Are New Cartridges Killing Old Cartridges or Is New Bullet Design and Technology?

[N555]

30-30 seems to have been able to benefit from new bullet design and new technologies.

 

[zdc1775]

An aside: I'm still looking for one of those in the proper price/condition bracket for my tastes.

A co-worker bought a pretty nice ex-Nepalese Martini when the big batch first hit the market -- he was shooting his using a .45 Colt adapter the day this photo was taken:

View attachment 1131075

Some years before this, I got my hands on a Mk II* 303 conversion with a shot-out barrel. I was owed a favor by my gunsmith and he rebarrelled/rechambered it to .44 Magnum, reworking a Star rolling block carbine barrel. I guess you could say I took the easy route to the ammo supply problem via conversion, though with considerable effort. The thing shoots great though.

View attachment 1131076

I want to find another. The one I had was a MkII built in 1876 that I completely restored and gave to my Grandfather several years ago.

His grandfather was an officer in the Royal Irish Rifles and his great grandfather was a member of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers who served from 1882 until he was killed in the 2nd Boer War so he probably spent quite a bit of time carrying one, and he could remember stories from his grandfather telling him about using one when he was an officer cadet.

 

[BreechFace]

The Europeans have been competing with 6.5x55 since forever and modern guns have separate loadings just like 45-70. I love my old sweed and there is zero chance I'm hot rodding it. I'm still trying to see why 280ai gets a higher pressure limit than 280, because case capacity wasn't enough....

Could have something to do with what the early Remington pumps and autos (740/742) that the 280 was chambered in?

Less cartridge taper has some to do with it, it provides some additional friction on chamber walls lessening bolt thrust.

The above are just some thoughts off the top of my head.

 

[3Crows]

@mcb, we are just gong to have to agree to disagree . The purchase of Marlin is not what brought Remington and the Freedom Group down. The Rem-hate certainly did not help. And the demise of Remington as a company in no way was a reflection upon the viability of the Marlin brand or lever rifles in general.

I think one of the things that is driving the industry to new cartridges is the current fascination with long range target shooting. The traditional hunting calibers are often not suited for the long for caliber projectiles. Which gets to the deeper root cause, the death of hunting sports and end of sportsmen as a market segment driver. If older hunting focused calibers and non-military (AR platform) cartridges are dying away and as you contend that lever guns, a hunting weapon platform if there ever was one, is no longer viable in the market place that speaks to the overall viability of all hunting weapons and their traditional cartridges.

There is plenty of .30-30 ammo available locally including at Walmart. There is plenty of 6.5CM also and aside from those two, not so much.

 

[mcb]

@mcb, we are just gong to have to agree to disagree . The purchase of Marlin is not what brought Remington and the Freedom Group down. The Rem-hate certainly did not help. And the demise of Remington as a company in no way was a reflection upon the viability of the Marlin brand or lever rifles in general.

I think one of the things that is driving the industry to new cartridges is the current fascination with long range target shooting. The traditional hunting calibers are often not suited for the long for caliber projectiles. Which gets to the deeper root cause, the death of hunting sports and end of sportsmen as a market segment driver. If older hunting focused calibers and non-military (AR platform) cartridges are dying away and as you contend that lever guns, a hunting weapon platform if there ever was one, is no longer viable in the market place that speaks to the overall viability of all hunting weapons and their traditional cartridges.

There is plenty of .30-30 ammo available locally including at Walmart. There is plenty of 6.5CM also and aside from those two, not so much.

I agree the purchase of Marlin did not single handedly cause the downfall of Remington, but trying to claim Marlin was a separate company from Remington is factually wronged from ~2010 onwards. The only difference between a Remington and Marlin was the logo on the box, they both cam out of the same factory by the same people. Remington's inability to make a quality Marlin from from 2010 until ~2016 when they finally quit trying to use the old Marlin tooling and retooled most certainly hurt the Marlin brand and thus hurt the Remington company as a whole. Remlins, especially the 2010-2016 vintage have a horrible reputations and even after the retooling many customers would not come back to Marlin due to Remington. The Marlin's brand viability was directly tied to Remington's. To try to separate the two and their fate is not possible. Ruger purchase of the Marlin brand may reinvigorate that brand but that will be due to Ruger not Marlin. Marlin as a company ceased to exist in 2010 when they fired all the employees and move the tooling to Ilion NY.

