How old does a cartridge have to be to be "accepted"?

[Border]

So, in light of the recent .277 Fury, 6.8 Western, 6.5 Weatherby RPM and 7mm Backcountry. How long does a cartridge have to be in use and available to become accepted and not a flash in the pan or pooh poohed? I would suggest 20 years minimum, maybe even 50?
Many of the standard rounds we use today are 50+ years old, some even over 100 years.
What are the SD members thoughts on the matter?

 

[Mungo]

Age probably not as important as the extent of uptake.

6.5 Creedmoor is not very old, but has had extremely enthusiastic uptake and is now so ubiquitous that it’s unlikely it will fade.

By contrast, the almost identical .260Rem has been around for much longer, but never had the same uptake, and will probably soon be all but extinct as anything but a niche reloader’s cartridge.

I’d guess that a lot of these new cartridges are created with the full knowledge that most will fail. And they almost certainly have an understanding of what proportion are likely to succeed, and plan their investment in marketing and industrial support accordingly. They are likely to watch uptake rate closely, and will know early on if it’s working or not, before deciding to sustain investment or let it wither.

My guess is that the strategy will be quite similar to that used by big publishing companies with new books. The business model in many ways is the same: you have old classics that will continue to be read at a known rate. You have a range of middle aged popular books that have sustained a readership past the initial release. And you have a huge number of recent releases, and you’re trying to work out which will become long term sellers.

 

[Ronin]

Age probably not as important as the extent of uptake.

6.5 Creedmoor is not very old, but has had extremely enthusiastic uptake and is now so ubiquitous that it’s unlikely it will fade.

By contrast, the almost identical .260Rem has been around for much longer, but never had the same uptake, and will probably soon be all but extinct as anything but a niche reloader’s cartridge.

Yet the 260 Rem is a superb performer let down by lack of hype marketing

It was the go to cartridge for “precision” rifle comp back in the day

Then came 6.5/47

Then came creedmoor

 

[Mungo]

Yet the 260 Rem is a superb performer let down by lack of hype marketing

It was the go to cartridge for “precision” rifle comp back in the day

Then came 6.5/47

Then came creedmoor

Exactly.

 

[Dougal McGuire]

Military adoption by some nation in some capacity really helps.

 

[timbrayford]

More than one manufacturer of both ammunition and firearms?

 

[ejg]

Yet the 260 Rem is a superb performer let down by lack of hype marketing

It was the go to cartridge for “precision” rifle comp back in the day

Then came 6.5/47

Then came creedmoor

And yet the 6.5CM can be border line in COL for AICS magazines with the long bullets, the 260 is way out with those and almost needs long action. That is also a reason why the 6.5CM is so popular. 6.5x47 is Euro... expensive and not better meaning no one wants it.
Convince the hunters and you have the market, convince the target shooters and you have business for one year.

edi

 

[Laurie]

Yet the 260 Rem is a superb performer let down by lack of hype marketing

Not an absence of 'hype marketing', rather an absence of manufacturer support, a failure to listen to what the customers want and need, and a failure to involve other riflemakers. A couple of medium deer loads from Remington and that was it. Even when the 260 Rem (in 'straight' and AI forms) was the tactical / sniper competition cartridge, no support, no sponsorship, no match/tactical loads from Remington. Winchester, the largest commercial ammunition manufacturer in the world at that time never produced 260 Rem cartridges, nor unprimed brass. If you wanted Win brass for your 260 handloads, and many did in the 1990s, you had to buy 7-08 cases and neck them down. You or I think nothing of doing that, but Joe US Public wants and expects his cases on Walmart or Cabelas shelves to be ready to use.

How many other makers were persuaded to offer rifles in it? Even Remington Arms reduced its offerings to the minimum after two or three years. By contrast, Hornady had a raft of rifle manufacturers, reamer manufacturers and custom builders signed up to the Creedmoor in advance with hardware available for order/sale on its launch, and responded very quickly indeed to signals from the marketplace that additional loadings / bullets were required. (It surprises many to learn that the Creedmoor was introduced only with match loadings - two A-Max bullet loads - as it was envisaged as an entirely match number, but when gunshops started receiving requests from customers for deer loads, Hornady responded very quickly.) In its first two years, there were more Creedmoor loads available than Remington has produced in the 35-year life of the 260.

Even Applied Ballistics Ammunition / Berger couldn't shift the lack of interest in the 260. When Bryan Litz designed the 6.5mm 130gn Berger AR-Hybrid and loaded it in the 260 for military AR-10 type DMR rifles demonstrating accuracy and a high hit-ratio to 1,000 yards in a short-barrel semi-auto DMR type job, the response was a lack of interest from the US military as well as everyone else such is the f**k-up that Remington has made with its cartridge.

