Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 7x57 verses the 284 Win

They are the only thing off of factory I will mess with. Wildcats ain't worth my effort any longer and I still like the option of factory ammo if need be.

Course I do have a 6.5/06 still.

The biggest advantage I have seen from the improved rounds is indeed the almost total elimination for case trimming. I load a lot of rounds and eliminating a step is a good thing!

But it really saves signficant time only when loading lots and lots of rounds, as for prairie dog shooting. Even then I find that neck-sizing often accomplishes much the same thing.

6.5/06 is a good wildcat;even a 270 nut can find room for that one

Ray, you say the 7x57 AI is an awesome round, in a long action I presume. Then say the the 284 which out does the 7x57 AI in a short action as having no place in a bolt gun and to get a 280.

You don't make any sense, sir.

I say if you have a long action get a 280 AI and if a short action a 284. I like short action for the same reasons that
260, 708, 338 Fed, 358 win owners like them.

The 7x57 gives you 708 performance in a long action. Wow!

With RL17 the 284 will get right there with the 280 Rem.

I have a 7x57AI on a LA Rem action.With the 140's I get 3050fps w/RL19.I have no illusions of it being a 280IMP but I can shoot the cup and core as well as the bonded bullets w/almost the same results.I have and will always shoot the 140gr Ballistic tips and no the extra 150fps does not make them come apart.Would I trade it for a 280...no!I have two other 7x57's and they do the same thing on our large s.Texas whiteails w/140's. powdr

lucky for me, your opinion on this does not hold much weight.

I know a rifle loony who is one of the looniest. Any cartridge that has to have a bullet seated below the neck drives him batty. He will chamber a rifle for a SHORTER cartridge just so he can seat the bullet to the base of the neck--and somehow believes that he will get more velocity because the bullet isn't taking up as much powder space.

The truth is that aside from some minor mechanical diffculties (such as a "doughnut" of extra brass forming at the base of the neck after a few firings, which can be reamed out) just about any cartridge presently loaded will have to have some bullet seated below the neck.

Another little piece of reality is that a the base of a bullet takes up just as much powder space in the neck as it does below the neck. Just because a case has a long neck it doesn't mean a longer bullet doesn't take up powder space inside the neck.

Thanks for the info!! I've sorta wondered if the X57AI gained enough over an -08 case to make a 6.5X57AI Kimber MT a worthwhile convervsion... I know loony, gack.

Mule Deer, You mentioned that Winchester brought out the 284 in an effort to approximate 270 Win speeds/power in a short action. What caused them to want to do that in 284 diameter instead of their beloved 277 diameter? Seems like the word "Winchester" and "270" just go together. Sales may have been better.
And today it would be a hot wildcat in 7mm.

Manlicher: Not dumping on your favorite of course,but since the action length is the same for the 7x57AI and a 280,and the 7x57 requires the extra step of forming brass and all the other stuff that goes with it,I'm just trying to figure out what is so alluring about it when a factory cartridge does the same thing....AND,what makes the cartridge so fabulous ,when it's no better than a 280?

That was my point.....

rifle lunatics...I guess its better to obsess about a few mm's of length and a few FPS argue stongly the case for the bullet case etc. rather than losing money at the race track or spending money on 20 year old single malt whiskey....but on the other hand...

Rifle loonys are wired into more, better(New, and Improved) and different at birth...

jimmy: I used to spend time and money obsessing over tiny ballistic things and to some degree I still do,though not as much.

Today I'd rather spend both on the single malt....

The .284 is more versatile than the 7x57. While the .284 was originally marketed in a lever action with ballistic performance comparable to that of the .270, it has adapted well to short bolt-action mountain rifles and to long-range varmint rifles. A bench-rest rifle in .284-caliber currently holds the National F-Class record at 1000 yards.

Although Winchester chose the 7mm bore size to compete with the .280, it was a good choice for other reasons. A larger bore can lower chamber pressure, lengthen barrel life, and present greater bullet choices.

