halcon

A friend recently purchased a 38-55 H&R Target rifle . Nobody locally carries ammo for this so we attempted to reload for it . We called H&R and talked to a Tech rep and he said it was bored .377and grooved .379 which should require a .381 bullet to get any kind of accuracy . Nobody we could find makes a .381 so we settled for a .380 lead bullet . To make a long story short it wont fit into the chamber . We again called H&R and asked for a Tech and they said they don' t have techs and couldn' t answer any questions on this gun . After a rather heated discussion they did give us the phone # for BlackHills Ammo and said they reloaded for this gun and suggested that we didn' t reload for it but only shoot factory ammo . We then talked to A BlackHills Tech and he said they load for it but only with a .375 bullet otherwise it wouldn' t fit in the chamber . A bullet .002 smaller than the bore doesn' t sound much like a target rifle to me . Anyone else had any thing like this

propmahn

well id see if you can find a slugging kit and slug the barrel (soft lead slug pounded down the barrel so that you can determine the actual diameter). some barrels vary alot from what the company intended them to be. also the chamber may have to be reamed to proper dimensions. i know we arent supposed to do this but you could try asking the people over at www.sixgunner.com on their forums they may know more since it is a somewhat obscure cartridge. good luck

Vapodog

Lyman' s 47 edition recommends (quote) bullet #375248, 249 gr sized to .379 dia.

they tested two guns, a stevens, and a winchester 94 The groocve dia was .377 on the Winchester and .379 on the stevens.

halcon

Talked to a tech today and he started out saying you should use the same bullets as the original tech said ,then went on to say not to reload but only buy factory ammo . The only factory ammo is loaded by Black Hills and it is undersized ,so it will fit in the gun . Finally ended up that we ship the gun back to H&R and they will fix it so that it will shoot the right size ammo . Instead of admitting they made a mistake they kept trying to cover it up . Poor customer service in my opinion. BTW the Tech for Black Hills Ammo said he and his brother had the same problem with thier guns .
Vapordog the problem is not with the bore it was chambered to tight for the case to fit in the gun with the correct size of bullet . A .377 bore should shoot a .381 bullet idealy . take the .381 dia and add the case thickness then you need a bigger chamber for the bullet to fit in the gun . The gun headspaces on the rim not the case so the chamber being bigger isn' t a problem unless it is to tight .