Brands should die when the company that made them dies IMHO. Ruger should have just started making clones of Marlin rifles and save the money on buying the brand. There is no IP in a Marlin 336 or Marlin 1895 and a Marlin or Ruger roll mark should make no difference. The quality of the gun should. It is sort of sad that so many customers are fooled by this game of music chairs played with brand names.

 

[lemaymiami]

That situation, buying brands for the name - then using the name recognition to generate sales holds for many other areas of manufacturing as well (sometimes with a better product - many times, though, moved offshore to take advantage of cheaper labor....). The fishing industry is just one example (but one I know a bit about) where grand old names were bought up and are now being made offshore for better or worse. Worse from my perspective when a name brand fishing reel no longer has a decent parts supply to keep it in service.. Knives are another...

PS.. Still hoping to hear what percentage of shooters are handloaders as opposed to folks like me that only work with manufactured ammo...

 

[illinoisburt]

Across the wide spectrum of the shooting sports market - what actual percentage of shooters (for any purpose) are handloaders, as opposed to folks like me that only use manufactured ammo?

It's a really small number in the overall gun owning population, likely less than a percentage point or two. There was a number as high as 5 million floated by antigun websites a few years back as part of their efforts to restrict ammo sales but it had no basis to back it and likely was super inflated. I seem to recall seeing somewhere that primer sales as consumer components was around 3 to 5 percent in normal operations for the four (now three) primary manufacturers in the US.

If folks really want to look at obsolete modern rifle cartridges in the sense of commercial availability, just flip through any of the extremely popular varmint rounds of the first half of the 20th century. Darned few of the sub-quarter bores are chambered in new production guns and both ammunition & components can be really spotty even before the latest crunch. The large volume replacement is 223. I wouldn't say the difference is so much bullet design (though as a 'small-big-game' round it absolutely benefited) as it's likely cost and volume.

 

[3Crows]

I agree the purchase of Marlin did not single handedly cause the downfall of Remington, but trying to claim Marlin was a separate company from Remington is factually wronged from ~2010 onwards. The only difference between a Remington and Marlin was the logo on the box, they both cam out of the same factory by the same people. Remington's inability to make a quality Marlin from from 2010 until ~2016 when they finally quit trying to use the old Marlin tooling and retooled most certainly hurt the Marlin brand and thus hurt the Remington company as a whole. Remlins, especially the 2010-2016 vintage have a horrible reputations and even after the retooling many customers would not come back to Marlin due to Remington. The Marlin's brand viability was directly tied to Remington's. To try to separate the two and their fate is not possible. Ruger purchase of the Marlin brand may reinvigorate that brand but that will be due to Ruger not Marlin. Marlin as a company ceased to exist in 2010 when they fired all the employees and move the tooling to Ilion NY.

Brands should die when the company that made them dies IMHO. Ruger should have just started making clones of Marlin rifles and save the money on buying the brand. There is no IP in a Marlin 336 or Marlin 1895 and a Marlin or Ruger roll mark should make no difference. The quality of the gun should. It is sort of sad that so many customers are fooled by this game of music chairs played with brand names.

I never claimed Marlin was a separate company under Remington or Ruger. I fully understand the importance of brand legacy even if you do not. And that the IP that Ruger acquired was largely that created by Remington, the CNC code and digital CAD drawings. You have your opinions and I largely in this case do not agree with your extrapolations. Though in general I do, in this last diatribe of yours I do not.

 

[mcb]

I never claimed Marlin was a separate company under Remington or Ruger. I fully understand the importance of brand legacy even if you do not. And that the IP that Ruger acquired was largely that created by Remington, the CNC code and digital CAD drawings. You have your opinions and I largely in this case do not agree with your extrapolations. Though in general I do, in this last diatribe of yours I do not.