If one takes the time to think about it, there are very few exceptions to the contention that cartridge developement could have stopped about 1930 (earlier than that if we could live without the 270. Easy for me but some others may think differently!). There have been some particularily good cartridges developed subsequently (the 222 Remington and the 308 Winchester come to mind)but the 284 isn't one of them.
We could all hunt and do most anything else if just given the original Mauser cartridges. I have no doubt that a 7x57 would do just fine as an "F" class cartridge just as does the 6.5x55.
Anyway, to those to whom a headstamp is magical, the 284 may be something special. From a practical performance perspective, it is not. The same is, of course, true of the 7x57 or the 280.
I've long been a fan of the 30/40 Krag cartridge; talk about hitching your wagon to a dying horse! I hunt with it lots and in my mind, it's a totally different proposition than the 308, the 300Savage, or any other medium caliber. In truth, it's just the same.
My true feeling is, within reason, it's the rifle which is the important thing. Bore size is semi-important. The cartridge designation is an accessory of less importance than the sling. GD

pjf,

You're a highly entertaining writer, and keep coming up with real doozies. Winchester did NOT introduce the .284 to compete with the .280.

The .284 came out in 1963, a year after the 7mm Remington Magnum essentially cut the .280 off at the knees. For at least a decade after that the .280 was just about dead--the reason Remington finally tried to "revive" the .280 by renaming it the 7mm Express, a marketing decision that ranks right alongside New Coke as a promotional disaster.

In fact, there was no reason for Winchester to ever be worried about the .280, since they'd brought out a highly successful cartridge called the .270 a couple of decades before the .280 showed up.

While the "7MM EXP REM" was a bad idea, calling the 280 "7MM-06 REM" was probably worse, considering the potential headspace issues that a wildcat 7mm-06 might have in a 280/7mm-06 REM chamber, or factory specs 280/7mm-06 REM ammo in a wildcat 7mm-06 chamber. Bearrr264 had a NIB 700 BDL with the barrel stamped 7MM-06 REM ****** 280 REM which he believed to be 1 of the few, 200+/-, that escaped from Ilion before Remington's management team had their "Aw $hit, I coulda had a V-8!" epiphany and recalled them.

Maybe you should conduct a survey and see what microscopic percent of the shooting public gives a rat's ass about what cartridges are used to shoot F-Class BR. AFAICS, F-Class BR has about as much in common with "the average hunter" as indy car racing has to do with soccer-mom rug-rat haulers, IOW, not much.

I've been shooting the 284 for nearly 38 years, when I got a Winchester 88 carbine to suppliment my Ruger 44 International, Remington 660 in 6mm, and Mauser 24/30 in 7x57. It is a nice cartridge, but I honestly believe that its greatest value is as a source of brass for its most useful off-spring, the 25-284.

Jeff

I'm gonna opt to skip right over pjf...and argue with Bob on one point...yeah we are getting old enough to no longer dwell over minutae....but as far as spending on single malt...I'd have to dispute that in favor of Single Barrel Bourbon!
No other disputes here...the 7x57 is the ultimate, consummate cartridge!
Ingwe

MD
What happened to the X die? They?, did advertise that the X die would reduce the amount of trimming needed
Phil

SU35,
Maybe you should reread my post...First, I do think the 7x57 is an awesome round, what has that go to do with the .284 which is another awesome round and one that I consider a better choice in a Lever action rifle as they seem to feed the rebated rim better than the bolt guns. I have never been a fan of the rebated rim.

Also,I am of the opine that short actions have little to offer and if a 1/4 inch of bolt toss is an advantage then I am glad your happy with it..I would much prefer a 280 IMP over the .284. Also I see little in the future for the .284 and at some point brass may become an issue particularly into todays political cloud. I might add I can make a 7x57 shoot circles around a 7-08, with any bullet, and please understand that we all have a right to an opinnion and that is all I posted was an opinnion..

BTW in my opinnion there isn't enough difference in any of the calibers were talking about to make a damn in either velocity, bullet weight, or trajectory, so its not much more than stimulating conversation, and nothing to get your shorts in a wad over.