 

[Laurie]

So, in light of the recent .277 Fury, 6.8 Western, 6.5 Weatherby RPM and 7mm Backcountry. How long does a cartridge have to be in use and available to become accepted and not a flash in the pan or pooh poohed? I would suggest 20 years minimum, maybe even 50?

Success isn't measured in years, but in acceptance by firearms and ammunition manufacturers and availability / shelf space provided in the marketplace. This applies to even relatively specialist numbers - there are several providers of 338LM rifles as well as people producing ammunition for them. If lots of companies make and sell the guns and ammo for them, a life of decades is pretty well guaranteed for that cartridge. That applies to every major commercial success in the field - the 357 and 44 Magnums, 308 Winchester, 223 Rem, 7mm Remington Magnum, 270 Win and so on. I don't see any of the quartet you list falling into this category.

 

[TringSaint]

I guess that if a cartridge is designed for military use (like the fury) then it has a good chance of becoming a standard cartridge, but if it’s for game, and niche game at that, only, like the 7mm BW, then I can see it being consigned to the ‘interesting but not really considered’ category.

 

[moeggesit]

Some of the old cartridges become obsolete simply because there’s insufficient demand for ammunition, only to be revitalised years later when its value is realised and interest restored.

I would assume that after 30+ years of main stream commercial rifle production, you will be safe for a good few years. That said, if you want to play is safe just but a 100 year old chambering and you know just what you’ve got.

 

[jthyttin]

260 Remington? Do you mean 6.5-08 A-Square...?

In addition to what has been said, 260 Rem is too short for std length action (that some call long action) and the market segment selected by Remington was wrong. They produced short barreled (as in 18") lightweight hunting rifles, and reloading data reflected that. So to general public, 260 Rem never profiled as long range cartridge.

(I have 3x 260Rem, one std length build, one AICS build and one AR-10 build)

 

[tackb]

most modern cartridges are just improvements over another older cartridge , the creedmoor does not do anything the 6.5x55 can't do it just does it in a smaller package , same with the 308/30-06 7-08/7x57 etc

the main reason anything is successful now is manufacturer support , amply demonstrated by the super successful 6.5 creedmoor

 

[Laurie]

the creedmoor does not do anything the 6.5x55 can't do it just does it in a smaller package , same with the 308/30-06 7-08/7x57 etc

I quite agree. The 6.5X55 is one of my all-time favourite cartridges, but the words of some US gunwriter that I read years ago re longer numbers that require a 'long' action are apposite here. He said of such cartridges and their rifles something to the effect of true magnum performance offerings aside, 'you can't give such rifles away even if you wrap them in five-dollar bills in today's American market.' He wrote those words many years ago, but they are as true of the US mainstream market today as they were then. Probably even more so, only it's 2.26 COAL cartridges to fit the AR-15 platform that are currently seeing ever more performance shoehorned into ever smaller packages.

On top of that, the 6.5X55 is regarded by the typical American hunter as a funny foreign number limited to low pressure loadings. A cartridge that is limited to 46,000 CUP (ca. 51,000 psi), but is actually loaded to 45,000 psi or much less by US cartridge manufacturers is an absolute yawn, a complete non-starter. The same applies to the 7mm, 7.65mm, and 7.92mm Mausers, all superb designs, but fatally damaged by low SAAMI max pressures (absence of any specified listing at all in SAAMI for the 7.65) The factory 277 Fury and 7mm Backcountry with their claimed 80,000 psi pressures and red-hot ballistics might excite a lot of gun magazine readers / Internet forum members, but fill me with horror at the inherent concepts and likely implications as per heat, recoil, and barrel life. Even with a relatively modest 62,000 SAAMI MAP, Hornady couldn't make its early Creedmoor cases strong enough to withstand the pressures and reduced its initial loadings.

I'll make one prediction now - neither of these 80,000 psi horrors will be adopted by any military outfit anywhere with the possible exception of a handful of weapons for extremely specialised applications, and even then, the versions adopted will be nothing like as high-pressure as the existing ones. The .276 Enfield of over 100 years ago which was 'going to replace the .303 in British Army service' ca. 1914/15 is a case in point:

.276 Enfield - Wikipedia

Scroll down to the section on the 1913 troop trials cartridges and their performance. To say they were beset by serious problems caused by the seeking over-high performance / ballistics is an understatement. Quote:

"The troop trial results reported the cartridge produced heavy metal fouling in the bore, heavy recoil, very loud report, undesirable muzzle flash, overheated rifle barrels, and difficulty in extraction (especially with a heated rifle). Overheating caused excessive barrel wear, unintentional premature discharges due to heat in the surrounding environment, and some potentially dangerous pressure indications from cooked off cartridges in (pre-heated) hot barrels, generating (excessive) chamber pressures of about 64,960 psi (447.9 MPa) (about 54,658 CUP). As a safety precaution, the programme was amended so that not more than fifteen rounds were fired without the rifle being allowed to cool off." [my italics]

The 276 Enfield was the SIG Fury and 7mm BC of its era. It's probable it would have been eventually accepted for service, but in a much lower pressure and performance loading, and if so would have given the Empire a poorer rifle than the SMLE it already had and with performance it could have obtained by adopting the 7X57 Mauser loaded with with the 276's lighter higher-BC bullet.

