Cartridges ahead of their time

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squarepants33889

squarepants33889

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Considering what has been learned and implemented by cartridge designers and manufacturers as of late, it seems as if shorter, fatter cases with slow burning powders using long for caliber bullets and the use of faster twist rates is becoming more the norm than the exception.
It has also been shown that exceeding some reasonable dimension limits (i.e. too fat or too short) can cause feeding and reliability issues.
Before the Creedmoor, Short mags and Nosler cartridges established this ideal, were they any old school cartridges that exemplified these traits that simply never gained much traction?
For example, I recently did some reading about the 6.5 Remington Magnum.
This little short mag almost looks like it could have hit the shelves in the last decade.
Any others that may have succeeded if shooters were more educated on these subjects at the time?
 
6.5 Rem Mag as you point out but also the 350 Rem Mag were short magnums long before they became a thing. They both suffered from the typical Remington problem of developing cartridges and then not supporting them with ammo and rifles soon after. They are also belted which is an outdated and possibly obsolete design by today’s standards and may never have been a good idea at all.
 
6 Lee Navy was way ahead of its era. The 280 Ross has way too much taper by modern standards but its ballistics were excellent, think 280 AI but in 1906.

But a lot of the old designs still look surprisingly modern. The 6.5 Carcano came out in 1891 and the case doesn't have any weird 19th century proportions. Put a pointy bullet in there and it would look quite current.

unnamed.jpg
 
Newton Rifle in .256 Newton - Revivaler

"American rifle and cartridge designer Charles Newton has been described as the “Father of the high velocity rifle” and this is partially true. However it should be remembered that there were others such as the renowned British rifle maker Holland and Holland who created the original belted magnum, the 375 Holland and Holland Magnum, back in 1912, around the same time Charles Newton was creating his rifles and cartridges. Holland and Holland did not stop with the venerable 375H&H and went on to create the 300 H&H Magnum and the barrel burning 244 H&H Magnum."
 
The new cartridge and new Bull Pup rifle the .280 produced by the Brits right after WW11 was squashed by the USA, in favour of the .308. Which was then replaced by the 5.56 an even smaller round than the .280.
As a teenager, I watched a demonstration on Pathy News? In which an armourer held the buttstock against his chin, while he one-handed fired the rifle, full auto! I lived in England at that time. Now all are looking at a round very close to the .280. As the next wonder bullet. Which my 85-year-old head can not remember the designation! Sorry.
 
I don't know about being ahead of its time because it's always been popular, but I'm amazed the lowly .22 long rifle is around 130 years old and still going strong. Especially considering the changes the .22 rimfire went through in the mid 1800's, from the .22 bb, the .22 short, .22 long, and then finally arriving at the .22 lr which no-one has been able to improve upon when taking popularity into account.
 
Heavy for caliber bullets were once the standard- 156-162 gr 6.5mm, 173-175 gr 7mm, 220 gr .30, 215 gr .303, 250 gr .318, 300 gr .333, etc.

To be blunt, most of new cartridges on the market, especially the short and fat specials, allow gunmakers to sell you another rifle that you probably wouldn't have purchased otherwise. I guess that makes everybody happy, but is hardly indicative of a vastly superior product.
 
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.455_Hunter said:
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the 1895 6mm Lee Navy, developed less than a decade after the birth of smokeless rifle powder, develops the exact same ballistics as the new hotness 6mm ARC when fired from service platforms- a ~110 gr 6mm bullet at ~2550 fps.
Click to expand...
Think it still holds the pine board record, can't remember how many but something ridicules.
 
Old Guy said:
As a teenager, I watched a demonstration on Pathy News? In which an armourer held the buttstock against his chin, while he one-handed fired the rifle, full auto!
Click to expand...

Our range sgt. in basic training did something similar, fired an M-14 (.308) rifle with the butt in his crotch to show us how little recoil it had. No one volunteered to duplicate this. It was not full auto though. Wonder how this affected his future parenting? lol
 
Old Guy said:
The new cartridge and new Bull Pup rifle the .280 produced by the Brits right after WW11 was squashed by the USA, in favour of the .308. Which was then replaced by the 5.56 an even smaller round than the .280.
As a teenager, I watched a demonstration on Pathy News? In which an armourer held the buttstock against his chin, while he one-handed fired the rifle, full auto! I lived in England at that time. Now all are looking at a round very close to the .280. As the next wonder bullet. Which my 85-year-old head can not remember the designation! Sorry.
Click to expand...
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
- Ecclesiastes 1:9
 
Any cartridge technology of today (ie, any physical projectile set in motion by an energy source to deliver that residual energy to a target) is way behind the times - they all do about the same thing - we hype this firearm stuff because that is what we like and that is what we know. The new weapons technology will deliver energy to a target as energy, not via a physical delivery. Try to imagine putting a hole in a deer’s chest with a beam of energy - no recoil, no report, no impact sound - nothing other than the animal’s reaction (maybe the animal will not even feel the “intrusion”). Our hobby is a lot of fun but it is very antiquated.
 
7.5x55. A 1911 version of 7.62x51.
6.8x57. A Chinese experimental cartridge that was never implemented due to WWI. Might have been the seed that led to the .270 Win.
 
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