roscoedoh Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 I may be misinformed, or perhaps I'm just hung up on the classics, but am I the only person who feels fairly strongly that all the useful rifle and pistol cartridges were invented a long time ago? Stepping further out on a limb, Europe gets the nod for inventing far more useful rifle cartridges than the US. I think the US holds the record for the most handgun cartridges, but then, we're a handgun culture. Am I wandering the dark all alone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doble Troble Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 Jason, I've pretty-much come to the same conclusion as you - only the hard way. I must have manufactured more than a dozen reamers for wild cats and improved cartridges, mostly 8 mm only to find that they really aren't much better performance wise than the stock cartridges. For example the 6.5 x 55 BJAI I made will push 140 gr bullets to almost 3000 fps, but will only group 3" at that velocity. To get groups approaching MOA I can't push them much more than 2750 fps and I could pretty-much get that accurately with the stock cartridge. The 8 mm Steyr AI that is beginning to pay off looks like it's going to max out at about 3000 fps with the 185 CL. I bet I'm going to have to drop this down for case life and accuracy. This is a fairly significant improvement over the 8 x 57, but I'll probably never be in a situation where this difference is critical. I suppose the best part of dinking around with all of these cartridges is that I've learned A LOT about making tools and chambering rifles. This experience is much more valuable to me than the rifles that I've produced (maybe this is why I'm having such a hard time producing a really high quality product - although I think I am making good progress). When it comes right down to it there really isn't much need for anything other than a Mauser in 7 x 57 and a S&W in 38 spcl. Get an apeture sight and you can skip the scope too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fritz Posted July 12, 2005 Report Share Posted July 12, 2005 New cartridges means new rifles to shoot them means new money for the rifle manufacturers. Now that's a mouthful! But it's the truth! fritz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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