Just thinking about what "coulda been"
but someone decided otherwise...

Basically I'm looking to discuss cartridges that were made but.....not as sucessful as they might have been had they been just a little "different".

My list: (feel free to add your own or debate these)
1)The Winchester 264Mag, though it has something of a cult following it's introduction in 1958 could have cut Remington's 1962 introduction of the 7mmMag off at the knees.
Instead it seems to have merely set the stage for the far more sucessful 7mmRemMag.

What could have winchester done different?
How about trading on the success of their 270
and making a 277WinMag in 1958?

What did happen is that even though the early 7mmRemMag had a short lived reputation as a barrel burner that reputation was exaggerated
but the similar reputation of the 264Win
was not as undeserved...
I'll add here the silliness of making 264Win featherweights with 20" barrels...

2)The 284Winchester. Though this also has something of a cult following the mistake here was not creating a cartridge more line the Remington 6.5Mag and 350Mag, though these still share the same flaw; heavier bullets greatly intrude on propellant space.

The vast majority of 284winchester cases are used to wildcat them up and down in caliber.
The 6.5-284 has been legitimized by Norma
and the 6-284 is more popular than the original
And I've seen no less than three 30-284
wildcat chambered rifles over the years but I have never actually crossed paths with a 284 winchester... Odd...

Basically the 284 winchester is really only capable of it's full potential in a long action rifle, which is pretty sad considering it was an attempt to put a 280Rem class cartridge into a short action rifle...
(Why do people worry so much about 5/8" of receiver length?)

3)The 7mm-08Remington. No there is nothing at all wrong with this cartridge, unless you realize that this is the cartridge that SHOULD have been in the first place, should have been the 7x51Nato and should have been named 7mmWinchester.

Some people like to hate Remington, but it seems that Remington always capitalizes on winchester's mistakes...

Winchester also could have come up with a 277version of the 308 at any time in the 20-odd years before remington produced their 7mm.

Why didn't they?
Oh you answer: "It's the answer to a question that Nobody actually asked?"

But can't that can be said of most cartridges?

Time to pick on remington again...
4)The Remington 244 with it's original slow twist rate gave winchester an opening that
allowed the 243Win to be a commercial success.
Remington corrected the problem and renamed the cartridge the 6mmRem but by then it was too late. and the 6mm has never caught up.
People blame the twist rate for the 244's failute to succede, I blame something else, the 6mmRem has always been crippled by being factory chambered in short action rifles in which it doesn't really fit.

Kinda like the 284Winchester which was short and fat but not short enough or fat enough.
But then again neither were the 6.5RemMag and the 350RemMag)

Ahh well, time to pick on winchester again...
5)The 225Winchester.

Lets see dropping the somewhat sucessful 220Swift changing their (beloved) rifle design radically and making the mistake of doing it at about the same time that remington legitimized the popular wildcat of the time as the 22-250Remington....

Your thoughts, couter arguements, additions...

AllanD

its called hindsight - many of the things you think of are today correct, but that wasn't what the factory was thinking about. i.e. the 264 was thought of as a very speedy long range antelope round. The 244 was a varmiter, not a big game round, the 7mm08 was around (sort of) for years before as a wildcat called the 270 bobcat. (308 necked to 277) remington just made it legal with their own success on 7mm. The 284 was developed as a round for the model 100 and 88, which wouldn't be expanded out to take a magnum width case head. etc etc. Some ideas worked, some didn't. the only thing is the replacement of the swift with the 225. it works nice in single shots, that they didn't make anymore, the rest is stupidity (but of course I stll have the 220 swift tatoo on my ass)

Butchloc is striking pretty close to the nail.....it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback unless you're playing Monday night!!!!

Other very fine cartridges that didn't materialize include the .358 winchester, the .224 weatherby, most of the weatherby magnums, the WSSMs and SAUMs and for reasons that we think could have been forecast.....

