300 wsm shorty

[jdub76]

I am thinking of building a 16.5" 300 wsm carbon barrel. Anyone have any experience with one in this category or what would be the shortest you would build?

 

[Zen Archery]

I've got gas gun 19 incher! LOVE IT!!!

 

[comfisherman]

I'm doing an 18.5 right now, it's perceptible less fire ball going from 16.5 to 18.5. My last 300 wsm was 20 inches. My personal opinion is the best length is right in the 18-20 inch range. In our length test we lost only 30ish fps to somewhere in the 19 range, and then 50 or more under down to the specialty pistol length.

 

[jdub76]

I'm doing an 18.5 right now, it's perceptible less fire ball going from 16.5 to 18.5. My last 300 wsm was 20 inches. My personal opinion is the best length is right in the 18-20 inch range. In our length test we lost only 30ish fps to somewhere in the 19 range, and then 50 or more under down to the specialty pistol length.

What powders are you using in the shorter barrel loads or is that with factory ammo testing?

 

[comfisherman]

My ardent belief is that burn rates are lost in the significant figures, xp hunter/ernie bishop surmise that the fastest long was the fastest short. About 15 years ago I tested the heck out of that in both the 270 short mag and seven Ultra Mag and could not find data that was meaningful to support different powders working better in a short barrel. There were slight changes to the fireball but not enough feet per second differentiation to get a statistician to call it anything but numerical noise.

What I did find is that the extreme ends of the bullet weight for caliber section lost a lot more feet per second per inch. So my shorties stay loaded in moderate for caliber bullets. This 300 wsm has a stash of 165-190 grain bullets, and correlating powders like imr 4350, ramshot hunter and rl17 . My last 300 wsm did beautiful things with 168 ballistic tips, going a tad longer hoping for good results with 190 accubond lrs.