#10MinuteTalk - .338 Lapua by Popular Request

[Music] what's up everybody we have 10 minutes here mr ryan muck and earns across the table and there are some cartridges between him and mark and myself so we're going to be talking about some kind of cartridge and you've already seen the title it's the 338 lapua we've had tons of requests to hear about the 338 lapua very interesting story very interesting development behind it i think we're going to get into that certainly um and also maybe get into a little bit of the uh fact that i think we talked a while back about a cartridge called the 50 bmg you're gonna want to go back and check that one out um somewhat unicorn dust sprinkled over a cartridge like the 50 bmg i think the 338 lapua gets a little bit of that that too like it's made of unicorn horn and it can do anything ever um ryan why don't you go into enlighten us on some of the history uh so it's an interesting wildcat which is neat also based off a very old cartridge yeah the 416 rigby uh so british sporting cartridge made for shooting things like elephants and rhinoceroses and hippopotami i think that's the plural of hippopotamus and big voluminous case robust design uh reshape neck it down to a very slippery projectile profile in this case 338 diameter um at the request of uh like the navy looking for a long long-range um sniper round they wanted it to be able to carry on its effectiveness in a certain speed if i recall correctly at a thousand meters right and we talked jim mentioned the 50 being everybody kind of had this preconceived notion that the 50 was the ultimate sniper cartridge the old 338 lapua gives a 50 a run for its money and and then sometimes is a much better application not not necessarily from a ballistic standpoint but like the whole system standpoint lighter weight rifle carry way more ammo lighter recoiling flies through the sonic and transonic barrier at depending on the bullet you're using sometimes better distances uh higher degree of potential accuracy from the shooter uh i think all around a probably better product it's sort of said to be between the 308 or the 762 by 51 and the 50 bmg yes right yep when people feel like the 308 just doesn't have enough gas to get the job done um i believe these are supposed to be at least when they were developed they're supposed to be able to pierce armor at a thousand meters that was kind of that idea they had a projectile for that okay yep um and and do so in a single man portable package whereas a 50 not every time almost every time is like a two-person operation right because the guns are just so big and the ammunition is just so big um it is a remarkable cartridge so in the development though somebody made a first attempt at it using the 416 rigby and they didn't even actually call it the 338 lapua because at that point in time the pool wasn't making it right so they called it what the 338 416 or something like that i think that's what we got here something like that right there yes the 338 416. so then um they determined though that at the pressures they needed to sort of get to in order to achieve these numbers that the navy wanted uh they were getting like the cases were separating not stellar results yeah like it just the cases were not robust enough in certain areas and yeah yes failing and so a little company known as uh what's their long name again namo joint venture joint venture yep uh the finns have a long history of being uh reputed an exceptional rifleman they make phenomenal rifles they make phenomenal ammo uh the two go well together lapua uh has been like the mainstay in ultraluck super premium ammunition for pretty much their inception um you know we obviously know lapua um on the commercial side of things probably more so because of the 338 lapua like it's in the name so it sticks uh but they're regular rifle ammunition like that you could buy in a smattering of calibers is beyond top tier their brass their component brass is heralded as the best i was going to say that's the one thing i'm always hearing about yeah their processes are exceptional and they're 22 long rifle ammunition and there's a huge debate amongst the 22 long rifle shooters so if you're one of those guys or gals way in um that rimfire stuff they make is just it's otherworldly uh in terms of consistency and quality and that's where they come into the picture um being the uh adept ballisticians that they are um they really put the finishing touches on the case uh and and cartridge package and enter as we know it today the 338 lapua what in sorry timing on this was about what does this know how many c3 i think is when they started initial development in 83 and jim you touched on a little bit of i guess the the parameters that they're looking through so i'm going to read this verbatim because i'm not i don't have the mind of orion but it says in 1983 research armament armament industries in the united states began development of a new long-range sniper cartridge capable of firing a 16 a 250 grain .338 diameter bullet at 914 meters per second or 3 000 feet per second that could lethally penetrate five layers of military body armor at 1 000 meters or 1094 yards and then yeah they then they kind of start talking about the challenges that you started facing that point right there is an important point of um distinction and reference in this conversation the 50 is not an anti-personnel weapon it's