Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Was the 270, supposed to be a 280?

Funny, but I was thinking "why not the 7mm-08 instead of the .284 Win?" as I made my previous post. I agree, the .284 Win is a nifty cartridge indeed.

NEED?? What is this need thing you refer too??

I always wondered if this had something to do with it...

Both are .007" smaller than their closest metric counterparts.

6.5mm= .264
25 cal= .257
Difference = .007

7mm= .284
27 cal = .277
Difference = .007

The Americans copying the Europeans again..

7x64 -> 270Win.


Make up a imaginary 7x64, and pay O´Connor to write about its "merrits".


Maybe Winchester did not want to pay royalties for the 7x64..

"NEED??"
I will try to clean up my language in the future.
Tim

I would like to get a .280 Ross/.289 Cal. I believe the Ross rifle caused issues when the bolt was taken apart and reassembled incorrectly in the field.It was a Canadian sniper rifle in ww1.

Here's another theory as to to why .277. Boddington recently pointed out that .277 is 90% of .308. Could Winchester have wanted a cartridge that was 10% less than the .30-06? Hard to say but it makes a fella wonder.

I've read a coupla times writers speculating that the .277" bullet diameter was copied from a Mauser cartridge for manchu-dynasty era China. I doubt the the guys at Winchester in 1925 knew about that.

I'm betting they decreased the .30-06 bore diameter by 10% to come up with the round number of .270 and create something new and unique they could tie their name to. and it worked.

Poole

There is no story of how the .270 was developed by Winchester because I believe they took it from Mauser.

There was a pre war Mauser cartridge that was virtually the same as the .270, with .277 bullets.

It is my belief that Winchester took a Mauser cartridge and deliberately Americanized it. That's why there no home grown story of how the .270 came into being.

With all the press and debate in the 40's and 50's - Jack Oconnor and Townsend Whelen and so on, that there was no story in how it got made and who developed it etc? That nobody at Winchester remembered how they came up with it?

That would be Sir Edwin Grey, whose brother was Prime Minister of Great Britain. The .280 Ross bullet was lightly constructed and broke up on the lion's chest muscles. For decades this event was cited as "proving" that you had to use a big bore on lions.

i always thought that they used the .256 Newton as incentive for the .270, it is a .264 ....

since the .270 Win came out in 1925, "pre-war" means pre WWI.

Olsen's book on the Mauser rifle, page 142-143 shows and describes the 6.8mm Mauser for the 1907 chinese rifle, (which is described as virtually identical to the 1904, hence a standard 98 action.) (There's also a cool photo of 3 chinese inspectors at the factory dressed in Manchu-era clothing and hair style with the rifles in about 1907)

The description of the 6.8mm cartridge in the text says the case is 57mm long and "apparently developed by necking down the 7.9mm mauser cartridge". The photo shows the bullet longer than a .270Win, so if it was a 62mm long case, it would not fit in the 98 action.

so the .270Win is not an Americanized version of "this" cartridge. Olsen's book does not mention a sporting cartridge of 6.8mm of any length. Cartridges of the world has lots of 6.5's and lots of 7's in the euro sporting cartridge section, but nothing in between.

I speculate the 10% shrink from .30 cal led to the .270 and I speculate that Winchester never knew about the 6.8mm chinese cartridge, but I might be wrong (I often am). They may well have known and chosen that diameter deliberately.... but why? there was no big stock of components, barrels or tooling in the US to justify copying some foreign metric caliber.

since the 9.3x62 already existed, Mauser had the case and the bullet to make a .270winch-like cartridge, but I cannot find evidence of a 6.8x62mm Mauser cartridge for Winchester to Americanize.

Poole

Having read & re read thru most of this thread FWIW I've read somewhere, mebbe the Townsend Whelen "Mr Rifleman" by Whelen & Angier 1965 Petersen Publishing book my BH bought me for our 1st Christmas together in 1967, along with the Elmer Keith "Big Game Hunting", 1965 Petersen Publishing coffee table sized illustrated book ....that the 270 development team had intended to use the 7mm 284 diameter bullet for this "new" caliber ...but got lots of push back from the anti German/Euro feelings in the US at the time and opted for something that was a "Real All American" cartridge.

I re read these about every 10 years or so, and especially enjoy the Whelen book and the stories of his travels and mapping exploration of the Panama Canal Zone outer borders that was not completly mapped & while th Canal was still under construction at the time.

That idea always made sense to me, after long talks with my grandfather after I got grown enough to understand what he was talking about. He was born in 1890 in Dallas County Texas in what becane Mesquite TX, and had hunted all his life. Interestingly, he had always advised me to not get caught up the lure & popularity of the 270...'cause the 280 "Flys better" was the only way he dscribed it with his cotton patch 3rd grade education before he ran away from home at 16. At the time I was bragging about buying my 1st deer rifle, a barely sporterized 03A3 Springfield that kicked my scrawny 145lb arse with it's steel buttplate off the bench and had proudly showed off my new manly shouder bruises to him.
Ron

The Great American cartridges 30/06 Springfield and 270 Winchester. None better IMHO. Spanking Euro's for decades......

fwiw,
Respectfully the 7x64 is actually just about identical to the .280 Remington...

Regards, Matt.

The 270 was born for coyotes. The 7x64/280 for big game.

Now you did it!!

Supposed to be? No. Should have been? Yes.

Actually a 280 is 276.