We are sliding way off topic but I would be interested in hearing why you thing brand legacy is important. My cynical side only sees it as a way to deceive the unwary buyer. ie there is no almost no relationship or continuity between a JM Marlin, a Remlin and a Ruglin. Why does it matter if the Ruger version of the 336 has a Marlin or Ruger roll mark on it?

 

[Mosin77]

I agree the purchase of Marlin did not single handedly cause the downfall of Remington, but trying to claim Marlin was a separate company from Remington is factually wronged from ~2010 onwards. The only difference between a Remington and Marlin was the logo on the box, they both cam out of the same factory by the same people. Remington's inability to make a quality Marlin from from 2010 until ~2016 when they finally quit trying to use the old Marlin tooling and retooled most certainly hurt the Marlin brand and thus hurt the Remington company as a whole. Remlins, especially the 2010-2016 vintage have a horrible reputations and even after the retooling many customers would not come back to Marlin due to Remington. The Marlin's brand viability was directly tied to Remington's. To try to separate the two and their fate is not possible. Ruger purchase of the Marlin brand may reinvigorate that brand but that will be due to Ruger not Marlin. Marlin as a company ceased to exist in 2010 when they fired all the employees and move the tooling to Ilion NY.

Brands should die when the company that made them dies IMHO. Ruger should have just started making clones of Marlin rifles and save the money on buying the brand. There is no IP in a Marlin 336 or Marlin 1895 and a Marlin or Ruger roll mark should make no difference. The quality of the gun should. It is sort of sad that so many customers are fooled by this game of music chairs played with brand names.

I 100% agree that brand names are abused today to the detriment of the customer. That being said I do think the woes of Remington’s treatment of Marlin have little to do with Remington’s bankruptcy. Freedom group’s financial chicanery was the primary driver of the bankruptcy, spotty Remlin quality in prior years notwithstanding.

 

[mcb]

I 100% agree that brand names are abused today to the detriment of the customer. That being said I do think the woes of Remington’s treatment of Marlin have little to do with Remington’s bankruptcy. Freedom group’s financial chicanery was the primary driver of the bankruptcy, spotty Remlin quality in prior years notwithstanding.

Which straw broke the camel's back? The first or the last? I would argue all of them. Freedoms group financial chicanery certainly was a big part of that, but remember Freedom Groups and its owner Cerberus were out of the picture as a result of the first bankruptcy in mid 2018. The company was under new owners (the banks) and was called the The Remington Outdoor Company. The company shed the overwhelming majority of its debt and yet it still failed completely approximately two years later. Marlin's (and Remington quality issues) were as much a part of the companies failures as was Cerberus, the Sandy Hook Lawsuits, etc. No single one of those things sank the company but they all played a part.

 

[Varminterror]

Still hoping to hear what percentage of shooters are handloaders as opposed to folks like me that only work with manufactured ammo.

I forget the outlet, whether CNN or NY Times, but I recall an article a few years ago which claimed ~5million Americans are reloaders, out of around 45M sport shooters and hunters, which, we can compare to other common data points that those are a portion out of around 100-110M gun owners in the US, owning just south of 400M firearms.

 

[CraigC]

The downfall of Winchester and Marlin had little or nothing to do with .30-30 leverguns. In Marlin's case, Remington ruined their reputation. Winchester went balls-deep on other things and could not recover.

With all of the new and improved cartridges and bullets, they may be five percent better than the ammo I learned to shoot in the 1950s.

I don't agree with that in the least. We know a lot more about internal, external and terminal ballistics then we did then. Bullets have improved dramatically. As has our understanding of how they work. People are starting to wise up about the energy myth and the exaggerated role of velocity.

Why does it matter if the Ruger version of the 336 has a Marlin or Ruger roll mark on it?

To me it makes no difference whatsoever.

 

[Howa 9700]

I am late to this party, but in my mind, what makes or breaks a caliber over the long term is ammo. Case in point would be the 6mm Rem. About the only ammo available for it these days are reloads and that only if you can find brass for it.