Let me give you a cartridge I never thought would sell a single round.....the .17 HMR!!! Please explain that one?????

RE: the 244 Remington.....had Remington bought out a good looking rifle to compete with the spiffy looking (compared to their 722) M-70 they could have kicked the sheet out of the .243 by introducing a .257 Roberts +P.....IMO a far superior round for dual purpose deer and varmints.....but there we go again with fifth quarter quarterbacking.

It is my opinion that the firearms industry does a piss poor job of maeketing.....by that finding out what the customer wants.....simply by asking. Only a very few post here to collect opinions.....Williams, Searcy, and a few custom makers aren't afraid to identify themselves and exchange opinions. As long as they want to guess they're bound to fail like any gambler.

Yes, I know it's hindsight.

one of the points I'm looking to make is that most of the time factories come up with something completely on their own turns into a F'up.

And they've done it often enough over the years that you'd think they'd learn....

Look at the great cartridge successes (SPECIFICALLY EXCEPTING military calibers because they are going to be sucessful no matter what happens) MOST are wildcats that are simply legitimized by factories after they've almost proven their success on their own and it's a "sure thing"
that they will be popular, beccause they've been "proven"
by field testing on a scale the corporation could only dream about...

The 25Neidner? 25-06Rem
Ned Robert's necked down 257 version of the 7x57
the 7mm-08 (mostly popularized by the single shot silouette shooters)
The 243Win
The 22-250
the 7mmMag

your examples of the 244Weatherby? another one killed dead by the 22-250
Most weatherby's are crippled by the price of weatherby MkVrifles... It wasn't until Roy was retired (dead?) that his son was able to chamber their entry level "vanguard" (really a Howa as we all know) in several of the more popular weatherby magnums. (a vanguard in 300Wby from Walmart?
I'm not really tempted by a vanguard in 257Wby or 300wby
but I would find a 340wby nearly irresistable... provided it wasn't going to cost me $2.50 each and every time I pulled the trigger... ($50 for a box of 20rds?)

One of the exceptions to the rule that factories screw up?
The 338Winchester Mag. There was a small following for some .333 magnum cartridges and winchester kind of flew in the face of all that by adopting the .338diameter
and for once won out.... how many popular .338 rifle
cartridges are there now? but you don't see .333's any more..... and further the winchester .338 nearly killed off the .358's wildcats as well!

Look how long it took for Remington to adopt the 35Whelen? you think it would have ever been anything other than a wildcat if Winchester had made their own version of a 338-06?
Remington making the 35Whelen did accomplish one important thing... it seems to have breathed new life into the 358NormaMag, even if only making a 225gr partition available for loading into the Norma.

And the 225gr and 250gr partitions made the 358STA
practical (well... sorta

When a wildcatter comes up with something that answers
a question that only he asked you shrug, because wildcatters are by definition "a bit touched in the head"
but when a corporation makes the same type of mistake it is magnified (by scale and money) into a massive screw-up.

My point here isn't about hindsight, it's about corporate entities that DON'T HAVE hindsight.
Intelligence is learning from the mistakes of others, but what can you call it when you don't learn from your own mistakes? Somehow "retarded" falls short.... ?

what is especially tragic is that they seem unable to learn from their own sucess' either...

How could a 277Winchester Mag have been any less
"long range" than the 264Mag?
But it would have had the additional hook of the 270's reputation... might not have helped, but it certainly coundn't have hurt...

Then they have something widely regarded as "perfect" and they don't have sense enough to leave it alone... (Remember the pre-64 M70?) again people got corrupted by the short term goal, making something cheaper...
their cardinal sin was in believing that their customers wouldn't know the difference.... Nice try...

People whine about the Rem700, but other than the fact that the safety lever is on the wrong side what's really broke that needs fixing?
Someone correctly pointed out in the last few days that if remington simply moved the safety to the left side that'd be where the rifle rubbed your body when carrying the rifle...

