Caliber designations.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Caliber designations.

Posted: 6/2/2003 8:36:25 PM EDT

7.62x39

7.62 is the diamater of the bullet in mm. What bout 39? Length of the case? Length of the cartridge?

30-06
.30 is the diameter of the bullet in inches. What does the -06 refer to?

22-250
.22 is the diameter of the bullet. What does the -250 refer to?

-Nick Viejo.

Posted: 6/2/2003 8:44:36 PM EDT

[#1]

39mm is the case length.

.30 is the calibre, -06 stands for 1906 when it was introduced. BTW .30-06 in metric is 7.62x63mm.

.22 is the calibre of the bullet, .250 is the diameter of the case I think.

Posted: 6/3/2003 10:29:10 AM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:
.22 is the calibre of the bullet, .250 is the diameter of the case I think.

Did great until this one. The 250 in .22-250 is a holdover that designates the parent case. The .22-250 was a wildcat cartridge intially. The parent case is the .250-3000 Savage which was the first comercially marketed cartridge to break the 3000 fps barrier, hence the 3000 in the name.

Kent

Posted: 6/3/2003 11:50:00 AM EDT

[#3]

Well, I was just trying to figure out the conventions behind the caliber designations. I thought the numbers in say, .30-06 or .22-250 actually had some significance to the physics of the round.

Now I'm seeing that it's often just an issue of historical or evolutionary information.

Thanks.

-Nick Viejo.

Posted: 6/3/2003 12:57:48 PM EDT

[#4]

Lots of times they are referring to a parent case;
.22-250, 338-06, etc.

Sometimes they are technical;
7.62x51, 5.45x39.

Sometimes they are meant to be scary!
.50 Beowulf, .338 Remington ULTRA mag.
(I thought only detergent and golf-balls were "ULTRA".)

Sometimes they are even truthful;
.308 Winchester, 7mm Remington

But other times they are not;
.218 Bee, 280 Remington

It sure is fun reading about them though. Lots of cool books available, reloading manuals have this info as well.

Posted: 6/3/2003 2:12:31 PM EDT

[#5]

Caliber names are really marketing/brand names, so you can't place too much faith that they represent true measurements.

For example, the current ".223" round was based on the ".222 Remington" round, both of which have ALWAYS used bullet that were .224" in diameter.

The .30-06 and the .308 rounds use identical bullets, of .308" diameter. In the case of the .30-06, the ".30" represented the bore diameter of the rifle, whereas the .308 number comes from the diameter of the actual bullet.

There's a little history lesson behind the names of almost any caliber.

-Troy

Posted: 6/5/2003 8:02:00 PM EDT

[#6]

Bah. your 'standard' numbers confuse me

diameter X case-length are all I(and most people) really need to know/do care about, not the year introduced or its original design velocity(sometimes usefull, but varies too much for it to be in a name).

Posted: 6/5/2003 8:07:55 PM EDT

[#7]

Ahh shaddup. ;)

Hell now I feel bad about getting that .22-250 one wrong. Plz dont beat me...

Posted: 6/7/2003 10:09:51 AM EDT

[#8]

..they mean different things.....30-06..30 cal 1906....which is a very different round than the 30us which preceded it....45-70....44-40...these are relative to thier predecesor "black powder" rounds..where the following number refers to powder charge...but doesn`t really hold true in the modern cartrige...best thing is to read up and study the history...to get a feel for the various cartridges...a ballistic chart...and reloading manual are good sources of info..

Posted: 6/7/2003 5:09:45 PM EDT

[#9]

I spend so much money on guns I cant afford much else anyomre lol.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Caliber designations.

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