area and more energy, but that has little to do with terminal performance. That comes down more to projectile construction, but we'll see how that goes with some beyond 1000 yard terminal performance testing shortly.
Swings and roundabouts as you say, but I'm sure you're going to have some fun playing with it no matter!
Greg

So when are you going to do the supressed 16" bush pig version

Whats the Recoil like compared to the 338 Luntaic? It looks like we may need to go to a bigger case to get the advantage with the 375, would it be possible to build a 375 Versico improved on a Barnard P Chey action? The bolt face would need to be opened up. Apparently it can drive a 400gr at 3250, and should give a big advantage over the improved Cheytac case.

Originally Posted by L.R

Whats the Recoil like compared to the 338 Luntaic? It looks like we may need to go to a bigger case to get the advantage with the 375, would it be possible to build a 375 Versico improved on a Barnard P Chey action? The bolt face would need to be opened up. Apparently it can drive a 400gr at 3250, and should give a big advantage over the improved Cheytac case.

You could probably go with a rebated rim on the Vierso Mag? Not sure on the diameter of the VM case, does it fit in between the bolt lug cuts?

Fired 21 rounds through my 338 Lunatic (18lb) and 24 rounds through the 7mm Fatmax (8lb) on Saturday, was starting to feel it on the shoulder at the end, but was good fun practicing banging steel plate...