Now for my little barb:
So tell me why exactly did Ruger drop their Tang safety?

there is always a percentage of buyers that just
have to have the "new thing" even if it's not different in any meaningful way from what they already had, but a corporation basing their marketing on fleecing those customers for all they are worth that's just plain stupid....
Mostly because most "gun people" are a bit slower to adopt "new" things which is the real point I'm trying to make.
the legitimized wildcat cartridges were only "new" the the manufacturer who stamped their name on them.

thus "research and development" for new cartridges is something the corporations should avoid like syphilis...
(then again looking at their logic syphilitic insanity could be a reasonable expanation...Hmmm....) especially since if they simply wait and watch someone else will do the research for them for FREE.

I believe that the R&D of the WSM/SAUM cartridge lines was driven by marketing and that they were targeting the people who've gotta have the "new" thing.
and that's the kind of short term goal thinking
that ALWAYS gets you deeper into whatever hole
you are trying to get out of.

I have Hindsight, and I just feel like having fun talking about those that don't seem to have any...

AllanD

You missed several other "almost was" cartridges. Unfortunately they all end with "Winchester".

Winchester/Olin/USRAC, or whatever you want to call it, started falling totally apart when the bean counters instead of shooters/hunters/engineers started running the company.

The same happened to Colt. Two of the finest old American gunmakers gone down the tube.

I ain't even gonna mention S&W, since I still have a very sour taste in my mouth for when they turned on the American handgunners.

As for Ruger ... well, it was the beginning of the PC/Lawyer era in firearms and "safety" all of a sudden took first place in the dictionary of gunmaking. (I always thought that "owner awareness and intelligence" should have been first.)

The original tang-safety 77's had to have the safety off in order to operate the bolt. That means if Joe D. Idiot had one in the chamber, he had to actually remember to keep his finger off the trigger when he was clearing the action.

With the "three position safety", the rifle can still have the safety engaged and the bolt can be operated. Geesh...

In addition, too many "home gunsmiths" were taking a perfectly great trigger on the early 77's and after finding the little screws were cranking the pull down to around 1 ounce, cutting travel to 0.001". And all of a sudden, BANG, the rifle fires when you slam the bolt closed!

So Ruger had to do something to protect itself from all those idiots and their friends.

So they put in the most gawd-awful trigger in the world, with a 12-pound pull and miles of creep and over-travel.

This was also the same reason the great old model Blackhawks and Super Blackhawks got butchered! Because some fool didn't know to keep the cylinder under the hammer empty. (I always wadded-up a $20 bill and put it in that cylinder.)

Big Green's other big wonder flop was the 8mm Magnum. If ever there was a round that did nothing but did it well, it was that one.

quote:

Originally posted by ricciardelli:
You missed several other "almost was" cartridges. Unfortunately they all end with "Winchester".

<Snip>

This was also the same reason the great old model Blackhawks and Super Blackhawks got butchered! Because some fool didn't know to keep the cylinder under the hammer empty. (I always wadded-up a $20 bill and put it in that cylinder.)

Care to name those cartridges?

Are you thinking about the 307/356 or
the 7-30/375?

the 32Win Special doesn't make much sense to most people unless you understand the history
(Hint, it's about rifling depth, twist rate and the availability (actually lack thereof) of smokeless propellant to reloaders at the time)

I can't help but think of the 32/351/401WSL's
trying to compete with remington's 30/32/35Rem
family (If that wasn't so tragic it'd be funny, and damn, people thought the 30carbine was a joke, try selling the 32WSL as a deer cartridge today

Or the 35Winchester that might have been a success if they had ever chambered it in a bolt gun (35Whelen? What is that?) but it died with the 1895Win.

Marlin "hamstringing" the 1964 444 cartridge by their OWN revitalizing of the 45-70 cartridge
in 1972?

