WSM cartridges too much of a pain?

[harlow]

Hi guys,

This is my understanding of this, just in case it's wrong and I'm missing something.

The WSM and other short magnums in a nutshell are 'magnum power, normal action length'. Right?

Good if you're hunting dangerous game where reloading time matters. Same for a soldier.

Outside of that though... Everywhere stocks 300 win mag stuff, not so much 300 WSM.

7mm Rem Mag is a lot more common than 7mm WSM too from looking at my shots?

Can't say much about the other options.

If you don't need that half second saved on the shorter action though, do you think you're just better off getting a more common full length one?

Easier to get ammo? Cheaper too? Better resale gun for more popular cartridge too if you wanna move on the rifle?

Opinions?

(P.S. sorry for all the questions tonight, getting lots of topics posted )

[Baldrick314]

Another factor with WSM's is relatively short barrel life. I was shooting next to a guy who had a WSM, 243 I think, and he had to rebarrel it after 700 rounds.

Personally I think they're a waste of time and money but each to their own

[Chronos]

there is also a matter of accuracy, in general a short fat case "should" be more accurate than a long narrow case. It's why i chose the .284 win chambering over a .280 and it's why a little fat PPC case has taken over from the longer, narrower .222 in benchrest.

the downside with this style of case is that they tend to be harder to get feeding smoothly from a magazine, particularly when they have a sharp shoulder

barrel life tends to have more to do with the shape of the case, the length of the neck and the speed of the round and it's effect on powder burn time and the heat generated than just the case shape in my opinion

Chronos

[Kelix]

Copied from Wikipedia about the WSM.

6 mm Benchrest
Another influence was a series of 6 mm cartridges developed for bench-rest target shooting competitions in the 1970s. The idea behind these cartridges was that a short, fat cartridge would be more "efficient" than the traditional long, narrow cartridge, as more of the powder column would be in the immediate vicinity of the primer as it detonated. In turn, this would mean that a cartridge of this type would be able to propel a bullet at speeds comparable to those of "magnum" cartridges of the same caliber using significantly less powder.