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Although the .30-06 Springfield cartridge and most wildcats derived therefrom theoretically headspace on the shoulder, the shoulder remaining when the neck is expanded to .40 caliber was described by Phil Sharpe as: "...no more apparent than the hips on a black snake." Sharpe relied upon fire forming cases for his well-crafted Griffin & Howe rifle to avoid headspace problems. Sharpe's abandonment of interchangeable parts suggests departure of practice and theory about what actually prevented forward movement of the cartridge in the chamber.

James V. Howe was the gunsmith of the Griffin & Howe team, while Seymour Griffin crafted gun stocks. Howe honed his craft as foreman of the machine shop at Frankford Arsenal during Colonel Townsend Whelen's experimental work as commanding officer of the arsenal. Arsenal production at the time of Howe's experience was .30-06 and .45 ACP. Howe would have used un-necked blanks forming .400 Whelen cartridges rather than expanding the necks of .30-06 cartridges; and Howe's chambering reamers for the .400 Whelen may have utilized the sharp case mouth form of the .45 ACP rather than the cone form typical of shoulder headspace.

Although I am unaware of any traditional cartridge specifications for this early wildcat; I request contributions from editors with documentation regarding headspace of this cartridge. Thewellman ( talk) 17:10, 5 August 2010 (UTC) reply

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.qual-cart.com/catalog_2010.pdf
  • In ICL cartridges on 2011-04-23 17:06:29, 404 Not Found
  • In ICL cartridges on 2011-04-24 04:32:08, 404 Not Found
  • In .400 Whelen on 2011-05-20 21:37:12, 404 Not Found

-- JeffGBot ( talk) 22:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC) reply