I don't think of the 444 as a lighter more user friendly version of the 45-70, but rather more of a 38-55/375Win on steroids, the only thing the 444Marlin needs is a 1:30" twist rate so
people will stop whining about not being able to use the heavier bullets.
(We'll ignore the fact that it's REALLY a .429Marlin

as for the trigger for a Ruger Mk2?

there are no less than three Timney Trigger kits for Mk2 M77 rugers hanging on the wall in the bargain cave of my local Cabela's

Oh, on your rolled up $20bill? a traditionalist would use a rolled up $10

AllanD

Let's see now...off the top of my head...

.22 Winchester Centerfire
.256 Winchester Magnum
.32 Winchester Self-Loading
.32-40 Winchester
.33 Winchester
.35 Winchester
.35 Wincehster Self-Loading
.351 Winchester Self-Loading
.38-56 Winchester
.38-70 Winchester
.38-72 Winchester
.38-90 Winchester
.40-60 Winchester
.40-65 Wincehster
.40-70 Wincehster
.40-72 Winchester
.40-82 Winchester
.40-110 Winchester
.40-110 Winchester High Speed
.401 Winchester Self-Loading
.405 Winchester
.44-60 Winchester
.45-60 Winchester
.45-75 Winchester
.45-125 Winchester
.45-82 Winchester
.45-85 Winchester
.45-90 Winchester
.50-100 Winchester
.50-105 Winchester
.50-110 Winchester
.50-140 Winchester


Granted, these are not all recently dead cartridges, but Winchester had a habit of dulpicating someone else's cartridge and putting their name on it...and even in the good old black powder days, they also kept bringing out "something new and improved" which in reality had no benefits over the existing cartridges of the day.

Seems that in those days it was the gimmick to lengthed the case a bit and add a couple of grains of black powder and call it the equivalent of today's WSM and WSSM.

quote:

Oh, on your rolled up $20bill? a traditionalist would use a rolled up $10

Well, when I was growing-up, $10 wouldn't buy you either a good meal or a bad woman...

How about the .458 Winchester Magnum, the original "short magnum". To think of it, how about ANY "short" or "ultra" magnum...

Brett

quote:

Oh, on your rolled up $20bill? a traditionalist would use a rolled up $10

And it lasted about five shots before it was so torn up and sooty the local Autoparts store wouldn't look at it let alone take for another box of shells. Remember when you could get ammo at the local auto parts?

GHAWW I'm not old enough for the that memory...am I?

quote:

Originally posted by Brett:
How about the .458 Winchester Magnum, the original "short magnum". To think of it, how about ANY "short" or "ultra" magnum...

Brett

I would hardly call the .458 Winchester Magnum a "Debacle"

quote:

Originally posted by ricciardelli:

The original tang-safety 77's had to have the safety off in order to operate the bolt.

With the "three position safety", the rifle can still have the safety engaged and the bolt can be operated. Geesh....)

Still, the only safety that LOOKS safe to me is the way the new Ruger locks back into the fireing pin.

quote:

Originally posted by Brett:
How about the .458 Winchester Magnum, the original "short magnum".Brett

Hey, just a minute. Lay off the .458WM.

Oh damn... I should have restricted the discussion to 20th century cartridges or more precisely EXCLUDED black powder cartridges....

But I KNEW the Win WSL cartridges would be in there....

I'm not so sure the 35Win was a mistake but dropping it with the 1895winchester probably was.

And I'm pretty sure the 45-75 wasn't any longer than the regular old 45-70.

IIRC it was just a 45-70-300 carbine load with a full propellant charge.

Another common gimick back then was reducing bullet weight filling the space with powder and calling it an "Express"...

Also I think the whole WSM thing was rediculous from the start.
Please remember that the 338WinMag and it's decendants were all "Short Magnums" because they were shorter than a 375H&H and thus would fit in a "standard" (30-06) length action.

And while I have to give credit where it's due to Remington for having the greatest number of really successful domesticated wildcats, but I've got to ask why it took sixty years
to commercialize the 35Whelen?

AllanD