Winners & Losers

[Larryjk]

Many of the new cartridges have specific "nitches" they fill that are very narrow. In addition, many are not that friendly in popular actions. I mean that they don't feed well, or hardly at all, out of the staggered magazines most actions use. The PPC variations are difficult to make feed and aren 't popular for that reason. Some of the more common cartridges don't feed well in staggered box magazines. When you put a short, fat cartridge in a staggered box magazine made for a longer, slim cartridge, you will normally have problems. Remember that box was designed for the 57mm case; 7mm and 8mm. So it actually feeds a little better when you make the box a little longer and run cartridges of 06 length (62 mm) through them. And there are some cartridges that are real "zoomers" in a rifle when fed factory ammo, but you find you can't duplicate that performance with available reloading components. I also wonder if new cartridges are tested in "tight" bore barrels. They always give great velocity that can't be duplicted. Give me the velocity on a five random barrel selection and then you have believeable velocity. Then we have the old "well you can make that cartridge on a short throw action". Bid deal! Learn not to short shuck a regular length action and that fantastic advantage is lost. You do save a few ounces on the weight of the action if it is short.