What Sako Caliber is Least in Demand?

[icebear]

I'd say 7mm RM (despite being an excellent long range cartridge) - nowhere near as popular as it once was and there are so many older Sakos available in this caliber that the supply far exceeds demand.

Absolutely agree. 7 mag is still a very popular caliber, but not like it was back in the day when the gun manufacturers were competing on the basis of muzzle energy. The thing that annoys me about 7 mag, 300 WinMag, and several others is the dubious engineering. Many magnum cartridges have a completely superfluous belt that is in there for marketing reasons. "Belted Magnum" was a term of art for gun writers back in the 60's and 70's, but only the original Holland and Holland magnums and the .458 WM actually need it for headspacing; the rest are more accurate if they are set up to headspace on the shoulder. And the whole family of Winchester Magnums is an example of price-point engineering - they had to fit in a 30-06 length action, so the shoulder was pushed forward to increase powder capacity, but that gave us short necks and reduced performance with heavy bullets. These are effective big-game cartridges, but the design lacks elegance. I'll stick with the old H&H cartridges, thank you very much, even if it means I have to handload to avoid the price of factory ammo.

 

[WalterBlackburn]

For me the least desirable would be 30-06 and 308 Win. Not a huge .243 fan but do have one that I hunt with every so often.

 

[stonecreek]

only the original Holland and Holland magnums and the .458 WM actually need it for headspacing

Not so with the two H&H rounds. Although long and sloping, there is plenty of shoulder on even the .300 H&H to provide positive headspace. I only neck-size my .300 H&H and have found that my handloads don't chamber in other .300 H&H rifles. This necessarily means that the handloaded cartridges are headspacing other than on the belt.

 

[paulsonconstruction]

Not so with the two H&H rounds. Although long and sloping, there is plenty of shoulder on even the .300 H&H to provide positive headspace. I only neck-size my .300 H&H and have found that my handloads don't chamber in other .300 H&H rifles. This necessarily means that the handloaded cartridges are headspacing other than on the belt.

I couldn't agree more! Disregarding the belt, with regard to headspacing, & partially sizing the cases so they headspace on the shoulder reduces case stretching & subsequent case head separation, while increasing your odds of improved accuracy. Only had one belted case cartridge & it had over .005" slop at the shoulder when headspacing off the belt. Owners of these rifles would find theirs exhibit similar problems if they actually measured things.

 

[icebear]

Interesting. First time I've heard of anybody actually doing the research on this topic. I need to load some .300 H&H one of these days, as the price of factory ammo has gone past the stratosphere and into outer space. I could adopt partial sizing, but then I would have to keep separate supplies of ammo and brass for each of my three rifles in that caliber. And my existing fired brass is not labeled as to which rifle it was fired from. Not sure it's worth the trouble, as I don't shoot them all that much. I could do a test run by shooting a box of ammo in my FN-Sako, reloading it with partial resizing, and checking the accuracy vs. factory loads or full-length-sized reloads.

This does raise the question of whether Holland & Holland could have designed the original cartridges without the belt and maintained uniform headspacing with 1920's production technology. What works for a hand worker making small batches may or may not work on a mass production scale. The original designers certainly considered the belt a necessity. As I understand it, the cartridge was designed to use Cordite, a powder that came in long, skinny sticks like angel-hair pasta. The sloping shoulder facilitated getting the Cordite into the case. This is secondhand knowledge, but it's the only explanation I've seen.

 

[paulsonconstruction]

I have also heard that the long sloping shoulder somehow was connected to the use of Cordite strands, but I don't know the particulars. Facilitating insertion of the Cordite strands into the case is probably as good a reason as any I've heard. I also agree that the production technology at that time may have made the belt a desired feature because of that type shoulder. The belt is definitely unnecessary on the modern sharp shoulder magnums & in many ways a nuisance.

 

[South Pender]

I’ve had good experiences with non-belted magnums—8x68S and 9.3x64 Brenneke—but I wouldn’t rate them any higher than the belted mags I’ve used over the years: .264 Win. Mag., 7x61 S&H, 7 Rem. Mag., .308 Norma Mag, .338 Win. Mag. With the introduction of the .458 Win. Mag. in 1956 (I'm ignoring the Weatherby cartridges here), it was natural for ammunition-makers to then neck the case down into a number of smaller-caliber magnums that would fit in a 30-06-length action, and so I don’t think they can be faulted for taking that route at the time to higher-performance cartridges. I guess it could be argued in hindsight that back in the day, the ammo makers should have developed beltless cases for magnum cartridges, but the practical consequences of their failing to do so are pretty minimal.

In my opinion, the current prevailing sentiment that belted cases are somehow inferior, and we should now flock to the newer beltless cases is based far more on creating and goosing sales than it is on any practical advantage for the beltless rounds. Take the 7mm. rounds as an example. Two newer beltless 7mm cartridges, the 7mm Remington Short Action Ultra Magnum (7 SAUM) and 7mm Winchester Short Magnum (7 WSM) provide no ballistic advantage over the 7 Rem. Mag. and, in fact, fall short ballistically of the 7 Rem. Mag. The claimed appeal of these newer rounds is that they come close to 7 Rem.. Mag. performance in a shorter case and this accompanies the firearms industry's marketing foray into shorter actions, but this latter marketing push seems pretty weak to me. focused on perhaps a 3-4 oz. reduction in overall weight, and seems more a function of enticing shooters to pony up for something new than offering something that is in any practical sense superior.

Beyond the above, for the non-reloader, I can see no advantage for the newer beltless cases over the older belted ones. I don't believe that the beltless cases feed or extract any better than belted cases. The slop noted by Paulson may be there with the latter, but I can’t see any practical flaw in this since the case is used only once. For the reloader, the case may have stretched a little more from the first firing, but, after that, as stonecreek and Paulson note, if proper resizing is performed, the case headspaces on the shoulder for subsequent firings, and any further case stretching should be minimal with a front-locking action. This proper resizing requires one to set the full-length die to just bump the shoulder very slightly (enough to enable smooth rechambering), and this is easy to do. For my own process, I neck-size with L.E. Wilson bushing neck dies and, once chambering becomes a bit tight, I resize the body with a body die, not a FL sizer. This is only slightly more time-consuming than going with FL resizing and keeps the necks from being torqued a bit off-center by the expander ball in the FL die.

 

[South Pender]

Not so with the two H&H rounds. Although long and sloping, there is plenty of shoulder on even the .300 H&H to provide positive headspace. I only neck-size my .300 H&H and have found that my handloads don't chamber in other .300 H&H rifles. This necessarily means that the handloaded cartridges are headspacing other than on the belt.

I guess an advantage of the .300 H&H over the newer .300 magnums would perhaps be in smoother feeding with that long sloping shoulder, although I've never experienced feeding problems with my more-modern magnums.

 

[stonecreek]

I agree that the belt on belted magnums isn't a particular problem, but I recognize it is mostly superfluous. But making cartridges fatter and shorter like the Short Magnum series creates feeding issues and usually limits magazine capacity to one less than a belted magnum.

The biggest problem with belted magnums is not the case, but the sloppy chamber dimensions that manufacturers often use when chambering a belted magnum. They assume that it will headspace (often rather loosely) on the belt, so they make the reamers oversized, thus getting many more chambers out of a reamer before it wears down smaller than spec.

 

[bloorooster]

Not sure if this is worth mentioning…anyone notice the lower prices paid for .222’s lately? I’ve seen some really nice looking standard models go for 750 - 850.