Perhaps you’ve heard me complain in regards to the 7mm Rem Magazine earlier than. I’ve been complaining about it for some many years now, and at any time when I do, the legions of 7mm Rem Magazine followers fart and sputter, questioning what there’s to not like. For his or her sake, I’ll concede that the cartridge has been very profitable and has been used to flatten an untold variety of critters. However, while you go to the difficulty of shopping for a rifle chambered for magnum cartridge and also you plunk down your cash for ammo to feed it, the “magnum” in query must be an actual magnum. Not the weak-kneed and flaccid excuse for a magnum that’s the 7mm Rem Magazine.
7mm Rem Magazine: Actual or Not Actual?
Chances are you’ll recall the scene from the film Crocodile Dundee the place a mugger threatens Mick Dundee with a switchblade. “He’s received a knife,” says Dundee’s companion and suggest he hand over his pockets. Dundee smiles, attracts a blade the scale of a small machete, and says, within the ghastly accents which can be accepted as English within the Land Down Beneath, “’At’s not a knoife. ‘At’s a knoife.”
Or let’s apply the identical precept to sports activities vehicles. Within the mid-Sixties, the race-car designer Carroll Shelby bought a sports activities automotive known as the Cobra with an English AC physique and a small-block 287 Ford V-8. It was very cool and went quick. Then Shelby got here to his senses, strengthened the AC body, and put in the 427 big-block Ford V-8. The Cobra was now extra of a projectile than a automotive. Unique 427 Cobras in the present day can promote for upward of $4,000,000. The 289s don’t.
So it’s in designing magnum cartridges: Something price doing is price doing to extra. You may name any spherical you need a magnum however that doesn’t make it one. A real magnum has to develop much more velocity than a normal cartridge to assert the title. And thus lies the issue with the 7mm Rem Magazine, which has the title however not the horsepower.
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Why Is the 7mm Rem Magazine Underpowered?
Warren Web page, who was the primary gun author to get behind 7mm magnums, did his looking with an amazing massive cartridge known as the 7mm Mashburn Magnum. Web page figured the most effective bullet for it was the 175-grain Nosler Partition, and the Mashburn held sufficient powder to ship that slug out of its 22-inch (sure, 22-inch) barrel at 3,050 chronographed fps.
However when it got here time (1962) for Remington to get within the 7 magazine enterprise, designer Mike Walker got here up with a a lot smaller case than the Mashburn. It propelled a 175-grain slug at 2,800 fps, or a bit extra, from a 24-inch barrel. So, why the 7mm Rem Magazine’s minimize in energy?
My guess is value and recoil. An enormous case would jack up the value, and the truth that a Mashburn-capacity cartridge would burn nearly 40 p.c extra powder would give the recoil and muzzle blast a serious enhance, neither of which might assist gross sales. Walker was proper. The cartridge he fathered was an instantaneous hit, largely as a result of it kicked little or no for a “magnum.” And thus it has been ever since. Trusting souls who swear by the 7mm Rem Magazine are seduced by the larger-than-standard case, and since it kicks little or no in comparison with an actual magnum they shoot it nicely, and the animals go down, and everyone seems to be glad besides the animals.
The Different Actual 7mm Magnum
However some shooters weren’t fooled. In 1978, Remington got here out with its 8mm Magnum, which was as common as a colonoscopy, and gun author Layne Simpson, who labored for Capturing Instances journal, beheld the 8mm’s large case and realized that in the event you necked it right down to 7mm, and will lay palms on a genuinely slow-burning powder, you’d have an actual 7mm Magnum. So Layne, who’s a really brilliant man and is skilled as an engineer, did the sensible factor and waited till a number of ultra-slow powders got here available on the market, and created the 7mm Capturing Instances Westerner, or 7mm STW as its mates name it.
The STW dwarfs the 7mm Rem Magazine, and it’ll ship a 175-grain bullet out of a 26-inch barrel (which you gotta have) at 3,200 fps, or very, very shut. It electrified the capturing world, and was acknowledged by SAAMI in 1996. I recall a aircraft journey from Gillette, Wyoming, to Denver throughout which I sat behind a man who had killed an antelope with a single very lengthy shot from an STW, and he ranted as if he had simply been via a spiritual expertise which, in reality, could have been the case.
However destiny was not type to the STW. In 2001, Remington successfully killed off the STW by introducing the 7mm Remington Extremely Magazine. The RUM’s efficiency was the identical because the older cartridge nearly to the foot per second. However the level has been made. There are at the least two real 7mm magnums on the market. However the authentic, 1962 model ain’t one in all them.
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