Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Who knows the real history of the short action magnum?

Anybody know the real timeline of the "short action magnum" cartridge? Maybe the .350 RemMag was the original as some say but perhaps it goes much further back than that? One thing is certain - this round was not "invented" by Winchester.

Could you say the 1st short action magnum was the 284win? I would think the short fat case with the rebated rim set the precident for all the current "magnum' cartridges.

The 300 Savage gets my vote.

30 Newton?

The original "short magnums" as most know them today (WSM's and SAUM's) are very similar to some wildcats made in the early 1950's by at least a couple of guys. Those rounds were made by turning the rims off .348 Winchester brass, then cutting an extractor groove. As I recall, both lines of wildcats were designed to fit in Remington 722 actions, the action that eventually became the "short" Remington 700. The case dimensions and powder capacity were both very similar to the WSM's.

Later on some other people produced similar wildcats and proprietary rounds on shortened .404 Jeffery brass, notably John Lazzeroni and Rick Jamison. But the .348-based cases came first.

Barring a few "wildcat" rounds (which follow no rules) the first of the "acceptable" short magnum rounds is probably the .284 Winchester. The .300 Savage, although pretty great (a .30-06 equivalent round in a shorter cartidge) was still a round trying to play "catch-up"....but not really inovative.

The .284 was the first attempt to add the same effective capasity of the .30-06 with a shorter cartridge. The "rebated" rim was kind of odd....but really did well with my own attempt at a "wildcat".....the .35-284....in perhaps 1975ish.


I don't count true "wildcats" as valid efforts in short magnums (it's just too easy when there are no rules)....the .284 is truely the right candidate.

Your logic is underwhelming.

The term "magnum" has never been applied to any .30-06 case, whether wildcat or commercial. The only possible exception (which would be a real stretch) is the .240 Weatherby, whose only feature that might qualify it as a magnum is a belted case.

In reality it's the exception that proves my point. The .25-06 has never been called any sort of magnum, even when it was a wildcat. Neither has the .270 Winchester, .280 Remington, .333-06 A-Square or .35 Whelen. This is because the .30-06 has never been considered a magnum cartridge.

Yet somehow the .284 is supposed to be a magnum, when it doesn't even quite match the powder capacity of the .30-06? Even Winchester, a company not exactly shy about hyping its products, never dreamed of calling the .284 a magnum. Not when only a few years before they'd introduced the .264, .338 and .458 Winchester Magnums.

I also can't follow why a cartridge being a wildcat prevents it from being a "real" magnum. That's how Roy Weatherby's first Magnums started out, and nobody ever questioned whether they were real magnums or not.

The original question was about the origins of the short-action magnums, not short-action cartridges that attempted to duplicate the ballistics or powder room of the .30-06.

Texas Rick - ? How can the 300 Savage be considered a "30-06 equivalent" cartridge?

That one ESCAPES me! ! Isn't the 250 Savage the same case w/a smaller dia. neck? If so, it's a LONG way from being equivalent to the 06 case.

Enlighten me if you can! !

Yup, Roy Gradle in the 50's with the Gradle Express cratridges, made like JB says on the blown out 348 case....case capcity was greater than the 06 based cases.

He was in California, too,along with Roy Weatherby..As I recall, even the shoulder of the 7mm Gradle Express(dead ringer for the 7mmWSM),had a radiused shoulder.

John Haviland did an article on the 7mm Gradle Express 2-3 years ago.

jwall,

Actually, the .300 Savage is NOT the .250 necked up, but more like a slightly shortened .308.

And yes, it was originally designed to approach the original pre-WWI .30-06 factory ballistics of a 150 at 2700 fps and a 180 at 2500 fps. But since the .30-06 was never a magnum, neither was the .300 Savage a "short-action magnum."

M D - Okay..I never compared the 250 Savage w/the 300 Savage. I guess I just ASSUMED. NOW LOOK>

Even so the antiquated loading might have come close to the 06, the case CAPACITY is not and was not the equivalent to the 06 THEN nor NOW.

I'm not arguing with you but pointing out to T R the real difference.

Thanks Again

How do you explain the 6.5 and 350 Rem Mags? About the same capacity as a 30-06 too.

"Explain" them?

Don't know quite what you mean, but they both have belted cases with the same head-size as the .375 H&H. This was pretty much the definition of a magnum until the 1990's, and Remington's justification for calling them magnums.

