Nosler’s 2nd Edition rifle is chambered for the .280 Ackley Improved round. Being a limited edition, only 500 rifles will be produced.

For about the past 10 years, I have watched a cartridge called the .280 Ackley Improved enjoy increasing popularity among hunters. Nowadays, just about every gunsmith who builds or rebarrels rifles has the chamber reamer for the cartridge, and those I have talked to describe it as extremely accurate.

How high the cartridge will eventually climb on the popularity chart remains to be seen, but the Nosler introduction of not only a rifle chambered for it but unprimed cases and ammunition loaded to SAAMI specifications have to be considered nothing less than a good omen. You read that correctly; the .280 Ackley Improved is now a factory cartridge.

An improved cartridge usually delivers higher velocities than its parent cartridge simply because it holds a bit more powder. The increase in powder capacity is a result of reforming the case to have less body taper and often a sharper shoulder angle as well.

An improved cartridge is not the same animal as a wildcat cartridge. When chambered properly, a rifle in an improved chambering has the same headspace dimension as the parent cartridge from which it originated. Creators of improved cartridges did this intentionally in order to produce cases by fireforming factory-loaded ammo of the original chambering in a rifle now chambered for the improved case. During fireforming, the elasticity of the brass case allows its body to expand to take on the dimensions of the chamber without rupturing. As a rule, when a factory cartridge is fired in an improved chamber, its velocity will be anywhere from 50 to 100 fps slower than when fired in a standard chamber.

On the other hand, a rifle chambered for a wildcat cartridge can use only that particular cartridge.

SIMPSON'S FAVORITE HANDLOADS
	POWDER		VELOCITY
	TYPE	GRS.	FPS.
Nosler 120-gr. Ballistic Tip	VV N 160	63.0	3334
Nosler 140-gr. AccuBond	AA 3100	59.0	2965
Nosler 140-gr. Ballistic Tip	Reloder 22	64.0	3125
Nosler 140-gr. Partition	H4831 SC	62.0	2985
Nosler 150-gr. E-Tip	IMR-7828	61.0	3014
Swift 150-gr. Scirocco	IMR-7828	63.0	3058
Sierra 168-gr. MatchKing	Reloder 22	56.0	2864
Nosler 175-gr. Partition	Reloder 25	58.0	2726
NOTES: Velocity is the average of 10 rounds measured 12 feet from the gun’s muzzle. .280 Improved cases and Federal 210M primers were used in all handloads. Reduce powder charges shown by 10 percent for starting loads.

Introduced by Lysle Kilbourn around 1940, the .22 K-Hornet is thought to be the first improved cartridge to gain nationwide popularity. But of the many improved cartridges created during the past 100 years or so, very few have managed to eventually gain factory-cartridge status. Without doubt, the most famous and most successful of them all is the .300 Weatherby Magnum, which Roy Weatherby designed in the mid-1940s as an improved version of the .300 H&H Magnum.

Through the years, many people have developed improved cartridges, but not a single one has been as prolific as Parker O. Ackley, or P.O. to those of us who knew him. Some of Ackley’s cartridges are in the two volumes of his out-of-print Handbook For Shooters & Reloaders, but they represent a mere tip of the iceberg. Many more ideas got no further than his reloading bench, and it is for this reason few people have ever heard of them.

Through the years, Ackley did a bit of gunsmith work for me, and I used to enjoy occasional telephone conversations with him. It was during one of those conversations that I asked P.O. to send me samples of his .17-caliber cartridges. Expecting to receive perhaps a dozen or so, I was absolutely amazed when I opened the box and counted 38 cartridges of that caliber on cases ranging in capacity from the shortened .22 Hornet to the full-length .220 Swift. For good measure, he also sent a few wildcats in .12 and .14 calibers.

But Ackley seemed to be most proud of his improved cartridges, with the .257 Roberts Improved and the 7x57mm Mauser Improved being two of them. Through the years, I have worked with them as well as the .22-250 Improved, .243 Winchester Improved, and .250 Savage Improved.