Cartridge accuracy....
- Thread starter 270WinDude
- Start date
I think you missed my point. The 100 short .22 PPC would most definitely agg well if you could keep the brass where it belonged. It didn't have anything to do with being to short and fat. It had everything to do with keeping the brass in excellent shootable condition. Bill knew how to do that better than anyone else and he proved it many times over. With all due respect to Mike Rattigan he evidently did not master the case management necessary to make it agg.
Dusty Stevens
Shiner
Wonder if any of those records forrester set with that 22 are still standing? Ive seen him win a lot with it but hes a good shooter that could win with a 6 too. And its way too big of a pain to get a 22 shooting then have to drag out the 6 for sporter. Thats where my problem was with the .100 short 22 i used to use a lot. Get it shooting good then have to put it up- that sucks
I don't think any of those records still stand. You are absolutely right about the short .22, they could be a pain to keep going but to say that they aren't capable of agging is inaccurate. I always said in order to shoot a short .22 PPC the first thing you needed was a lathe and the tooling to support it. You had to make mandrels, modify dies and work on case management with such frequency that most of the shooters at that time simply couldn't do it. But they would agg with the best of them when they were right.
Donovan, I’m not arguing, but I just don’t follow the logic in the statement “more efficient, hence more inherent accuracy”. How did you arrive at that?
I said nothing about that case being finicky. In fact they were quite easy to load for. I had, and still have quite a bit of, a lot of T-322 that was easy to make them shoot. Load enough to make it to 3550 and it would shoot dots at 200 yards every time. What I said was it was difficult to keep the brass in shape and shooting well because it was a shortened case and therefore very thick in the shoulder which migrated into the neck in short order.
Ken Waters was always dubious about the PPC being inherently 'more accurate' than equivalent small 22 or 6mm centrefires, this at the time of the rapid switchover from the 6X47mm (6mm-222 Rem Mag, not today's 6X47mm Lapua) by BR competitors. So as he was having an out and out short-range BR gun being built by Seely Masker, it was initially done so in 6X47mm, then the barrel set back and rechambered to PPC loading it with the same bullets and powders. It was found that the PPC produced a step-change improvement. Unsurprising to us today, but people other than dedicated benchrest competitors took some convincing back then.
The 'how?' and 'why?' of this have been regularly and endlessly debated ever since, and lots of possible reasons put forward, but this thread demonstrates yet again that there is little consensus, never mind a simple answer, almost certainly because there isn't a single factor. (Somewhere or other I have the old Precision Shooting Magazine's massive 1,000 page Quarto paperback collection of selected articles on BR shooting culled from many years' worth of the magazine, and whilst I never added up how many articles postulating hypotheses on this single subject of why the PPC is superior, there must be a lot of them!) The brass condition / management factor seems to be as important as the short fat case factor, and maybe the 6PPC just has the perfect case capacity / powder charge weight to bore ratio. (But if so, then why would the .22PPC also be a super performer with a much different case capacity to bore ratio, likewise the .30BR vs 6mm BR?)
One thing not mentioned so far is the issue of sheer cartridge size, charge weight burned and weight of bullet being forced down the barrel. In the days when Remington's Custom Shop range-tested each and every Model 40X before delivery, records were kept and there was a distinct correlation between cartridge and group sizes, the .222 Rem producing an average not much above half that of the .300 Win Mag at the two extremes. Harold R. Vaughn's studies documented in Rifle Accuracy Facts show just how much effect the chamber pressure / bolt thrust stresses have on actions and barrels, even scopes, and the smaller they are apparently the easier it becomes to produce consistent shot to shot behaviours.
Another thought. If the case shape and capacity to bore ratio override everything else, then the old Soviet 7.62X39mm M43 ought to be broadly on a par with the .30BR. Being mostly chambered in SKS and AK series assault rifles whose internals rattle if the rifle is shaken doesn't make for super-precision of course, but one doesn't hear of many (any?) super-accurate bolt rifles in the chambering either.
