Wildcat Cartridges

Handheld Wind Meter for Shooters.

“The effects of wind and weather play a huge role in our sport. Not only does the wind affect the flight of the bullet, but differences in altitude, pressure, and temperature can also change the bullet’s impact,” said Emil Praslick III, Head Coach of the National / Palma® Team. “Tools like the Kestrel Pocket Weather Tracker can often mean the difference between being a winning team, or being at the weather’s mercy.” The Kestrel family include the Kestrel 1000 ($99), which measures solely wind speed, probably the most valuable information for shooters.

A complete hand-held weather station, the Kestrel 4000 NV measures every major environmental condition: barometric pressure, altitude, density altitude, temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind chill, dewpoint, wet bulb temperature and heat stress. This pocket-sized unit is more than just a weather meter for checking the current conditions; the Kestrel 4000 NV is a tracking device that allows users to log the environmental data for entire expeditions or flights. The Kestrel 2500 NV and 3500 NV operate similarly, but sample some (but not all) of the same information as the 4000.

http://www.nkhome.com/

Clymer Reamers announced at the 2010 Shot Show in Las Vegas that they would soon be shipping piloted chamber reamers that match up to the “West Coast” pattern.  They are also moving to the screw attachment for these reamers as apposed to the old spring clip style retainers.

Todd Wilms, Owner of Clymer is clearly proud of his products and rightfully so.  When he purchased the company almost five years he set about the work of moving the company to a new facility, rebuilding and replacing machines and in short looking at the entire operation with an eye toward improving the products they make.

Patrick Ryan at Redding told me that one to items that Redding is making a standard stock item for 2010 is dies for the “260 Imp. 40”.  That translates as the 260 Ackley Improved to you and me.

We talked about popular wildcats they had made dies for recently.  The 6mm SPC was one that had seen some strong interest.  I am a firm believer that the pendulum has begun to swing away from huge cartridges with super case capacity.  Economics may enter into the change but more likely it is shooters learning that they don’t like recoil, and smaller cases are the easiest route away from recoil.

Ballistics from the 6mm SPC will fall right between the 6mm BR and the 6mm PPC so it is in a good family.  Accuracy should be awesome in a well built gun.  It’s not as short and fat as it’s cousins but that should not hinder result too much.  Like many things in life, its more about having faith than anything else.

Recent additions to the NoslerCustom line of brass are the 25-06 and the 7mm-08.   For those of you who may not know the differences that Nosler brass offers, here is a quick run-down.

Nosler carefully checks thier brass, case mouths are chamfered adn deburred, flash holes are deburred and check for alignment.  The brass is all sorted by weight so that you get uniform brass in each box.  Considering the difference in price, its a pretty good deal and saves you lots of time at the loading bench performing tedius tasks.

Ammunition Accountability Legislation… Sounds like a good idea right?   Like most anti-gun laws the name is misleading.  The plan is to make guns illegal through the back door.  In the summer of 2008 when the Heller v. Washington D.C. decision was handed down by the Supreme Court the liberals knew they had to take a new route because they have lost on the issue of the Second Amendment, and private ownership.

Remember how Obama said that he wasn’t going to take your guns?  Well, it seems that his allies in the anti-gun world have no problem with taking your ammo! The bill that is being pushed in 18 states (including Illinois and Indiana) requires all ammunition to be encoded by the manufacture a data base of all ammunition sales. So they will know how much you buy and what calibers. If  it passes nobody can sell any ammunition afterwards unless the ammunition is coded.

Any privately held unencoded ammunition must be destroyed as a part of this proposed law. (Including hand loaded ammo.) They will also charge a .05 cent tax on every round so every box of ammo you buy will go up at least $2.50 or more!  That is just to start, how long do you think it will take for that tax to rise to the point that plinking and soon hunting are simply too expensive for the average person to participate in.  If they can deprive you of ammo they do not need to take your gun!

Reloading and therfore wildcatting would be a thing of the past.  You will not be able to buy bullets, cases, primers, powder.  All components will be gone because they would violate this law.  If you love reloading, if you love shooting, if you like wildcats, this is a death nail to your sport!

This legislation was active in 18 state legislatures in 2008 and will be reintroduced in 2009, call you state legislators and tell them to fight this bill when it pops up, don’t even let it out of committee!  The Following states considered this bill in 2008; Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.

To find more about the anti-gun group that is sponsoring this legislation and the specific legislation for each state, go to: http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm

Explanation of the technology: http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Technology.htm

Quality Cartridge offers a wide variety of custom formed and headstamped brass.  For the first time there is a supplier who can make headstamped brass for your wildcat without having to order 10,000 rounds or more.  This interview gives you a pretty good idea of the brass and services available to you from Quality Cartridge.

http://www.qual-cart.com/

Well, pretty busy for a first day of the show. 

Found some time to get out on the show floor and look for things that might interest the wildcatters.  First stop the Lapua booth.  One of the reps asked me what I was interested in and I said, “Always looking for the new stuff.”

The first thing we looked at was the new Lapua 222 Rem. Match brass.  So, if you have always liked this cartridge or any of it’s offspring and just wished for better quality brass… Now you have it in the form of unprimed brass.  Lapua has a reputation for top quality components for reloaders, they are exceptionally strong and uniformity exceeds normal expectations by a fair margin.

The advantage of quality match grade brass is in the uniformity.  Lapua holds tight tolerances in neck concentricity, base straightness, and wall thickness.  These conditions along with quality brass, and proper grain structure make for a case that be reloaded over and over, while delivering excellent accuracy.

Loaded ammo is also available from Lapua in the 222 Remington Match case.  The current loading is with a Lapua 55 grain FMJ.

222 Rem Lapua Match brass

Here is a link to an article that might help answer a few questions if your learning your way around wildcats and some of the nomenclature.  This article also discusses some methods and concepts that could be helpful, check it out.

FindArticles - Loading wildcat cartridges: a few simple considerations make life much easier
Guns Magazine, August, 2005, by Charles E. Petty

FDZ

Here we are a totally new web site just for Wildcaters.  It’s tough enough to be a “gun nut” but if you have the disease bad enough; you become a wildcatter. 

This blog will contain commentary and information about wildcatting, gunsmithing, tools, reloading and much more.  I have contacted many of my acquaintances in the gun trade and many have agreed to be guest bloggers.  That means you will have access to folks who normally would not have time to blog.

Our parent web site, www.wildcatintel.com contains a huge amount of data for wildcatters.  We start off with a data base of cartridge dimensions, we will be adding drawings for each cartridge based on the dimensions so you can visually compare them.   We will continually add articles to our archive, both new and historical, we are always looking for letters and historical documents to add to our archive, so long as they add to the knowledge base for wildcatting.

If you have ideas about where this site should be headed, speak up!