an anti-material weapon right we're talking like vehicles vehicles satellite dishes missile systems uh machine guns buildings whatever the 338 lapua enters to fill the gap of anti-personnel and and do so effectively and now is it also crossing over into it certainly does it certainly does um the payload that it is carrying is substantial enough that it it does do a number on uh hard targets like vehicles like satellite dishes like missile defense systems engine blocks perhaps yep and uh now we're starting to see uh the integration of cartridges like the lapua or similar 338 cartridges into medium weight machine guns that are now man portable now is that the 338 normal yep so norma and the lapua which was kind of a little bit of a wild catting adventure based on the 338 lapor right similarly they kind of made it like they're sort of almost did they just creed more same same but different yep yep there's some repackaging for size constraints and performance values needed um they're very ballistically similar cartridges they're not terribly far off each other um you know and a lot of folks are like one is better than the other same debate rages with 260 and six five creedmoor yeah sort of the 338 norma magnum when you see it is a shorter case but the bullets seeded out further so you kind of get a lot of that where you probably made it be able to fit into certain magazines or feeding systems a little bit better and you didn't necessarily eat so much into the powder capacity because the bullets seeded out further i mean all the same kind of stuff we've seen before in other things and so that's kind of a very interesting turning point um i think for like military arms and use um so sniper roll is very defined you know you've got a sniper rifle you've got an observer and now we're potentially getting into a situation in which a medium weight machine gun that's man portable could be used in an interim sniper roll with the right optic outfit on it and also could be used to you know provide suppressive fire or disable a vehicle or whatever a machine gun would be needed for in that arena and it's doing it in a cartridge that has a lot of um i guess similarities downrange i guess we're talking about like impacting things like a 50 wood big heavy payload more so than the 762 that most of those medium machine guns were chambered in um doing it at a much higher velocity um than a 762 but far more portable far more controllable than the 50 bmg you know what i thought was pretty cool when i was reading about this is that uh in the development so in order to get this lapua this 338 lapua to achieve these these sort of i don't want to say pie in the sky numbers but i think at that time they're a little bit about i think maybe when the navy put out its requirements they're probably like let's let's see if anybody can do this you know in our ideal case scenario what's our what's our dream list right so of course you know when a company first set out to do it it didn't it didn't work out that great but when the finns went after it i thought it was interesting reading about how their brass they actually can almost um i'm probably gonna use some incorrect terminology here so bear with me they've they've developed it in such a way where there's different hardnesses or different strengths or characteristics of the metal in the single piece of brass at different points so back by the web and by the the rear portion of the case where you know the uh extractor goes on and and the primer and all that but back by the web there it's a harder stronger type of or not type but just composition of brass and then out as it gets further into the case and up into the neck it's a little bit softer and more malleable why so it's maybe you can explain exactly the reasons that you're talking about so when we look at how the case works like the the package itself at the point of detonation where the pressure is you know first hitting and there's all this powder volume here like this has to be structurally very sound as we move up through the case obviously we need the shoulder to provide adequate head space certainly it needs to be strong we don't want the necks brittle or very hard like back here okay they do need to be more malleable to control neck tension proper neck tension to maintain accuracy and that kind of thing and we we've talked about annealing before on the podcast and and effectively what you've described is just clever means of uh managing your brass thickness throughout the case wall all the way down to the head and web and then proper annealing techniques to maintain uh the correct hardness or softness depending on what point of the case that we're at and so if you open up a box of brand new lapua brass it all looks very neat the way that their annealing marks are and their annealing lines and then the rest of the brass everything is just buttoned up and again to speak to why they're so popular with sport shooters is they do put such a huge precedence on brass quality and production yeah and it's it's not just the outside if you cross-section one of these and you look at the internal dimensions of any lapua case not necessarily just a 330 lapu case but any lapua case they are like finer than a lot of other brass on the commercial market so so do they all or a lot of them have that uh distribution i guess graduation yeah most most cartridges do yeah to the degree that