Look at the entire range of options of brass offered by Starline and others. If that caliber is not on their list, it is not long for this world. Same for load data. When a caliber starts dropping out of the load data, it is not long for this world. By same token, unless and until load data appears for it, its not likely to catch on.

What lasts the longest seems to be dies. Both new and of course used dies linger on for years.

 

[Anchorite]

I think shooters are becoming better educated.

I don’t know about that. I hear the term “knockdown power” more today than I ever did when I got into guns and shooting almost 45 years ago. Are there more people aware of guns and shooting activities today? Probably. But hey, I don’t think they are any better educated.

 

[Howa 9700]

Can't address what happened to Marlin as I wasn't around to know, but there is an old saying that family wealth rarely survives 3 generations. The way that works is some guy sees a need or opportunity and builds a better mousetrap. Idea takes off and he builds a successful business. That guy has one or more children, who tend to grow up in the biz, so know the inner workings. They tend to maintain or even improve on things. But then they have kids who grow up only knowing the wealth those that came before have bestowed upon them. Original guy may have walked to work. 2nd Gen drove beaters. 3rd Generation got new Firebirds when they turned 16.

If 3rd gens don't run it into the ground via drugs or their third wife, likely as not ownership has gone from the original 1 to several, and biz can't support several, but unless it gets stipulated otherwise, each retains equal ownership. Those that have no interest in the biz, want their share, and those that want to retain it can't afford to buy them out. So it gets sold. It's a shame, but happens all the time.

 

[jmorris]

A couple of Field And Stream articles caught my eye this morning. One about the 35 caliber cartridges going into extinction. The other was Best Elk Cartridges.
The Elk cartridges article included a few newer cartridges, but didn't include old favorites like 35 Whelen.

I'm a firm believer that everything has a life and technology will replace old standards with new and improved products.
Every time I turn around there is a video or article that the 30-06 is going obsolete.

You must understand what motivates the writers. Are they recording history, trying to shape it or sell the things their advertisers make.

For the “35 is dead” comment, I guess they must not have any 350 Legend advertisers.

The 30-06 is about as dead as the combustion engine. More than a few will keep using it successfully until the day they die, many more will successfully use things that don’t even have capability’s that could match the 30-06. You can take the 300 blackout as an example. Lots of people love it and it can’t even match the 30-30, much less the 30-06.

I am a firm believer in people selling what they can. “New” doesn’t equal better for starters but take a step back and try to quantify the improvements in ammunition say since 1906. Now think about everything else in this world that has drastically changed over the same period of time.

Remember the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, today, if you have enough wealth, you can fly into outer space. Back then you used fuel oil to light your home as well as in headlights of your car.




Today you can put a flashlight powered by a single lithium ion battery in your pocket that provides much more light.

Even in 1925 only ~50% of homes even had electricity.

It’s actually kind of amazing to me the advancements made in so many other areas over the last 100+ years and how little they have advanced in the firearm world. It’s not hard to see the quantifiable advantages of say a new Ford car or truck over the 1906 model N, in horsepower, range, safety, heck they can even drive and park themselves and guide you to the location you set them to.

In the firearm world it seems the differences, while still quantifiable, show much smaller gains or even a shuffling of what’s important.






https://thebiggamehuntingblog.com/6-5-creedmoor-vs-30-06/

Just not a “game changer” for many and for some uses, like hunting it’s difficult to argue it’s even an improvement.

 

[wanderinwalker]

The downfall of Winchester and Marlin had little or nothing to do with .30-30 leverguns. In Marlin's case, Remington ruined their reputation. Winchester went balls-deep on other things and could not recover...

Sorry, I have to say I believe Marlin was ruining Marlin's reputation long before Remington bought them up. After owning a couple of late JM-stamped Marlins, likely made 7-8 years apart, I think name recognition and past reputation were their selling points. On my 1894PG in .44 Magnum the barrel was overclocked and the magazine tube and barrel were obviously out of vertical alignment. My 336BL in .30-30 Winchester had sharp edges on the lever, a little overclocking of the barrel and a rough bore that looked like a copper mine after a few rounds went down range. Yet I was able to sell both of them on consignments and make back what I had in them, even though objectively neither one were "great" guns. The 336BL was definitely made near the end of the New Haven CT plant, but I don't remember how far it was from the Remington take-over.

