Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters innovative carteradgs

6.5 Creedmoor? Not all that innovative, just highly refined. The 6 m/m PPC comes to mind also. Pindell and Palmisano spent a couple years playing with the .220 Russian to get the short powder column and shoulder angles right on that. Remember Lou Palmisano shooting that at Johnstown early on when the rest of us were shooting .222's. We were outclassed and everybody knew it. The PPC was a game changer.

I wouldn't go with that one. It was advertised at 2460 fps from a revolver. The actual velocity was about 1760. Remington later admitted they'd chronographed it in a 30" rifle barrel, and then lowered the claimed velocity about 600 fps. Also the bottle necked case would lock up a revolver after 3 or 4 shots. S&W quickly stopped offering revolvers for it.

What's innovative about ideas that immediately fail in the market place?

Odd as it may sound at first I'm going to pick the .444 Marlin. Not because it was a brand new concept but because it was daring due to the fact that Marlin tapped into a style of cartridge (straight wall big bore rifle length) that had been dead for over a half century at that point. It worked and it opened the door for the .45-70 to make a huge comeback.

.223 AI - The only cartridge to spawn a thread with over 31 MILLION views and almost 5,000 pages of posts! That's not even including the original incarnations of the thread before it was moved to the basement...

I agree with rainierrifleco that the 284 Win should be in this list. When introduced in 1963 it was ahead of its time. It had an unusual concept of a rebated rim which got adopted by the RUMs at a later date. It had a 35 degree shoulder angle which was the steepest in its day. Even now most of the popular cartridges like the Creedmoor use 30 degree shoulder angle.

Its major detraction is that in the beginning it was offered as a lever or autoloader rifle. As a result the load data for it was anemic. In a bolt action the 284 shines. Also the quality of Winchester brass was poor and more recently it has dried up. It has been known to have feeding issues which can be resolved.

The 284 spawned many wildcats in its day with the 6.5-284 the most popular. The 6mm-284 still holding its own as what many would consider the largest practical case capacity for a 6mm.

Recently the 284 has come back into popularity with the LR crowd. It is often used for F class competitions with fast twists barrels to shoot 180 gr bullets.
Bullets.com has struck a deal with Norma to make excellent brass. In addition Lapua makes 6.5-284 brass.

This seems more to me like a highly-refined version of Ackley’s work. Hopefully we’ll see more, in .25, .27 and .32.

The 400 Whelen. Developed in 1923, it preceded Ackley's "improved design" employing a straighter case and a blown out shoulder. One of the first "improved" versions of the 30-06 case.

I don't know if he intended it but Whelen duplicated the performance of the 450-400 in an affordable magazine rifle. I suppose with the then, new found interest in velocity and smaller bores, the 400 was doomed to obscurity until a Michael Petrov brought it back to life. I sure miss him. He was a wealth of information, was generous with his time, and had a lot of interesting pre-war custom Springfields.

Aside from my 400, I see these as innovative;

30-06
308
7x57
250-3000
257 Roberts
222
22 Magnum (might qualify as a refinement rather than an innovation but a major step up from the WRF)
17HMR
6.5x54 (as much the rifle as the cartridge)

8mm Lebel

Have to add 7.62X39 to the list. First successful intermediate rifle round ushering in the "modern" assault rifle, can't think of any other military rifle round that has been in 70+ years of service or as widely in use around the world in every conflict post WWII.

9mm parabellum also deserves mention, first successful non bottleneck semi auto handgun and smg round the world over with nearly 120 years in service.

"carteradgs"

That's a real tongue twister.

Say that real fast3 times...thought about fixing it but I might make it worse...

The interesting thing about these is that only one of them was introduced after 1960.

We seem to have run out of innovations since then. A millimeter here, a slightly different rifle twist there, and what we get, in my opinion, is advertised "fad" cartridges. Result: shelf space is cluttered with variations that do the same thing. And a few years later you can't buy them. Costs increase for everyone. Does the 6.5 Creedmore improve anything over the .270 by more than one or two percent? Do the WSMs and SAUMs do anything but reduce the weight of the rifle by an ounce or so? No. Not to mention turkeys like the .376 Steyer.

I just tuned in to see what a 'carteradgs' was.....

laughing....so did I.

Makes one wonder what ever happened to "kawi". He was always good for a head scratcher....

No kidding! I miss Kawi...

Wasn't any use whatsoever to go all 'spelling nazi' on him!

Remington needs to do something smart and relaunch the 260 and take advantage of the current 6.5 rage.

- Good selection of accurate rifles.
- Fast twist bbls
- Lots of good brass and ammo.

Sound business moves like the above would be innovative for Remington.

LOL

Agreed, all the way.