.35 Remington

Retrieved: December 08, 2013

Saiga made some rifles in .35 Remington, and there's a .pdf of a book from D&S from 2000 that describes building one from a flat, opening the bolt face to .460" and sectioning and widening a stock x39 magazine.

The .35 came out in 1906 and is a low-pressure cartridge at 33,500 CUP. It can push a 200 grain, .358" bullet out to around 2000 fps, which gives it quite a bit more punch than the 7.62x39 despite the lower pressure.

A 7.62x39 cartridge is about 2.2" long, the .35 is 2.53", and a .308 is 2.80". You could use a .308 mag with a spacer... or if you handload, Hornady makes some spitzer bullets that might make up most of the difference. The old P-17 Enfield had about the same amount of cartridge slop in the magzine (It was originally designed for the very long .280 Ross), though the idea of cartridges slamming back and forth with recoil makes me wince.

Reamerrentals.com has .35 Remington reamers for $26, with another $5 for the headspace gauge.

Inexpensive true .358" barrels seem to be out of stock everywhere at the moment. Googling around shows some Marlin 336s in .35 Remington were .359 or .360"

Numrich has .357 carbine barrels for $19.95, depending on how you feel about pushing a .358" bullet through a .357" barrel. Izhmash and Tula didn't worry much about that sort of thing...

TRX
01-10-2010

I was looking through some of my loading manuals last night, and some show the .35 as having a .357" barrel.

I have enough projects in the fire at the moment, so I'm just presenting the .35 information FYI.

TRX
05-24-2010

I've been keeping an eye out on .35 Remington stuff. I recently found a picture of a Molot Vepr with ".35 Remington" engraved (apparently by the factory, along with the brand and model name) on the top cover.

My first reaction to the .35 was "WTF?" A nearly-extinct levergun cartridge, alive only because of the cowboy shooting fad, best as I can figure. Why dig something like that out of its grave?

As noted earlier, the .35 gives you some impressive ballistics from low pressure, like the .300 Savage. The .357" bullet is short and fat by rifle standards, but there's a large selection of longer and heavier bullets, mostly targeted to people shooting Contenders in .357.

The rimless, slightly bottlenecked .35 case was designed to be easily fed through leverguns. Apparently it feeds well through the Kalasnikov design too.

.357 Maximum:
48,000 CUP 200gr, 1675 f/s, 1246 ft/lb

.35 Remington:
33,500 CUP 200gr, 2084 f/s, 1929 ft/lb

7.62x39:
xxxxxxxxxx 123gr, 2300 f/s, 1480 ft/lb

.30-30:
xxxxxxxxxx 150gr, 2390 f/s, 1903 ft/lb

.45-70:
xxxxxxxxxx 405gr, 1384 f/s, 1748 ft/lb

The .35 packs more wallop than the x39. It's right up there with the .30-30, and substantially hotter than the .357 Maximum, which is usually considered sufficient for any North American game that weighs less than a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide.

Also note the .35 carries more energy downrange than the .45-70! Well, at least in its original military loading...

TRX
05-25-2010

Originally Posted by 1biggun

I didn't notice, but I'd assume 8-10" for the Max and 18-20" for the .35.

[looks at Wikipedia pages again]

14" for the Maximum, referencing Accurate Powder data
24" for the .35, same source

I guess I could have edited the above so it looked like I knew that all along...

Peak pressure usually occurs just after the bullet enters the rifling, from what I've read. I searched on ".357 Maximum rifle" but didn't find any length/velocity figures on the first couple of hits.

Since the Maximum was developed for 6" barrel revolvers, I'd expect it uses a fast-burning powder to build as much speed as it can before running out of barrel. The .35 was always a rifle cartridge. I'd say the main difference (in factory loading) is the powder burn rate.

It might be interesting to see what you could do, handloading Maximum for rifle-length barrels. A Maximum rim will fit an unmodified AK bolt, but you'd have to fab the magazine from scratch, or slice'n'dice a Desert Eagle or Coonan .357 magazine. The .35 will feed through a .308 AK magazine.

TRX
05-27-2010

Originally Posted by Bullpup
I've never heard of AK's factory chambered in .35 rem!>? not sure i even belive it without seeing it.

I've found several pictures, and there was mention of it on the Izshevsk web site. Apparently it's quite popular in the Russian and eastern European market.

Valmet built some rifles in .243 Win, Saiga did .270 Win, 9.3x53R, .35 Remington, .30-06, and in .410, 20ga, and 12ga. Molot also built .35 Remington guns.

Bear in mind these are all civilian market rifles, so they're building what they think the market will buy, instead of meeting government specifications.

You might boggle at a Kalashnikov in .35 Remington, but I *still* can't quite get my mind around the idea of a Kalashnikov in 12 gauge. There's something fundamentally wrong about the whole thing, sort of like the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir performing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" in concert...

TRX
11-10-2010

I made a 90-mile trip yesterday to buy some .303 brass. I guess I should have called first... they were still cleaned out from last time I was there.

I thought of this thread while looking at .35 Remington brass. They had buckets of it, both new and once-fired.

TRX
12-06-2010

The question isn't "what's the most powerful .358 cartridge the Russians could have crammed into an AK", but "why did they choose the .35 Remington over all other competitors, including their own 9x39?"

My theory is it's because these civilian-market rifles were primarily intended to hunt meat for the pot. Why put up with more noise and recoil than you have to, and damage the meat more?

*Someone* thought there was a market for AKs in .35 Remington; both Izhmash and Molot made them for sale in the home market and Europe.

Molot doesn't exist any more, and Izhmash has dumped the .35 along with about half of the calibers they listed last year, during their recent American-style "product line adjustment" as they faced bankruptcy. Frankly, if I was an arms company facing extinction I'd list every cartridge that might conceivably bring some rubles in, even if I had to have old Piotr in the back room run a chambering reamer in with a tap wrench instead of making them on the regular line, but what do I know about business?

TRX
12-26-2010

Here's a full-stocked Molot Super Vepr in .35 Remington...

TRX
12-27-2010

I've been looking for a full-length Super Vepr stock for over a year. Since the first thing most people want to do is "yank that fugly wood off" and "put it back like it's supposed to be" (and there was at least one company specializing in it!) you'd expect those stocks would grow on trees, as it were...

Best as I can figure, the majority of Super Veprs had two piece wood stocks, similar to Saiga stocks. At least, I've seen lots of people calling their two- piece rifles "Super Veprs". Either way, the one piece stocks are much rarer than Hadar stocks. I managed to snag two of those, from people who were converting an exotic Israeli sporting rifle into (yawn) a fake Galil, like there weren't a zillion of them already...