Xae289
.223 Rem
So with Shot Show sort of happening, lots of industry players are putting out their new things. It reminded me of a couple of things I've been paying attention to and am interested in watching develop. Is there any development in firearms, ammo, or accessories you're excited about or interested in? Maybe not even something you haven't heard of being in the works, but would love to see happen?
For me, the trigger for starting this thread was getting updated on a couple of calibers, the .277 Sig Fury and the 8.6 Blackout.
The .277 Fury seems incredibly cool to me. They're getting .270 Winchester performance with a 130 grain bullet doing > 3000 fps in a short-action cartridge. With the same cartridge, but using a steel case-head and running a max pressure of 80,000 psi, they're allegedly getting a 150 grain bullet > 3100 fps. That's some awesome performance and efficiency. More important than the cartridge itself, I'd like to see how the steel-head, brass body ammo works out. Will it be affordable? Will it be reloadable? Will others follow suit to create very high pressure and high performance cartridges? What rifle actions could handle such pressure? It could be an awesome development that leads to a big advance in firearms tech.
As far as the 8.6 Blackout goes, it's a lot more niche and less cutting-edge, but I find the technical challenges interesting. I like the .300 Blackout, even without a suppressor, and this is just an improved version. It's a .338 caliber meant to fit in a .308 length action, offering super-heavy bullets for subsonic use and very good supersonic performance with lighter bullets (I think I read a 210 grain bullet at 2400 fps!). I'm pretty skeptical as to whether it will work at all. It's been in development for a while. The twist rate they decided on is a crazy 1:3 twist. Maybe it works well with very heavy subsonic bullets, but I can't help but imagine that it would be difficult to keep lighter, supersonic bullets from spinning themselves apart. Maybe the solution would be that you can only use tough, monolithic copper bullets for supersonic and can't use anything but the toughest, jacketed, lead bullets. It has a lot of challenges facing it. The .338 already isn't crazy popular caliber, and you would need specialty, tough lightweight bullets to even survive being fired. The heavy bullets face the challenge that no heavy bullets in that caliber would be designed to expand at subsonic velocities. If Q and Faxon manage to solve those problems and get useful components to the market, it would be pretty sweet in a handy little 12" bolt-action pistol.
For me, the trigger for starting this thread was getting updated on a couple of calibers, the .277 Sig Fury and the 8.6 Blackout.
The .277 Fury seems incredibly cool to me. They're getting .270 Winchester performance with a 130 grain bullet doing > 3000 fps in a short-action cartridge. With the same cartridge, but using a steel case-head and running a max pressure of 80,000 psi, they're allegedly getting a 150 grain bullet > 3100 fps. That's some awesome performance and efficiency. More important than the cartridge itself, I'd like to see how the steel-head, brass body ammo works out. Will it be affordable? Will it be reloadable? Will others follow suit to create very high pressure and high performance cartridges? What rifle actions could handle such pressure? It could be an awesome development that leads to a big advance in firearms tech.
As far as the 8.6 Blackout goes, it's a lot more niche and less cutting-edge, but I find the technical challenges interesting. I like the .300 Blackout, even without a suppressor, and this is just an improved version. It's a .338 caliber meant to fit in a .308 length action, offering super-heavy bullets for subsonic use and very good supersonic performance with lighter bullets (I think I read a 210 grain bullet at 2400 fps!). I'm pretty skeptical as to whether it will work at all. It's been in development for a while. The twist rate they decided on is a crazy 1:3 twist. Maybe it works well with very heavy subsonic bullets, but I can't help but imagine that it would be difficult to keep lighter, supersonic bullets from spinning themselves apart. Maybe the solution would be that you can only use tough, monolithic copper bullets for supersonic and can't use anything but the toughest, jacketed, lead bullets. It has a lot of challenges facing it. The .338 already isn't crazy popular caliber, and you would need specialty, tough lightweight bullets to even survive being fired. The heavy bullets face the challenge that no heavy bullets in that caliber would be designed to expand at subsonic velocities. If Q and Faxon manage to solve those problems and get useful components to the market, it would be pretty sweet in a handy little 12" bolt-action pistol.
