Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cartridge Progress

Several fellows over on the " � Gunwriters" forum are swapping opinions about the progress in cartridges that shooters and hunters have enjoyed in the last and current centuries.

How nice it'd be if our next great progress would be wide-spread recognition of the empty foolishness of the fetish for muzzle velocity at whatever cost in down-range results and right-next-to-the-face risks.

Just engineering loads to chamber pressures no higher than 50,000 lb/sq in. (instead of 60,000 lb/sq in. and higher) produces demonstrably wonderful benefits in accuracy, case longevity, barrel longevity, better recoil, and better long-range performance � as well as better safety.

Ken, in the battle betwixt reason and emotion the latter has the advantage of youth I fear.

Two very good posts.

It's simply the American way. It's something that is imbedded in our psyche, our culture.

To be sure, it doesn't affect all individuals, and certainly not to an equal extent. It may also be associated with relative youth, diminishing with age and maturity, just like the desire to drive fast.

Just speculation on my part.

Paul

Ken Howell,

This idea is "engineering loads to chamber pressures no higher than 50,000 lb/sq in. (instead of 60,000 lb/sq in. and higher)" is archaic. Materials are better than when you were young.

It is early to make popcorn but what the hell...

But the human intellect is still no more advanced, so young people fall for marketing huckstering the biggest, fastest, most luxurious and "in" things. Almost every new cartridge development in the last 50 years is nothing but a marketing technique to sell rifles and ammo. Not to mention that brass is still brass which is the limiting factor for pressure containment. I do recall that at one time Dick Casull was experimenting with cartridges that used steel heads to contain extreme high pressure, but that idea went nowhere.

I mean my new 204 Ruger custom rifle shoots the 24 grain Hornady NTX bullet best at 3,936 fps average, but opens the group up at 4,155 fps. Slow it down and everything is good!

The youngn's have not come full circle yet. Let them try the new stuff out on their own. They won't listen to the old guys anyway. Some of them have not figured out that they are smarter/wiser than they where a year ago. Much less 20-30 years of learning.

I'm just waiting for them to come out with a handheld rail gun.

Rail Gun!

Too much EMF!

My capacitor is bigger than your capacitor. I can hear it now.

I want a lazer. We can set the targets on the moon.

Jim

What kind of targets you talking about.

I can think of a few!

Off topic, but just having fun!!!

Au contrere, mon Frere! Our better modern materials are precisely what make my approach much more feasible than ever! The physics of both interior and exterior ballistics are exactly the same as they were when I was born (1931). Modern materials make it easier for us to utilize 'em to get superior results. If you were here, I'd show you. You simply don't know what the Aitch you're opining about.

"Archaic?"

Pore ol' Toro has gotten into the Ex-Lax again!

Yeah???????????? SOoooooooooooo?? You can't kill a critter deader than dead. You don't need an ICBM to accomplish what can be done with a piper cub........

Swedish and some of the German steels used by Lowe of the turn of the last century were just as good as anything now....overall tolerances are better, or atleast much easier to hold, but quality of materials really isnt all than much better....

Given the advancements in bullet technology, higher velocity is needed less now than ever, IMO.........

There's more to cartridges than simply killing schit.

Speed doesn't hurt.



Travis

Yeah, I'd take high BC over speed, but if we're talking about pushing the limits, speed and BC doesn't hurt.



Travis

With all the 1940s IMR-4350 that we could dribble uncompacted into the .30-06 behind a 168-grain Sierra HPBT seated 0.363 inch into the neck (about 56.8 grains), we could very safely get about 2,600 ft/sec and 2,971 ft-lb at the muzzle.

With about 56.4 grains of today's much later ReLoDer 17, we can get about 2,800 ft/sec and 3,109 ft-lb at little more than 50,000 lb/sq in.

I'd consider that a lot better performance � with a heavier, more modern bullet than the 150-grain bullets commonly used in the 1940s .30-06, for much better retention of energy down-range.

To keep the comparison honestly comparable, I've compared loads with the same bullet and different powders. A comparison between different bullets with different powders would more dramatically demonstrate the greatly increased benefits offered by modern components.

Yes, it can.

The faster it starts out, the faster it loses velocity to the drag that it encounters in its travel. Timeless fact of physics.