I have burned up 8-9 STW barrels, and I have a bunch of experience with them. This one and the Mashburn do virtually the same thing with less powder. This one runs within 30fps of my STW with the same length barrel with 8gr less powder.
Travis ,great work! Very impressive cartridge!
I think this is interesting.....the 7mm Mashburn Super was actually the third Mashburn 7mm wildcat,one being based on the the same type case as the 7RM and Weatherby,and another based on the FL,blown out H&H case,similar to the STW and 7mm/300 Weatherby.
What he found was that the intermediate length case,the third,did most of what the FL H&H case did,in a more "efficient" design and more than the shorter case...hence, the name 7mm Mashburn
Super. Later Bob Hagel came to the same conslusion with the 7mm/300 Weatherby,and if you dig far enough back in Rifle Magazine, you will find the article on this comparison.He found the Mashburn Super to be only slightly exceeded with the heavy 175 gr bullet, but not at all with 160's and down.
What I find interesting is that Travis has obviously put a lot of shop and range time into this and has come to basically the same conslusions....even with the passage of 60+ years and more modern propellants.
Apparently there is a "sweet spot" in 7mm magnum capacity,and materially exceeding it does not necessarily provide signifcanttly more velocity...or at least not enough more to make it worthwhile in barrel lengths customariy used for hunting.
I like that Travis optimized the throat length and angle specifically for the 180 gr bullet....3200 for that slug is very impressive and I will bet it packs the mail.
Which is "better", the Rogue or the Mashburn, is really pretty moot...what is significant in my mind is that both Art Mashburn and Travis did the homework to optimize a 7mm magnum
:)as a potent LR hunting rig using commonly available (300 Win Mag) brass,that fits handily into many commonly available actions...that their work is separated by 60 odd years tells us that a good idea is still a good idea regardless when it was done.
Now wildcatters have something else to choose when looking to optimize 7mm Magnum performance.
Kudos ,Travis! Nice work!
