Thinking about a 35 Whelen with a 18" barrel anyone have one? I know that with 225 gr bullets 2700 fps is safely possible in a 22" barrel with an 18" I'm thinking 2600+ fps should be doable. A left hand Remington 700 with a McMillan Edge is what I'm thinking about. I have a 35 Whelen already but I would like to rebarrel it to a heavy barrel 6.5x55 as a fun target rifle. Since that gun is heavy to begin with and would need a lot of work to get it where I want it to be I would like to start fresh with a new Whelen. Thinking a short barrel Whelen would be very useful to me for moose and black bears and timber goat hunting.
.........I can`t offer comments on any shorter barreled velocity losses from the 35 Whelen as I don`t own one. But I can comment on my own chrony experiments, which were based on velocity comparisons using identical reloads between two 24" 300 WSMs owned by friends vs my own 16.5" barreled 300 WSM Ruger compact.
Across the board, the average overall velocity loss ranged from 4.2% to 4.5% depending on the loads that were chrony`d for comparison. The velocity loss for every inch of shorter barrel length, was between 16 fps and 22 fps. I did all the reloading and used various powders and bullets for the experiment which took several weeks to complete.
For comparison, I also duplicated and then chrony`d a load from my 20" barreled 375 Ruger Alaskan that I read about. It showed 2875 fps with a 270 gr Hornady SP from the 23" barreled 375 Ruger African. That exact loading got me 2808 fps, or an overall loss of 2.34% which is a loss of 67 fps or 22.3 fps for every inch of shorter barrel length.
I don`t know how the 35 Whelen would do if put through the same experiment, but going from 22" down to 18" I would assume that your loss would be around the same; around maybe 20 fps for every inch of shorter barrel length or a total of 80 fps. Could average a little higher or maybe a little lower.
Whether from a 22" barrel or from an 18"er. I don`t think you`ll have any game dropping issues.