Thread: Redundant Calibres

Originally Posted by Flyblown

Have a look at the list of cartridges (not calibres ffs!) in Quickload and mesmerise yourself at the sheer number of cartridges you’ve never even heard of.

So many odd little men in their sheds making mostly pointless wildcats out of perfectly good pre-existing cartridge cases. But, to be fair, wildcatting is a hobby like many other mostly pointless exercises and if that’s what floats your boat, then go for it. And of course it must be remembered that some of these wildcats have spawned globally dominant cartridges that are already decades old and probably won’t go out of production for decades more to come.

The way I look at today’s new cartridges, is not to focus on the cartridge alone but to look at the barrel twist and projectiles promoted along with it. There’s a lot of cynical commentary about marketing (aimed at Hornady mostly) but the fact is that their new products are very smartly designed and have absolutely raised the bar for some of the long-standing calibres. Efficient, accurate, competition proven and thoroughly successful in the field, easy to load, excellent factory ammunition (e.g. Precision Hunter). Compare the performance of Precision Hunter in 6.5 Creedmoor to the traditional 6.5x55 factory ammo and you’ve got a great example of how lots of small incremental improvements add up to make a thoroughly superior product.

Contrast this to Sierra, who in their efforts to keep up with Hornady made an absolute dogs breakfast of the launch of the GameChanger bullets, screwing up the twist rate recommendations for the long-for-calibre bullets (e.g. 90 & 100gr 6mm), with a design that is fickle at best (putting in nicely) with the short bearing surface and very long ogive.

Who won the battle of coloured tips? Red or Green?

If you’re looking for a recent example of a cartridge that’s on a one way ride to redundancy, look at the 6.8 Western. There’s a reason Hornady has been so successful with new cartridges (and bullets, and getting rifle manufacturers to adopt the chamberings). Winchester & Browning probably should have considered why this is the case before they spent all that money designing, manufacturing and promoting a case that’s pretty much disappeared in 6 months. Go check out the availability of 6.8 Western related products… if you bought one of those in mid-2021 I’ll bet you’re wishing you got a .270 Winchester.

6.8 western will probably do well if the next gen us army squad project goes ahead
its not looking likely tho but at the very least there should be a bit more development on high bc .270 bullets off the back of it