From what I understand of the story, a lot of the trouble with the moving of Marlin was the fact that the old machines in New Haven WERE old machines. The employees had the institutional knowledge of how to keep making products, which was lost in the move to Ilion NY. And everything we've seen in the decade since has been Remington, and now Ruger, having to completely recreate all of the drawings and machining processes from scratch.

 

[Scout21]

.

 

[Laphroaig]

At least part of the OP's observation about the needle moving away from the big thumpers, like 35 Whelen, is due to the advent of premium bullets like bonded and monometals. These will penetrate and reliably expand in smaller calibers and are effective in killing big game like elk and moose with flatter trajectories and less recoil. Better rifles and optics in general allow for longer shots. The PRC's, Nosler family, and short magnums can attain what the big .34's and .35's with old school cup and core bullets did.

 

[3Crows]

Sorry, I have to say I believe Marlin was ruining Marlin's reputation long before Remington bought them up. After owning a couple of late JM-stamped Marlins, likely made 7-8 years apart,

I too have owned and still do several JM stamped rifles that were less than expectation. I have a JM 1895 cowboy that jams constantly. I knew all that when I bought it and I will eventually get around to setting it straight. I bought (bought by me with my money) my first real rifle about 1970, a Marlin .30-30, I assumed it was a good rifle. It was new, bought at Montgomery Wards. The front sight was crooked and the barrel drooped. I installed a scope alleviating those two issues but it also began to jam. I eventually sent it back to Marlin and they did fix the rifle, some four years or so after purchase. These three things, crooked barrels, barrel droop and the Marlin Jam are long standing problems (which Ruger has addressed) that long predate Remington and are intrinsic to some degree to the manufacturing process and design. And all of this and the Marlin "brand" fussing is dragging us too far off the thread subject and I have no interest in getting into a food fight with folks I admire, enjoy reading and mostly 99% agree with.

The market forces driving new cartridges, as I have said, I think it is mostly a change of intended use. I do not think the ammo companies or gun manufacturers or conspiring to obsolete our favorite cartridges. And, we the consumer get a vote in it, with our purchases. The folks on these boards probably do not represent the average shooting sports consumer.

 

[CraigC]

Sorry, I have to say I believe Marlin was ruining Marlin's reputation long before Remington bought them up. After owning a couple of late JM-stamped Marlins, likely made 7-8 years apart, I think name recognition and past reputation were their selling points. On my 1894PG in .44 Magnum the barrel was overclocked and the magazine tube and barrel were obviously out of vertical alignment. My 336BL in .30-30 Winchester had sharp edges on the lever, a little overclocking of the barrel and a rough bore that looked like a copper mine after a few rounds went down range. Yet I was able to sell both of them on consignments and make back what I had in them, even though objectively neither one were "great" guns. The 336BL was definitely made near the end of the New Haven CT plant, but I don't remember how far it was from the Remington take-over.

From what I understand of the story, a lot of the trouble with the moving of Marlin was the fact that the old machines in New Haven WERE old machines. The employees had the institutional knowledge of how to keep making products, which was lost in the move to Ilion NY. And everything we've seen in the decade since has been Remington, and now Ruger, having to completely recreate all of the drawings and machining processes from scratch.

The JM guns weren't 'that' great, which is why I have to kinda chuckle that they seem to be held in such high regard. Marlin actually REALLY needed the upgrade to their manufacturing that they got from Remington. The problem was that it took too long to figure out that's what they needed and a bunch of crap made it out the door that shouldn't have. My late model Remlin 1895 is the nicest Marlin I've ever owned.

Just not a “game changer” for many and for some uses, like hunting it’s difficult to argue it’s even an improvement.

That's the point that has to be made in virtually every thread about the 6.5CM. It was never meant to be an improvement over anything as a hunting cartridge. That was never its intended purpose. Every person I've seen or heard decry the cartridge comes at it from that angle.