 

[MarinePMI]

Yet the 260 Rem is a superb performer let down by lack of hype marketing

It was the go to cartridge for “precision” rifle comp back in the day

Then came 6.5/47

Then came creedmoor

That and Remington pretty much abandoned supporting it with brass and bullets, only ramping up support when the 6.5 CM came on the scene. Too little, too late (and I had a .260 at one time).

ETA: Whoops! Laurie beat me to the punch.

 

[Jagged77]

From my own experience of the .260, back in the day it was starting to get a decent following as a long range target round, but then came the Creedmoor and all the things that Laurie mentions.

For the handloader the .260 looses nothing to the CM - can be loaded to achieve slightly more muzzle velocity I believe (it’s a moot point in a practical sense). I run two of them and fair to say I’ve found them to be the easiest chambering to work up a load for a shoot accurately for both hunting and long range.

 

[the prowler]

Didn't take long for 204ruger to be accepted.

 

[ejg]

Since 2006 we have been helping friends/customer put rifles together, bedding rifles etc. Lot of hype about the 6.5x55 but actually very few that have one. We have only seen a handful in that time. More being re-barrelled to something else. Now we have more 6.5CM in the safe than in almost 20 years of 6.5x55 passing through. I never wanted a 6.5 because none were right until the CM showed up. Now there was a cartridge that is able to be supersonic out to 1400m from a 20" barrel using very little powder compared to what else is out there achieving that. Shooters are not stupid, they see and promote something that they think is good. The marketing of the 6.5CM was not difficult, thankfully Hornady was on the ball and helped. Rifle manufacturers recognised the potential of the cartridge and the Hornady backing. The numbers now actually show how much the other 6.5 offerings were hated and how the market was gasping the small difference of the CM making it "just right" for so many.
I don't think this kind of breakthrough will happen with the new high pressure cartridges. Do we really need that performance? Can it not be achieved more conventionally? The 6.5CM has shown us that more is not always better. Many say the 6.5x55 or 260 is more powerful..... yet they are not chosen. Hornady read the customers right, built something the customers actually wanted. At least until something better comes along.
edi

 

[TringSaint]

I quite agree. The 6.5X55 is one of my all-time favourite cartridges, but the words of some US gunwriter that I read years ago re longer numbers that require a 'long' action are apposite here. He said of such cartridges and their rifles something to the effect of true magnum performance offerings aside, 'you can't give such rifles away even if you wrap them in five-dollar bills in today's American market.' He wrote those words many years ago, but they are as true of the US mainstream market today as they were then. Probably even more so, only it's 2.26 COAL cartridges to fit the AR-15 platform that are currently seeing ever more performance shoehorned into ever smaller packages.

On top of that, the 6.5X55 is regarded by the typical American hunter as a funny foreign number limited to low pressure loadings. A cartridge that is limited to 46,000 CUP (ca. 51,000 psi), but is actually loaded to 45,000 psi or much less by US cartridge manufacturers is an absolute yawn, a complete non-starter. The same applies to the 7mm, 7.65mm, and 7.92mm Mausers, all superb designs, but fatally damaged by low SAAMI max pressures (absence of any specified listing at all in SAAMI for the 7.65) The factory 277 Fury and 7mm Backcountry with their claimed 80,000 psi pressures and red-hot ballistics might excite a lot of gun magazine readers / Internet forum members, but fill me with horror at the inherent concepts and likely implications as per heat, recoil, and barrel life. Even with a relatively modest 62,000 SAAMI MAP, Hornady couldn't make its early Creedmoor cases strong enough to withstand the pressures and reduced its initial loadings.