I had one some years back in factory form, the Cz527 Carbine with Mini-Mauser action and 16-inch barrel. With Lapua factory ammo and the best of my handloads it would group under an inch at 100, the rare fluke group down at half that. I was much amused by people who'd say to me on the range words to the effect of .... "It'll be a good shooter I'll bet. The PPC is based on this cartridge." It didn't stay long as whilst a great plinker, we have few to nil opportunities in the UK for off-range plinking, and it wasn't suitable for any form of range based competition I indulge myself in.
It can be made to shoot better I'm pretty sure, but large primer (Remington brass aside), large flash-hole, and brass quality likely make it impossible to ever match the PPC or 30BR its nearest equivalent. Glen Zediker mentions in his original book The Accurate AR-15 having used a .22PPC in XTC at one stage, but to keep brass costs manageable, reformed commercial 7.62X39 cases to make it .... and it seemed to work, but a huge cost in time and effort. Anyway, XTC and BR make slightly
different demands on rifle, ammunition, and shooter!
I had one some years back in factory form, the Cz527 Carbine with Mini-Mauser action and 16-inch barrel. With Lapua factory ammo and the best of my handloads it would group under an inch at 100, the rare fluke group down at half that. I was much amused by people who'd say to me on the range words to the effect of .... "It'll be a good shooter I'll bet. The PPC is based on this cartridge." It didn't stay long as whilst a great plinker, we have few to nil opportunities in the UK for off-range plinking, and it wasn't suitable for any form of range based competition I indulge myself in.
It can be made to shoot better I'm pretty sure, but large primer (Remington brass aside), large flash-hole, and brass quality likely make it impossible to ever match the PPC or 30BR its nearest equivalent. Glen Zediker mentions in his original book The Accurate AR-15 having used a .22PPC in XTC at one stage, but to keep brass costs manageable, reformed commercial 7.62X39 cases to make it .... and it seemed to work, but a huge cost in time and effort. Anyway, XTC and BR make slightly
different demands on rifle, ammunition, and shooter!WyleWD
Silver $$ Contributor
Totally agree with ya Mike. It takes more tuning and wind reading skills than most average shooters are capable of to make a 6ppc agg better than a good 80gr bullet out of a 12tw 6br at 200yds. The average shooter can do some really great groups with the 6ppc under perfect conditions at 200yds from time to time, but let that average shooter set down 4 or 5 different times during the course of 4-6 hours and do great goups within a 10 minute relay and it's a different story almost every time. So where I agree with you is that some cartridge in between the 6ppc and the 6br may(?) be just the ticket.JMHO. WD
Another thought. If the case shape and capacity to bore ratio override everything else, then the old Soviet 7.62X39mm M43 ought to be broadly on a par with the .30BR. Being mostly chambered in SKS and AK series assault rifles whose internals rattle if the rifle is shaken doesn't make for super-precision of course, but one doesn't hear of many (any?) super-accurate bolt rifles in the chambering either.
I had one some years back in factory form, the Cz527 Carbine with Mini-Mauser action and 16-inch barrel. With Lapua factory ammo and the best of my handloads it would group under an inch at 100, the rare fluke group down at half that. I was much amused by people who'd say to me on the range words to the effect of .... "It'll be a good shooter I'll bet. The PPC is based on this cartridge." It didn't stay long as whilst a great plinker, we have few to nil opportunities in the UK for off-range plinking, and it wasn't suitable for any form of range based competition I indulge myself in.
It can be made to shoot better I'm pretty sure, but large primer (Remington brass aside), large flash-hole, and brass quality likely make it impossible to ever match the PPC or 30BR its nearest equivalent. Glen Zediker mentions in his original book The Accurate AR-15 having used a .22PPC in XTC at one stage, but to keep brass costs manageable, reformed commercial 7.62X39 cases to make it .... and it seemed to work, but a huge cost in time and effort. Anyway, XTC and BR make slightly
Laurie, I've been shooting a 30 based on a Grendel case since 2007. It's capacity is very similar to a x39. It holds the world record for smallest 5 shot group at 100, ever fired in a match.
I've got plenty of experience with both it and the 30br. I've said it many times but will say it again...If I thought a 30br was better, I'd be shooting one before dark.
