Major Ned H. Roberts (1866 Goffstown, N.H. -- 1948), was an American hunter, competition target shooter, gun writer & editor, ballistician and firearms experimenter. Roberts was a prolific contributor to sporting publications, including Outdoor Life, Outers, Arms and the Man (later renamed as American Rifleman, and to Hunting and Fishing magazine, for which latter publication he served as Firearms Editor. His work on cartridge design in collaboration with

Adolph Otto Niedner Adolph Otto Niedner (October 1, 1863 – December 27, 1954) was an American gunsmith remembered for pioneering work with cartridges including the .22 Long Rifle and .25-06 Remington. Early life Niedner was born in Philadelphia to Germans, German ...

Townsend Whelen Townsend Whelen (March 6, 1877 – December 23, 1961), called "Townie" by his friends, was an American hunter, soldier, writer, Outdoor enthusiast, outdoorsman and rifleman. Whelen was a colonel in the United States Army, and a prolific writer on ...

, and F.J. Sage led to a commercialized version of his own original .25-caliber wildcat cartridge introduced by Remington in 1934 and named the

.257 Roberts The .257 Roberts, also known as .257 Bob, is a medium-powered .25 caliber rifle cartridge. It has been described as the best compromise between the low recoil and flat trajectory of smaller calibers such as the 5 mm (.22") and 6 mm (.24"), and ...

. Development of the .257 Roberts Roberts announced in the March 1928 issue of American Rifleman the creation of a new "ideal, or perfected" .25-caliber cartridge superior in ballistics and accuracy to any other cartridge yet produced in that caliber. Dr. F.W. Mann and

had previously developed wildcat cartridges in .25-caliber made by necking down the

.30-40 Krag The .30-40 Krag (also known as .30 U.S. and .30 Army) was a cartridge developed in the early 1890s to provide the U.S. armed forces with a smokeless powder cartridge suited for use with modern small-bore repeating rifles to be selected in the 1 ...

and the

.30-06 Springfield The .30-06 Springfield cartridge (pronounced "thirty- aught-six" ), 7.62×63mm in metric notation, and called the .30 Gov't '06 by Winchester, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and later standardized; it remained in military use ...

cases. The two .30-caliber cases held too much powder, however, and could not be filled with any existing smokeless powder. Although good results had been obtained with the Krag cartridge case, a rimless cartridge compatible with the best (Springfield and Mauser) actions was desired. He originally intended to base the new cartridge on the .30-06 case, as proposed by

, but Whelen's friend and correspondent Harvey A. Donaldson pointed out, in a letter to Whelen that it would save work to modify the shorter 7x57 Mauser case. Roberts was a perfectionist and 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 dimensions and rifling twists. Colonel Whelen once told Ken Waters that he doubted if any man ever spent so much time perfecting a cartridge as Ned Roberts did with his .25 Roberts, as he originally called it. Colonel

and Mr. L. C. Weldin, ballistic engineer of the Hercules Powder Company advised using a shoulder angle of 15° in order to hold down pressures with the rather fast-burning powders of the late 1920s. This suggestion was adopted and the 7mm case necked down, formed to the new long-sloping shoulder, and trimmed approximately 1/16". The Neidner Rifle Corporation of Dowagiac, Michigan proceeded to offer barrels and complete rifles in the new caliber featuring A.O. Neidner's usual close chambering. The result was availability to an elite audience of especially keen and affluent shooters of the original wildcat .25 Roberts cartridge, designed to be capable of firing 1-inch ten shot groups at 100 yards from a rest with a telescopic sight.

Griffin & Howe Griffin & Howe, Inc. is an American firearms manufacturer headquartered in Andover, New Jersey. Founded in 1923 by Seymour Griffin, a New York City cabinetmaker, and James V. Howe, foreman of the machine shop at the Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvani ...

, the great New York custom gun-making firm, soon followed suit, making custom rifles chambered in their own slightly-modified version of the wildcat cartridge. The .25 Griffin & Howe differed from the .25 Roberts only with respect to the New York company, skipping one step and opting for a slightly longer cartridge by leaving the 7x57 Mauser case untrimmed. In 1934, Remington decided to make the new .25 Roberts cartridge available commercially. Remington eliminated case-trimming and modified the shoulder angle from the original 15° to 20° for greater ease in manufacturing. The resulting cartridge had a 1/16" longer case, and was given the slightly different designation of

. The new Remington cartridge went on to become, for decades, one of the most popular North American hunting cartridges. Schuetzen Rifle and Other Target Shooting Roberts published extensively on match target, Schuetzen, and long-range hunting rifles of both the 19th century black powder era and the early 20th century smokeless powder era. After his death, a number of his articles and letters on these subjects were collected and published by Gerald O. Kelver in 1951.

Published works

* ''The Muzzle-Loading Cap Lock Rifle''. Manchester, N.H., The Granite State Press, 1940. iling 2333* ''Big Game Hunting; white-tailed deer and black bear''. Chicago, Paul, Richmond & Co., 1947. iling 2614 * ''Major Ned H. Roberts and the Schuetzen Rifle''. edited by Gerald O. Kelver, 1951

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Ned H. American hunters Gun writers 1866 births 1948 deaths