I'll make one prediction now - neither of these 80,000 psi horrors will be adopted by any military outfit anywhere with the possible exception of a handful of weapons for extremely specialised applications, and even then, the versions adopted will be nothing like as high-pressure as the existing ones. The .276 Enfield of over 100 years ago which was 'going to replace the .303 in British Army service' ca. 1914/15 is a case in point:

.276 Enfield - Wikipedia

Scroll down to the section on the 1913 troop trials cartridges and their performance. To say they were beset by serious problems caused by the seeking over-high performance / ballistics is an understatement. Quote:

"The troop trial results reported the cartridge produced heavy metal fouling in the bore, heavy recoil, very loud report, undesirable muzzle flash, overheated rifle barrels, and difficulty in extraction (especially with a heated rifle). Overheating caused excessive barrel wear, unintentional premature discharges due to heat in the surrounding environment, and some potentially dangerous pressure indications from cooked off cartridges in (pre-heated) hot barrels, generating (excessive) chamber pressures of about 64,960 psi (447.9 MPa) (about 54,658 CUP). As a safety precaution, the programme was amended so that not more than fifteen rounds were fired without the rifle being allowed to cool off." [my italics]

The 276 Enfield was the SIG Fury and 7mm BC of its era. It's probable it would have been eventually accepted for service, but in a much lower pressure and performance loading, and if so would have given the Empire a poorer rifle than the SMLE it already had and with performance it could have obtained by adopting the 7X57 Mauser loaded with with the 276's lighter higher-BC bullet.

I love my swede even if it’s not cool!

 

[Heym SR20]

I quite agree. The 6.5X55 is one of my all-time favourite cartridges, but the words of some US gunwriter that I read years ago re longer numbers that require a 'long' action are apposite here. He said of such cartridges and their rifles something to the effect of true magnum performance offerings aside, 'you can't give such rifles away even if you wrap them in five-dollar bills in today's American market.' He wrote those words many years ago, but they are as true of the US mainstream market today as they were then. Probably even more so, only it's 2.26 COAL cartridges to fit the AR-15 platform that are currently seeing ever more performance shoehorned into ever smaller packages.

On top of that, the 6.5X55 is regarded by the typical American hunter as a funny foreign number limited to low pressure loadings. A cartridge that is limited to 46,000 CUP (ca. 51,000 psi), but is actually loaded to 45,000 psi or much less by US cartridge manufacturers is an absolute yawn, a complete non-starter. The same applies to the 7mm, 7.65mm, and 7.92mm Mausers, all superb designs, but fatally damaged by low SAAMI max pressures (absence of any specified listing at all in SAAMI for the 7.65) The factory 277 Fury and 7mm Backcountry with their claimed 80,000 psi pressures and red-hot ballistics might excite a lot of gun magazine readers / Internet forum members, but fill me with horror at the inherent concepts and likely implications as per heat, recoil, and barrel life. Even with a relatively modest 62,000 SAAMI MAP, Hornady couldn't make its early Creedmoor cases strong enough to withstand the pressures and reduced its initial loadings.

I'll make one prediction now - neither of these 80,000 psi horrors will be adopted by any military outfit anywhere with the possible exception of a handful of weapons for extremely specialised applications, and even then, the versions adopted will be nothing like as high-pressure as the existing ones. The .276 Enfield of over 100 years ago which was 'going to replace the .303 in British Army service' ca. 1914/15 is a case in point:

.276 Enfield - Wikipedia

Scroll down to the section on the 1913 troop trials cartridges and their performance. To say they were beset by serious problems caused by the seeking over-high performance / ballistics is an understatement. Quote:

"The troop trial results reported the cartridge produced heavy metal fouling in the bore, heavy recoil, very loud report, undesirable muzzle flash, overheated rifle barrels, and difficulty in extraction (especially with a heated rifle). Overheating caused excessive barrel wear, unintentional premature discharges due to heat in the surrounding environment, and some potentially dangerous pressure indications from cooked off cartridges in (pre-heated) hot barrels, generating (excessive) chamber pressures of about 64,960 psi (447.9 MPa) (about 54,658 CUP). As a safety precaution, the programme was amended so that not more than fifteen rounds were fired without the rifle being allowed to cool off." [my italics]

The 276 Enfield was the SIG Fury and 7mm BC of its era. It's probable it would have been eventually accepted for service, but in a much lower pressure and performance loading, and if so would have given the Empire a poorer rifle than the SMLE it already had and with performance it could have obtained by adopting the 7X57 Mauser loaded with with the 276's lighter higher-BC bullet.

The 277 Fury or 6.8x51 Sig has been adopted by the US Army as its next generation rifle replacing the M16 platform that has been in service for 60 plus years.

Cartridges remain in use because they fill a real niche and just plain work. Military adoptions help but 243 Win, 270 Win, 9.3x62, 375 H&H etc. have all been popular and preeminent in their respective categories.

Plenty of other very similar cartridges have been introduced over the years, but lack of widespread and affordable rifles and ammunition means they just fade away. 244 H&H is a very good cartridge. But only available in a few very expensive custom rifles, with premium priced ammo. 243 win does the same thing, but available in just about every rifle brand and ammo widespread ammo, and perfectly capable from vermin right up to the largest deer.