Ballistically they're pretty much identical to the 6.5/06 (or 6.5/.284 with the bullets seated way out) and the .35 Whelen.
Both came along much later than the .348-based wildcats, which did hold more powder than the .30-06, and so exceeded .30-06 ballistics. So no, they weren't the inspiration for today's short-action, non-belted magnums, no matter how much some of their fans would like to believe so.

Which is one of the reasons I very consciously did NOT call my own wildcat on the same case, the 9.3 Barsness-Sisk, the .366 Short Magnum.

Wow...

I guess I threw out the 300 Savage, simply because as a concept it did what modern "short mags" were designed to do: give close to the same ballistics in lighter, handier rifles to their standard counterparts.

IMO, the "Magnum" is a pretty baseless term since even during the "magnum era" of the 1960's, there were "magnum" monikers for rifle cartridges sans belts and several were much smaller than the 30/06 or even the 300 Savage.

Hawk,
That's why I said the 284win. It was the first commercially produced cartridge that changed the rules. A Short fat case with a rebated rim just wasn't seen on the store shelves.

IMO, changing the rules on a commercial basis is what lead to the new beltless short action "magnum" cartridges. 284 got people thinking outside the box and willing to go to the pencil pushers with cartridge ideas that were out of the norm.

"made by turning the rims off .348 Winchester brass, then cutting an extractor groove."

Are you referring to the "7mm Gradle" and the "Wade Super Seven". I had a 7mm Gradle in the 1960's and thought it was OK, but making brasss was a headache (I tried it one time and then bought some more brass).

P.O. Ackley's books "Handbook for Shooters and Reloaders" lists a number of shortened cartridges based on the 348 Winchester.

MD, I didn't understand why the 350RM is a Magnum but the 284 with the same capacity and nearly the same diameter isn't. It's the belt thing! But then we have the 222 Magnum, no belt and much smaller capacity. So there is no logic-only marketing!

"Magnum" orignated as a Latin word meaning "big" or "great."
It's been applied to everything from books (a "magnum opus" is a great work) to wine bottles (a magnum holds 1.5 liters, twice as much as a standard bottle) to rifle cartridges.

In rifle cartridges magnum basically means "bigger than normal." Thus we even have the .22 Magnum rimfire case, plus the .222 Remington Magnum (a stretched version of the .222, but not nearly as large as the .22-250 or .220 Swift, neither called a magnum). It's also one reason the .240 Weatherby is called a magnum, since it's the largest-capacity commercial 6mm--aside from the .244 Holland & Holland Magnum.

But since the original cartridge called a "magnum" (the .375 H&H) had a belt to control headspace, and most commercial magnums after that also had belt, whether it was needed or not, the belt became another qualification, at least in some people's eyes. Hence the .350 Remington "Magnum."

But the original Latin word still means "bigger," which is why the .300 Savage and .284 Winchester don't qualify, even if they were designed for short actions. So no, the .284 did not start the path to the present array of short, beltless magnums. It came out at least a decade AFTER the rimless .348 wildcats, and nobody bothered bringing out any other commercial cartridges on that theme after the .284 (and the 6.5 and .350 Remingtons) appeared in the 1960's.

In fact, the .284 was designed for lever- and autoloading rifles, not as a short "magnum" for bolt actions. Eventuallt it mostly served as the inspiration for rifle loonies who get all excited about reproducing the ballistics of the .25-06, .280 and other .30-06-based rounds in short bolt actions, thereby saving an ounce or two. Of course the 6.5/.350 Remington case does the same thing, but these days many loonies regard belts on brass are useless if not actually evil.

The major inspiration for the recent short magnums was the resurge in popularity of some of the older British cartridges in the 1990's. New .404 Jeffery brass became available for the first time in many years, thus making it relatively easy for wildcatters to reproduce the .348-based wildcats of the early 1950's.

Pictured below are my 22-458 Short Lott Magnum, my 17-458 Short Lott, and my 22-44 magnum.

Do they qualify?
Butch

Irregardless of the "Belt" thing, According to various manuals the .284 Win. was design in 1963 to "approximate" or "replicate" the performance of the .270 Win or .280 Rem... in a short action... Specifically the Winchester M-88 and M-100.

You must remember that 50 yrs ago, Lever rifles were still hugely popular and Semi-Autos were a coming thing. A few years later, bolt rifles would really surge in popularity... (More than likely, largely because of the "Magnum" craze, I suspect...)

GH