Saturday 3 October 2009

and more on cartridges - this time the .338 RCM

Well, me being me, when I had my rummage around for .338 cartridges, I stumbled upon the .338 Ruger Compact Magnum. Regardless of some silly marketing blahblah ("same power as a .338 Winchester Magnum, but from a 20" barrel" - yeah right) it turns out that it has basically the same volume as the .338-06, so we should still be able to use it with a 25mm over-the-barrel moderator, but it is a short action cartridge, which will not only potentially allow for a shorter barrel (which I am not usually a fan of, but let's not forget that a moderator adds something like 15 to 20cm to the length of the barrel), but also makes a "short, fat magnum", which means better combustion than in a long catridge. So quite possibly one can get a few more m/s out of it. And the added effective barrel length of a short action doesn't hurt my feelings either.

On  the other hand, the .338-06 gets a similar performance with lower pressures. This is from Hodgdon, since my version of QuickLoad doesn't have the .338 RCM


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