it's um executed though i think it depends on the particular cartridge so if you wanted to achieve a particular thing and you need to do brass heavier and thicker and stronger at the bottom and you know softer and more malleable at the top you would you would have to draw that out like that would all be in the process portion when you draw that case up and by dry i don't mean like colored pencil on paper like the actual manufacturing process of drawing and then how you treat that brass after the fact um and i think a lot of that cartridge to success obviously comes from uh the people at la poi doing their homework yeah for the better part of the century we we've talked about this a lot as a sniper cartridge because that's kind of how it was developed but you start seeing it now i think in more of your you know your savage i i can't tell you how many savage 110 ba 338 pool as i've seen in my lifetime with the pst on top and people take them out hunting my house my hat's off to savage for they weren't the first people to we're going to say commercialize the cartridge in a hunting scenario i actually that nod goes to sako with an older rifle that they had the trgs which is kind of a unicorn they had a hunting weight rifle hunting stocked rifle like a what you would expect to see on the gun shop rack chambered in 338 lapua and nowadays they're very hard to come by so if you own a trgs good work um or trg sport or whatever you want to call them um fantastic uh savage brought the economy rifle in to the scene chambered in 338 lapua i would say that they were probably the front runner there for the americans anyway and it is a fantastic sporting cartridge i don't know why it actually doesn't get more credit um there's a lot more 340 weather bees out there which are ballistically almost identical um to the 338 lapua uh then there are 338 lapuas and that is a strange thing to me like and i mean you can basically take down anything in north america absolutely 338 lapua and i i think i was even reading where peop some people say you know there's certain people who are saying you know well of course with a well-placed shot on you know your african big uh you know stuff i've never seen in my life but game uh 338 lapu is kind of on the edge and you know some people won't allow it and some people will but it's it's for most everything north american though it'll yes yes i i mean again if you're debating a really big 33 and you're on the fence and cusp between 338 win meg 33 nosler 340 wetherby 338 lapua should be in that lineup certainly there's and for a number of good reasons there's actually a really good ammo selection out there and as far as hand loading it's very straightforward cartridge it's nothing there's nothing really magical other than a very large powder capacity that you really need to contend with um no weird shoulders no belts not that those are bad things i i load cartridges with weird shoulders and belts all the time but it's a really fine round um the factory offerings in as far as rifles are concerned chambered in this in a hunting type are a little scant um but in my head for no good reason if you wanted a big 33 this is as good as it gets i think and it's a fine option if you're you know on the fence on that consider the lapua i mean if you're hunting big animals or a dangerous game and and for all the reasons jim mentioned off the go here you're pushing a big hill excuse me a big pill you could push it up a big hill yeah i was gonna say you're probably on a big hill you could be on a big hill firing this cartridge high bc bullets they're going fast good for long range yeah i don't know nothing about it it seems like the stuff everybody's looking for nothing about it is wrong in my mind for a sporting cartridge if you're needing that kind of case good to know yeah well there you have it folks 338 lapua hopefully that satisfied all the requests out there for this cartridge if you have any other questions definitely hit us up instagram youtube comments all that stuff uh yeah get a discussion going down there um keep throwing out cartridges that you want to hear from us we try and keep up with as many of those suggestions as we can also go back and see if there's some ones that we've done already on cartridges that you're curious about we may have already done it uh but otherwise thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you next time see you thanks bye forgot to mention 338 rum i've never understood why oh one thing that i saw when i was looking at this was the 300 lapua which is essentially this neck down to three right and um 338 is it's not it's not seven it's not eight it's like it's an upper eight eight point oh yeah eight point one six eight point six eight point six eight point six it's a big old it's a bullet man it is it's a mark would say it's a grande how far down is this how far down does this bullet go in this case right uh that projectile i would say just a tad below the shoulder so like right about yay like where my thumbnail is yay okay yeah that's big it's a grande is it 286's 285 35 big that box looks like the box that like a super nintendo game would have once come in big gulps the niece has one he does he has a savage long-range honor he bought it expressly for smoking elk at long range there was a period of time where uh i saw a savage 110 stealth ba chambered in 338 lapua with a pst gen 1 6 to 24 by 50 on top