.25 ROBERTS - .257 ROBERTS
Early in the 20th Century, several experimenters and wildcatters were playing with 25 caliber cartridges based on the .30-40 Krag case, similar to what Dr. Franklin Mann had introduced to the world in his treatise The Bullet's Flight. One of those pioneers was N. H. (Ned) Roberts. He set out to design a rimless case having a capacity similar to the rimmed .25 Krag-Mann, considering the advances in powders since Mann’s experiments. Roberts settled on the 7x57mm Mauser case and began months of testing different bullets, barrels, and chambers. He finally settled on a 15 degree shoulder and a 2.160" case length, dubbing it the .25 Roberts. Michigan rifle maker A. O. Niedner agreed to make barrels, hand formed cases, and complete rifles, and shooters of the day commonly called the new cartridge the .25 Niedner Roberts.
In 1930, New York gun makers Griffin & Howe began to produce ammunition and rifles. They determined that case forming could be expedited if the case was left full length. Roberts tested the longer case, approved it’s design, and it quickly came to be called the .25 G & H Roberts.
In 1934 Remington proposed to legitimize the wildcat and introduce it in their Model 30-S Express rifle. They concluded that the manufacture of new brass cases could be facilitated by simply necking the 7x57mm case to 25 caliber, with no other changes. The new cartridge was named the .25 Roberts and cases were headstamped accordingly. Several noted riflemen raised flags of concern since it could be mistaken for the original .25 Roberts. Within a year the cartridge was renamed the .257 Remington Roberts and the headstamp changed to .257 REM. A year later, Winchester came on board with their cartridge named the .257 Winchester Roberts, headstamped .257 Roberts. With the passing of time both the Remington and Winchester cartridges came to be known as simply the .257 Roberts.
International Ammunition Association Forum:
http://iaaforum.org/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7464------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard F. Simmons, Wildcat Cartridges, 1947.
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N.H. Roberts was one of the bright stars in the company of notable American riflemen. One of the relatively few in that select group to bridge the entire span of years from muzzleloaders to autoloaders, Ned was a man of diverse skills: rifleman, professor, writer, student of ballistics, and of course, cartridge designer.
Many of our readers are familiar with the historical fact that Ned Roberts, assisted by his friends F.J. Sage and A.O. Neidner, designed the .25 Roberts cartridge, later to become the .257 Roberts. Perhaps fewer of you know about the original cartridge without the "7" in its headstamp, but how many of you know that there were three different .25 Roberts cartridges? Most present day sources will tell you there were two, but shooters contemporary to the years 1930 to 1935 may remember the story as it actually happened.
The old .30-40 Krag case having already proven to be about the right capacity for necking down to .25 caliber, Ned selected the 7X57mm Mauser as a rimless case having about the same capacity. Perfectionist that he was, there followed years of trial-and-error testing which involved the making up of literally dozens of barrels for his .25-caliber wildcat, with different chambers, groove dimansions and rifling twists. Colonel Whelen once told the writer that he doubted if any man ever spent so much time perfecting a cartridge as Ned Roberts did with his .257 (or .25 Roberts, as he originally called it).
Early in the experiments, Roberts and Adolph Neidner were advised by Colonel Whelen and Mr. L. C. Weldin, ballistic engineer of the Hercules Powder Company, to specify a shoulder slope of 15 degrees for their new cartridge in order to hold down pressures with the rather fast-burning powders of those days (late 1920s). This suggestion was adopted and the 7mm vase necked down, formed to the new long-sloping shoulder, and trimmed approximately 1/16". A.O. Neidner then proceeded to make up barrels for the new cartridge with his usual close chambering.
These barrels, along with their hand-formed brass cases, were known as the ".25 Roberts" and were all that was available for the first couple years.
--- Ken Waters, Pet Loads, 1990.
