Understanding The New 270 Cartridges

you know we try to move along with new cartridges 21st century but folks keep bringing us back and asking questions about this old war horse the 270 winchester oh well the 270s are on the rise and we've got more than just the 270 winchester to check out on this episode of bronze bomber outdoors stay tuned we're going to 270 land like you've never seen it before [Music] did you know that there are at least seven commercially available 270s yeah things are really moving along here before we dive into those though i would like to show you guys the book we mentioned in our last video on the fast or the flattest shooting cartridges i mentioned robert rourke this is the guy who pooh-poohed the 220 swift during his hunt in africa back in the 1950s great book though if you ever want to read a superb african hunting book this is one of them so you might want to check that out and the other thing i want to show you is this full curl well it's almost a full curl does anybody know what that is this came off of our old rooster the one that keeps making all the noise in our outdoor videos that guy is an antique i mean if you know pheasants and long spurs on pheasants or even turkeys you're pretty excited if you see one about an inch and a half long look at this thing it's like a big horn sheep rooster or something that's pretty crazy anyway the rooster still alive we just broke off his spur because it was literally growing into his heel the back of his leg and he was limping so i snared him and snapped it off i think he's a lot happier now okay the 270s now everybody of course is aware of the 270 winchester it is a classic it ranks right up there with a 30 odd six as a well-known cartridge and it's been around since 1925. but what most people don't know is that there are many more 270s and i would like to take them chronologically so after the 270 came out in 1925 the next one up was the 270 weatherby magnum that came out around old say 1944 or so and boy for a long time those were the only two out there now this big guy really pushes the same bullets as the 277 uh winchester bullet but a lot faster probably as much as 400 feet per second faster we're going to look at some ballistic charts as usual and see all the numbers but that was the next 270 in line and that was about it until by golly i think it was right up until the uh 21st century winchester came out with the next one surprised us all with the 270 winchester short magnum and you can see what they were doing they enlarged the diameter of the case and shortened it so they could run it through a short action that was all the rage for quite a while there's those short ones so it's a short fat and it almost duplicates the ballistics of the weatherby magnum then the next one along went in the opposite direction that was an oddball came out about 2004 that's when remington jumped on the remington spc special purpose cartridge and that was designed pretty much at the request of the special branches of the military they wanted something that could run through their ars or the m4 in in the military service rifles that hit harder than the 223 or that uh 5.56 nato so they came up with this thing and it's kayab and oddball because it's so short and yet it's shooting a pretty large diameter bullet and we'll learn a little bit about the ballistics and how they suffer from that the next one up oh that's pretty reason a lot of us haven't even seen it yet this is a sigs 277 fury this is really something different if you notice on the base of that case it's steel and that allows them to raise the pressures up to 80 000 psi now this 270 here is right at the top of the heap for typical cartridges at 65 000 psi of pressure sami allowed 80 000 for this one and that enables it to drive the same bullets a lot faster with a lot less powder this is essentially a 308 winchester case neck down to 277 it's that steel head that really makes the difference then we jump up to a really big one 27 nosler and that's in that entire series of standard length action cartridges that means it fits the 270 length action or the 30 at six but it has the 404 jeffrey size fat case so you get more powder in it doesn't have a belt on it so that's all the latest and greatest for a magnum nozzler came out with that just about two years ago i think maybe even just one year ago it's pretty new i think it's the newest one in their line and that promises some great things obviously with all that powder pushing those bullets and then the absolute most recent one i just started hunting with it last fall and it was announced as a new cartridge in 2021 the 6.8 western shoots a 0.277 bullet these all do so now let me get my paperwork so we can look at some numbers we'll flash them up on the screen for you but i forgot to put it on the table for me so i better go grab it all right here they are lots of names and numbers so let's start off with this shortie the uh remington spc that thing is a little bit of an oddball because with that small powder capacity you really can't push the heavier bullets what i want to do on this chart with all of these is try to maintain similarity in our in our bullets so we get a better idea of how each of these can propel that bullet so we're going to use a 150 grain bullet the same one with a bc of 0.590 on all of them except for the 6.8 that thing can only handle up to maybe 130 grain bullet but more often you're going to see it with 110 215 grain bullets so i ran with 115 bc is pretty low at 0.325 and my muscle velocity is only 2 50 feet per second so that's going to obviously cost trajectories and you just don't think of a 270 as being that slow so muzzle energy on it's only 1661 foot-pounds and the maximum point-blank range we're going to compare on all of these this is how that works