 

[sage5907]

.As a long time reloader the popularity of the cartridge has almost no bearing on whether I add a new cartridge to my collections..

I have spent a lifetime carry a high powered rifle and watching animals fall when they are hit. It has taken me a lifetime to pick the calibers and cartridges that I use today. My current choices are the 280 Remington, the 338-06 and the 30-06. I am very comfortable with these choices and if a game animal is within 300 yards of me, no matter the hunting conditions, he is in big danger. Once the shooting sequence starts the only thing that is important is the sight picture when the gun goes off.

 

[Varminterror]

Can't address what happened to Marlin as I wasn't around to know, but there is an old saying that family wealth rarely survives 3 generations. The way that works is some guy sees a need or opportunity and builds a better mousetrap. Idea takes off and he builds a successful business. That guy has one or more children, who tend to grow up in the biz, so know the inner workings. They tend to maintain or even improve on things. But then they have kids who grow up only knowing the wealth those that came before have bestowed upon them. Original guy may have walked to work. 2nd Gen drove beaters. 3rd Generation got new Firebirds when they turned 16.

If 3rd gens don't run it into the ground via drugs or their third wife, likely as not ownership has gone from the original 1 to several, and biz can't support several, but unless it gets stipulated otherwise, each retains equal ownership. Those that have no interest in the biz, want their share, and those that want to retain it can't afford to buy them out. So it gets sold. It's a shame, but happens all the time.

Studying wealth in America for a long time, while this parable sounds logical, it really has no founding as a common situation for rise and fall in generational wealth.

On the contrary, quite typically wealth built in any given generation sets a tone for continued wealth, ESPECIALLY when a generation builds sufficient wealth to cross economic class boundaries. The “hard times build strong men, strong men build good times, good times build weak men, weak men cause hard times” parable is false in American economic culture.

Also, there are hundreds of popular cartridges which enjoy happy market shares, for multiple generations, while never once being offered by Starline, so that’s another false prophecy offered above.

 

[wanderinwalker]

The JM guns weren't 'that' great, which is why I have to kinda chuckle that they seem to be held in such high regard. Marlin actually REALLY needed the upgrade to their manufacturing that they got from Remington. The problem was that it took too long to figure out that's what they needed and a bunch of crap made it out the door that shouldn't have. My late model Remlin 1895 is the nicest Marlin I've ever owned.



That's the point that has to be made in virtually every thread about the 6.5CM. It was never meant to be an improvement over anything as a hunting cartridge. That was never its intended purpose. Every person I've seen or heard decry the cartridge comes at it from that angle.

It sounds like we, and many others in this thread, were on the same page about The Saga of Marlin.

As for the 6.5CM, and the premise of the thread, I was shooting Service Rifle in NRA and CMP matches when the Creedmoor was announced. I was digging around my reloading stuff earlier and found my Hodgdon 2010 Annual Reloading Manual, which sparked some memories. I remember seeing some of those early boxes of Hornady match ammo that had the suggested reloading data right on the boxes. As a Service Rifle shooter, I was painted into using .223 Remington/5.56 NATO, so I didn't pay much attention to the 6.5CM. And if I was going to step over to Match Rifle, there was a lot of experimenting going on with various 6mm rounds even as the 6.5CM was being introduced commercially. When I dropped out of the sport 12 years ago, I'd already decided I would probably land with a small-frame AR (AR-15) in some configuration of the 6mm Turbo, which today is available on the gunshop shelf as the 6mm ARC.

What I see with all of these "new and improved" cartridges, is SAAMI manufacturers venturing into the places competitors and wildcatters have been visiting for years. They're also responding to a perceived need for improved out of the box options for long-range shooting, or whatever the marketing department and consumer surveys tell them they should be offering. There are some advantages to a lot of the newer cartridge designs, such as tightened standards, reliably good brass and improving component availability. But ballistically, they don't offer anything that hasn't been possible for at least 75 years.

The old standby rounds won't go anywhere either. There's a reason why every new hunting rifle gets launched in .30-06, .270 and .308 Winchester.