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Old December 16, 2011, 12:47 PM   #10
44 AMP
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Join Date: March 11, 2006
Location: Upper US
Posts: 28,677
P.O. Ackley was one of the leading gunsmiths of his generation. He did extensive testing of rifles and cartridges and wrote a couple of books about it that have become kind of gospel for generations.

One of his most famous and lasting things was "improving" various cartridges. THis usually involved a chamber cut to his specs which had a sharper shoulder (and sometimes moved a bit forward) which meant that formed brass could hold a few grains more powder than the "standard" round.

A little more powder meant a little more velocity, and a little flatter trajectory, over the standard factory round's performance. For some people this was enough to justify the expense of special dies, rechambering a rifle, etc. For others, not so much.

Some rounds get a pretty good boost in performance from Ackley Improvement. Others, not so much.

One advantage to all the Ackley Improved rounds (as far as I know) is that you can still fire standard ammo. Cases get fireformed to the new chamber dimensions in the process, although its preferred to fireform the brass using speical light loads intended for just that purpose.

So, if you have an Ackley Improved rifle, and you lose your custom made (handloaded) ammo, you could still get some regular stuff and hunt with it, in a pinch.
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