every day somewhere somewhere i would see it different ones too and usually mounted up in really cheap rings tacticals yes i got a very spirited conversation with your brother joe about tactical rings because of that rifle and that scope yeah yeah because people would they'd get the scope great scope get the rifle great rifle i think and then they would just say cool i'm done oh rings ah those ones say tactical on them give me those and they're for a red dot and then they would mount it up and it wouldn't work a good ring for the intended application for the red for the strike fire red dot yes fantastic and we call it the tactical ring which honestly is a little bit our fault but uh but yeah yeah i'd see one of those at least every day yep but i haven't seen one in forever six five greenmore stole its win man how forever and a day that's so silly i remember being because that's so silly to me that somebody would be like 3 30 a little poo or six five why are those even in the same thought the notion that long range is it begins and ends at a thousand yards and then a 308 can't do it and the 300 win mag is not accurate like i think that's where it comes from yeah correct yeah so what i remember sitting when the lapuas were first available from savage behind the counter at the gun shop guys like i'm gonna shoot a thousand yards and that was the cartridge they picked and then the creedmoor came out and it was like you can also with this creedmoor and they're like all right sweet don't need you know 75 bucks a box i go to the creedmoor i mean i can see that if you're just trying to like hit steal at a thousand yards yeah that's gonna be ripping through a bunch of those yeah i think that's what people are doing okay and so you know that that rifle started at 999.99 pst gen 1 99.99 match made in heaven somebody's budget was 2 000 yes and they're like ah rings yes best i can use 20 bucks yeah yeah and that's where it came from the first 338 lapua i ever sold though was to a gentleman um his name is skip and i can't remember his last name um like remarkably interesting guy he's an over the road trucker former military he ordered a sako trg 42 and um he ordered the bipod which is 330 the scope mount which was 330 and two extra magazines which i want to say were 180 piece and i came in this pelican case and i called them up and i said hey skip it's ryan from the gun shop he's like hey man how are you am i good package came for you today is my soccer yes it is i'm coming and he came down and i am not kidding great balls of fire i am not kidding you he wept when he opened it up and at the time i mean that and they still are that was like that was like a six or seven thousand dollar rig whoa and he's like do you want to shoot it i'm like yes and so we went to some public land outside of hutchinson and he had a knock down steel plate and he set it up at 200 yards and i remember because i like i i was gone i did not shot any of this stuff and i'm like how many how much do we have to like i'm thinking he's like just hold that on i'm like whoa i'll touch that thing off and that plate just whacked down it went and i'm like i i'm a bit of a sniper myself just then and yeah that was the first one i wonder i'm sure he still has that rifle but uh that was cool holding that case in my hand and i want to say it was like three dollars more cartridges into the bulk 50 bmg that i was selling at the same time wow i can't say that i would ever get one because i just don't see the need for me to have one but it but it'd be cool my buddy jaren has a 338 lapua actually improved and that's as good as it yet so what we've gotten a good jillion requests to do a podcast full length on what even actly improved is and all about the story of that which i think we should do but it's just some guy exactly some guy named ackley basically was just like here's like a smattering of cartridges on the table and he just comes in and just yeah yeah my should we hey brian have we ever talked about the 280 ai we have not it's never that's never been do you like that we got to do we got to do all the ai like that one i have a 280 yeah do i like it is a 168 grain nozzle or acuben long range at 2 900 feet per second using considerably less powder than a seven millimeter remington magnum and a rifle that weighs considerably less recoils considerably less interesting to me yes it is it would never work it sounds like it would work famously on antelope last year first critter i i hunted suppressed hit him just inset the clavicle past your entire body cavity exited last rib crossed like this went out smashed the femur blew out the back of the ham and that thing went like this how much meat did you get off that thing most of it i hit it so i lost a little bit of the neck roast up front and maybe like this much of the shoulder and then in the rear where the exit was was low enough that the bullet hit just above the knuckle on oh okay the femur right you really didn't lose much there that was an impressive cartridge first first load i threw out of it with that bullet three shots landed point three i said hey that'll do velocity 29 ish that's 28 okay [Music]

Channel: Vortex Nation Podcast

Views: 7,557

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: Vortex Optics, Vortex, Vortex Nation, Vortex Nation Podcast, Podcast, Optics

Id: FHTO37QZlNI

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020