we zero for an eight-inch target so that when you aim dead center under the target your max ordinate the height that your bullet rise above your line of sight is no more than four inches and then it begins to fall and when it reaches the bottom of that 80 inch diameter circle it falls out of your target zone that is your maximum point blank range so you could aim at the center of that eight inch target out to that distance and hit it either on the top edge at the bottom edge or somewhere in the middle and that pretty much takes care of the vital zone on most of the game we hunt so it's a useful setup for zeroing your rifle and that helps us compare the differences in the reach of each ones of these so 272 yards with this little guy which really surprised me that's pretty impressive for a cartridge that's going that slow with a bc bullet that is also that low and of course the real benefit is there's almost no recoil if you're recoil shy 7.3 foot pounds at an impact velocity of 7.61 feet per second it's just not much there so it'd be a real pleasure to shoot that one now let's get up to what we would consider a more typical 270 for hunting 270 winchester obviously 150 grain bullet is about as big as they get there were a few 160 grains around but this is kind of the new standard for the heavyweight and we are able to drive at 2 900 feet per second with some of the latest powders and really pushing that load and i think you can do it in the 24 inch barrel you might need to go to 26 to get that velocity so that's top end and these numbers again are taken out of reloading manuals i got most of them out of the nosler manual their latest one i think it's number ten and they tend to go pretty hot but you're always going to find differences in those recipes in the different hand loading manuals so don't take any of them for gospel they can all change especially with your rifle your setup the kind of primer you use the powders and everything so take all of this with just a little grain of salt but it does show the potential for all of these so muzzle energy out of that 270 2802 foot pounds now that's getting up there you know that's why it's considered a great mule deer cartridge and pretty darn good for elk but it's been used for just about everything quite successfully notice the maximum point blank range now you're really reaching out there 328 yards i mean that's pretty nice to think of hunting and if you see a deer out there and you go i don't know if he's 200 yards or 300 yards or maybe a little more if you've got that nailed down to somewhere within that 328 yards you can just confidently aim for the center of that eight inch circle which is right on the middle of the chest of that deer and you're probably going to get him so it takes a lot of guesswork out of it and it saves time if you don't have time to slap up a rangefinder and get an exact range on him you can do it quickly with this system so the recoil you know it's fairly stout at 20.6 foot pounds of energy and comes back at about 12.9 feet per second so they're sort of the standard that most of us probably know because we've shot 270 winchesters or something close to them now we're going to jump to that western the 6.8 western why they didn't call that a 270 of some kind i don't know but probably to avoid confusion because it looks awfully similar to that 270 wsm and that's because all they did was took the 270 wsm case pushed the shoulder back a little bit and that gave them a little more room to put the long bullets on it that's what's special about the 6.8 it is set up to shoot longer bullets you probably can't even find a commercial load with 150 grain bullet on them they start off at about 165 then they have 170 grain and 875 grain so they're really reaching out there they're trying to match up with the oh well all the new 6.5 with those high bc bullets so they're sacrificing a little velocity getting uh flatter not flatter trajectory but less wind deflection with those high bc bullets that's the advantage there so that was going at maybe 3150 feet per second i had to sort of extrapolate on this one because there's no actual data out there i've shot the 165s and and up but i just kind of figured out roughly what it would run with a 150 in it if i hand loaded it that would give us pretty good muzzle energy at 3 305 foot pounds and the maximum point blank range beats the old 270 a little bit pushes it out there to 354. that's reaching out a little more he hurt on the shoulder at 25.2 coming back a little faster at 14.2 now the 277 fury more extrapolation on this the cool thing about this little shorty is that not only does it have the high pressure but because of that high pressure they can stick it in a 16 inch barrel and get the same performance as the 270 would out of a 24 inch barrel so they're loading up 140 grains on here and i think they're getting about 3 000 feet per second so now wait a minute they were getting a little more than that of 140 at any rate this is a guess at 3 100 feet per second it might be 3 000 instead but i think that's what they were getting out of the 16 inch barrel i figured this one for a 22 to 24 inch barrel time will tell i haven't loaded any of those yet but i think it's a pretty good guess 3 200 foot pounds of energy 349 yards 18.9 on the shoulder not bad 12.3 feet per second yeah that's a little easier to shoot might be an interesting project to watch they've right now got it out in a sig sauer rifle uh it's all aluminum and steel it's no wooden it's one of those tricked out new chassis type rifles and it's it's short and compact and you can tell it's kind of been inspired by the military operations but it's cranking out some pretty high velocities for a short little barreled rifle like that now the 270 wsm is kind of falling out of favor as a