I'm just curious, what is the smallest wildcat caliber ever produced, and what would ballistics be like?

I have seen a loaded case for a 14 Flea.....

Guess it was called the flea, because for the size of it.. that is probably as big of a varmint as it was good for taking....

tyler

I have seen write ups about wildcat cartridges using phonograph needles as projectiles. I'm sure the military has experimented with such things. The smallest practical caliber is probably 10 or 12 and several cartridges in those calibers have been developed. The smallest I have in my collection is a 12 Squirrel. As far as ballistics, propellant gases can only be accellerated to a certain speed and it's only possible to exceed that speed with gimmicks such as squeeze bores, rockets,etc. I don't know what the max speed is exactly but I think it's around 5000 fps.

You might get better answers on the Wildcat Forum. There's also a site devoted entirely to the tiny calibers. I think it's saubier.com or something like that.

Good question.

Ray

batter the outside and make the inside feel good, eh???

The 2.7mm Kolibri Auto, while not a wildcat, was a pretty small center fire. Produced about 1914, is shot a 3 grain bullet an estimated 650-700 fps, for about 3 ft/lbs of energy. It was said to penetrate about 1 1/2" of pine, and effective on overly aggressive cock roaches. This comes from "Cartridges of The World", 10th Edition

quote:

Originally posted by Cheechako:
I don't know what the max speed is exactly but I think it's around 5000 fps.
Ray

The practical limit is right around 14000fps. It becomes nearly impossible to move the heated gas column any faster. I read this in an article about NASA's "Light Gas" guns.
Pretty neat stuff. They used them to simulate spacecraft collisions with "space crap."

You can probably go to the NASA website or Google "light gas guns" to get more info.

EDIT:
Here is the link:

Light Gas guns

quote:

Originally posted by Tyler Kemp:
I'm just curious, what is the smallest wildcat caliber ever produced, and what would ballistics be like?

Bill Eichelberger did an 8 Eichelberger Dart on the 25acp case And I think he also did an 8 caliber on the 22LR case.

2mm Pinfire for the watchcharm pistol maybe ?

a 2MM UBUNGSMUNITION- It looks like a long necked down small rifle primer with a cb bullet. Its rim fire. Whole thing is only 0.365" long