Any difference is small but the slightly smaller case lends well to a little faster powders, which generate lower muzzle pressures, less muzzle ejecta and less recoil, while still shooting at the same speed as most br's.
A 6ppc and a 30br are both very, very fine cartridges. There's not room for huge differences left but I do think there just might be room to refine and optimize.
This returns us to the point I made in a previous post - that if and when all the other accuracy boxes are ticked, simple cartridge and charge weight size counts for a great deal, smaller the better.
I agree in large part but a larger bore ie, expansion area, seems to be of even more importance but with the obvious downsides of shooting bigger, heavier bullets.
Also, I think optimizing capacity to bullet weight and available powders is where there is a small bit of room to refine...ie, a 6 Grendel and 80 grain bullets.
From what I can tell so far shooting this combo, it leaves little or nothing on the table at 100 and is considerably better than a ppc with light bullets, at 200 and beyond. The net seems to be an overall gain and as I said before, grand agg matches are typically won and lost at 200.
Fwiw
Maybe the "lower muzzle pressures, less muzzle ejecta, and less recoil" are part of the explanation to the statement by @dmoran that higher efficiency means higher inherent accuracy?
If you can find a set today, the NRA put out a series of books on High Power Rifle competition some years back (1980-'81 or so?). Much of these were based on the classes and group discussions at some of the clinics given at Perry during the Nationals. They compiled many of these into a three volume set. The contributors were a virtual who's who of High Power competition; Carl Bernosky, Garay Anderson, Creighton Audette, Martin (Jim) Hull, Mid Tompkins, Larry Moore, D.I Boyd and so on. These are people you listen to when they offer their insights. One of the pieces in there was a section on handloading for competition, done by Creighton Audette. In it, he showed a graph dome by Remington on the 40-Xs produced by their custom shop, all of which were test fired for accuracy with the data logged and recorded. In the course of testing hundreds of different guns, all of the same make and builder, differing only in caliber, there was one thing that jumped out; size does matter. In short, the smaller the cartridge, the more accurate the long-run average of multiple guns. A 30-338 was more accurate than a 300 Win Mag, a 30-06 was more accurate than the 30-338s, and the 308 Wins were more accurate than the 30-06s. The same thing held true over a wide range of bore sizes and a large number of different cartridges. But that
s the trend. Not saying that a large cartridge like the 300 Win Mag can't be accurate (obviously), but long-run averages of many otherwise identical guns show an accuracy advantage going to the smaller cartridges.
I wish the NRA would reprint these as they're worth their weight in gold for the information they contain.
s the trend. Not saying that a large cartridge like the 300 Win Mag can't be accurate (obviously), but long-run averages of many otherwise identical guns show an accuracy advantage going to the smaller cartridges.
I wish the NRA would reprint these as they're worth their weight in gold for the information they contain.
Kevin, I originally read about this in a Gun Digest Annual feature from many years ago, in the days when I bought secondhand GDs from specialist bookshops (pre-Amazon days) to try and build a complete set. I'm pretty sure the Remington 40-X graph you mention was reprinted somewhere in the piece. I still have these old books, and if I have an hour - or six - spare will try and find it and put it up here if successful.
Recoil is a bad thing for consistent accuracy, no question. Muzzle pressure might also adversely affect the bullet as it leaves the bore. Given the same weight bullet and same case, necked up or down..the larger bore will utilize much faster powders, creating lower muzzle pressures...ie 30br vs 6br.
It also translates to efficiency directly, else you could push 118gr 6mm pills at 3050FPS from a 6BR. I wouldn't try that though.
Alex Wheeler
Site $$ Sponsor
Great point. There are powders out there that will take you near 3200fps with a 105 in a 28" BRA or Dasher. But they wont .agg with a little faster powder. And no doubt muzzle pressure is higher with them. Its not a race.
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SteveOak
Gold $$ Contributor
One should not use a scalpel to do the work of an axe.
A 300 Win Mag has more effective range.
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And the Lapua beats it. I know Dave Tooley has been working with the military for a few years on 338's. Both the Lapua and 338 Norma. Matt
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