Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Shooting Times

WOW, I WISH TO THANK LAYNE SIMPSON AND SHOOTING TIMESFOR THE recent article on the .22 Short! Growing up in southern Illinois in the 1950s, I hunted rabbits and squirrels religiously with my single-shot .410 H&R and my father’s .22 Short Remington 241 rifle, both of which I still own and are in excellent condition. I remember the .22 Short “Rocket” and carried a box or two in my pocket every day that I hunted. After joining the Marines in 1969, which lasted for a career of 22 years, I began checking out pawn shops in search of the Remington 241 in .22 LR. Eventually, my search found one, and it also is in excellent condition. It resides right my next to my .22 Short 241 in my gun safe.…

WINCHESTER’S TAKEDOWN MODEL 1905 WAS THE company’s first successful semiautomatic centerfire rifle. Designed by engineer Thomas Johnson, it utilized a blowback-type action with a counterbalance weight housed in the forearm. Johnson also designed the rimfire Model 63, as well as the Model 1907 that would displace the Model 1905 just a few short years after its introduction. With the Model 1905, Winchester introduced two new rifle-specific cartridges: the .32 WSL (Winchester Self-Loading) and the .35 WSL. The rifle tested and pictured here is chambered for the latter. Some 29,000 were manufactured before the 1905 was discontinued in 1920. Both cartridges were mild. Too mild, really, as sportsmen were unimpressed by their authority on game. The powers that be at Winchester must have been aware early on because the company introduced…

VERSATILE, ADVANCED, PATENT PENDING, highly adaptable, and unparalleled are the words the good folks at Springfield Armory are using to announce the company’s all-new modular 9mm striker-fired polymer-frame Echelon semiautomatic pistol. I think that terminology pretty well pegs it. ECHELON New Developments One of the features that makes the new Echelon so exciting is the self-contained central operating group (COG in Springfield’s nomenclature) that allows different grip frame modules to be used with a single COG. Our sample Echelon came with a medium grip frame, but small and large frames will be available. The COG is essentially a serialized, stainless-steel chassis with the trigger mechanism incorporated into it. Entirely encased in the COG, the internal trigger components are machined from tool steel and are highly polished. Our sample had clean…

SMITH & WESSON’S LATEST POLYMER-FRAME M&P SEMIAUTOMATIC PISTOL is the new full-size M&P22 Magnum. It’s chambered for .22 WMR and has a magazine capacity of 30 rounds. The new design features an internal hammer and the TEMPO gas-operated barrel system, which keeps the components locked in place until the bullet passes the gas port. The pistol comes with a 4.35-inch stainless-steel barrel, a fiber-optic front sight, a black notch rear sight, a flat-face trigger, and a Picatinny accessory frame rail. The slide is optics ready, providing direct mounting of popular micro reflex red-dot optics. The M&P22 Magnum wears an Armornite finish and comes with two magazines. MSRP: $649 smith-wesson.com CrossBreed Holsters for Staccato Pistols CrossBreed now meets all your carry needs for Staccato CS and C2 pistols. For maximum…

I’VE ALWAYS GRAVITATED TO 7MM/.28-CAL- iber cartridges, but only an old ballistician could recall those that have faded into shadow. Although they are little known today, I found them ballistically and/or historically interesting. For my references I used CIP (European) ballistic standards for dimensions and maximum average pressure (MAP) comparisons; CIP catalogs more obsolete cartridges than SAAMI. 7x33mm Sako When I first saw this diminutive bottleneck cartridge, I thought it was for a military carbine. No, it was a small-game cartridge introduced in 1942 for Sako’s short-action L42 bolt rifle. The 7x33 is based on a stretched 9mm case necked to 7mm. Sako loaded only a 78-grain FMJ or JHP bullet at about 2,400 fps. MAP is about 15 percent under the .30 Carbine, but loaded with bullets of similar…

THE .220 SWIFT IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST maligned cartridge in history. At least, I can’t think of one that compares. But it also is loved—almost worshipped—by members of the above-mentioned cult. I call it a cult because admiration of the Swift always involves some degree of the supernatural, and a cult is, by definition, out of the mainstream. Since its introduction by Winchester in 1935, .220 Swift ammunition and brass have come, gone, and come again, but always with one feature: It’s expensive. Since varmint shooters and rifle nuts and experimenters, all of whom were attracted by the Swift, shoot a lot of rounds, it was handload or go broke. Over the years, I’ve known half a dozen Swift devotees, and they are definitely a breed apart. Jim Carmichel, the…

Q. I READ WITH INTEREST THE ARTICLE ON THE NEW .338 Weatherby RPM cartridge in the May issue written by Joseph von Benedikt. In it he stated that there wasn’t any handloading data available at that time, so I want to know if any has been developed since the article appeared. I would like to build some .338 WBY RPM handloads. Can you provide some recipes? Phil Wolf  Via email A. Since Joseph’s article on the cartridge ran in Shooting Times, Hodgdon has developed and published a good number of hand-loads for the .338 WBY RPM. In fact, because we help Hodgdon put its Annual Manual together each year, another ST writer (Steve Gash) prepared a report on handloading the .338 WBY RPM for the 2023 edition. Here is…

LAST SPRING I WAS SURFING GUN topics on the internet and found a thread discussing the many attributes of a .35/.30-30 wildcat. If you’ve followed my column for a while, you know my interest in odd cartridges, including several wildcat rounds. Somehow, I flat out missed this one. When I realized the rifle and case conversions were so easy, I just had to do it. Simply necking up .30-30 Winchester brass to accommodate standard 0.358-inch-diameter bullets forms the wildcat .35/.30-30 cases. According to everything I’ve read, most shooters load 200- to 240-grain cast bullets (with or without gas checks) to velocities up to 1,900 fps. Of course, you can also load jacketed bullets. Converting a .30-30 rifle entails reboring the barrel and cut-rifling a three-, four-, or five-groove spiral in…

IN 1977 REMINGTON ARMS CO. SURPRISED THE shooting world with an offbeat round called the 8mm Remington Magnum (8mm RM). It was powerful, and it was chambered in the attractive and accurate Remington Model 700 BDL rifle. But it never caught on, sales were dismal, and it may be on life support at present. Cartridges with metric names have traditionally been a tough sell in the United States. Exceptions, of course, are the 7mm Remington Magnum and the 6.5 Creedmoor. Fate has not been so kind to 8mm rounds. I suspect that’s because of, well, their “foreign” sounding names. The few 8mm cartridges have a bullet diameter of 0.323 inch, and there have been some dandies. It’s not for a lack of sterling qualities that metric cartridges languish, as many,…

WITH THIS ISSUE BEING FOCUSED ON HANDLOADing, I wanted to write about an accomplished handloader. In that vein, I thought who better to profile here than one of the first people who wrote the reloading column for Shooting Times. I’m referring to Ken Waters. He wasn’t our first reloading columnist, that distinction goes to a man named Kent Bellah, but Waters became a regular contributor in 1961, and he took over writing the reloading column in 1962. It was called “Precision Reloading” in those days. He generated that monthly column until 1965, after which he shared writing it with Dean Grennell until 1966. Waters continued contributing feature articles until 1972. His last feature for ST was about loads for the .25-06. Kenneth L. Waters was born on July 22, 1917,…