lot of the two uh short magnums did and part of that was because of a court case for some oh copyright infringement i think you know patent infringement you can still get some chambered ford and i think it's a great cartridge i have used it for caribou and elk moose and i think it's just every bit as good as the 270 weatherby in a short and almost exactly the same ballistics out of it if you load it up right so we're looking at the wsm is driving 3190 feet per second that gives us 3 390 foot pounds of energy 358 yards maximum point blank range reaching out a little bit further you know getting a little more kick on the shoulder too and that's just the way it goes with these you know you're you're pushing the same bullets you're just using different powder levels in these cartridges so as the powder level goes up and to a degree the pressure levels and this is really the only one that pushes the envelope on that you're going to get more recoil so 270 weatherby as you see 3200 right there with that wsm a little bit more muzzle energy as a result adds another yard to the reach guys you better jump on that one and a little more recoil but it's not too bad but here's where we jump up at a pretty significant pace 3400 feet per second with that 27 nosler so that's the champ right now in 270 land if you really want to drive those bullets far now i'm pretty sure that they are are putting fast twist barrels on that maybe one in eight you probably have a one and eight on the 277 i know they have one and eights in the brownings on this 6.8 and the winchester rifles are 1.75 inch twist rate so that's why they're stabilizing those big long bullets on those so these are the new ones the 21st century when everyone's really into the high bc bullets and for good reason but the other ones are all at one in 10 twist and even that spc although there are some that are slowing that down because they're using those shorter bullets it reduces the pressures a little bit not to have that fast twist rate and makes it a little easier to load for that one so that's always the oddball out but you know the old guys wanted 10 twist even the wsm and that's part of the reason i think that 6.8 was was changed you know it looks so similar you think why did they bother well it's that longer bullet and then they didn't want to mess around with the twist rate on the old 270 wsm so they just made a whole new cartridge so they could then crank up the twist rate load the ammo for it wouldn't be any confusion folks out there buying the wrong ammo so that's what we're up against in the new 270s and i think these are gonna get some pretty good traction because they can throw heavier bullets than the 6.5 and as much as i love and most of us love the 6.5 because it's a pretty good balance for a deer cartridge you're getting your bullets up there around 150 grains and maybe a little more in some of the magnums you can get up into the 156s maybe even 160s now um that's great but you can't get quite the weight you would out of a 270 so i think that will appeal to folks who are thinking maybe they're going to do some elk hunting and they want a little more bullet out of that operation and definitely for moose caribou and all the bigger ones but any of these would work i think the 270 is a viable caliber and it is an oddball and it's all american too although there is some historical data that says the first 270 was really a chinese cartridge from way back before even the 270 winchester came out and i think something that we need to consider about cartridge diameters calibers is that they're really sort of arbitrary i mean why should we think the 30 caliber for instance is kind of the standard or the 28 is really impressive or the 6.5 when you make a barrel you drill a hole in it and back in the day in the muzzleloader days you know they would drill holes in and not be necessarily specific with each one and then they would cast a lead ball into it and determine exactly what the caliber was and you might end up with a 32 or a 40 or a 50 and they were kind of all over the map and it didn't matter all that much because you were making your own bullets you just cast them you made your your pound of lead into as many balls as you get down that barrel and that's what you shot of course things are standardized now but why we started off with 30 calibers and then decided 28 would be good and eight millimeters coming out of germany all that early stuff just sort of for whatever reason popped up in those calibers and we stuck with them uh but we've never made a 29 caliber now isn't that odd we've got 24 25 26 27 28 30 32 33 skip to 31 there's someone that didn't get hit yet boy if you're a wild cat or you've got an opportunity now you can get yourself a whole new cartridge anyway if you're interested in splitting the difference between the sevens and the 26s the 27s are right up your alley so check them out there's some great old ones that can still do the job and there's some delightful new ones with the longer heavier bullets and the fast twist barrels that will extend your range a little bit those are the modern 270s as well as the old ones and i'm still the old ron's bomber thanking you for subscribing to our channel and especially thanks to our patrons who make these uh videos possible we really appreciate your support if you'd like to join the ron spomer outdoors community on patreon just go to patreon.com and ron spommer outdoors we'd love to have you join us until next time on honest and shoot straight [Music] you

Channel: Ron Spomer Outdoors

Views: 190,335

Keywords: outdoors, ron spomer outdoors, ron spomer, hunting, firearms, guns, shooting sports, rifles, big game hunting, hunting gear, hunting gear review, rifle review, gun review, 270 Winchester, 27 nosler, 6.8 western cartridge, 27 nosler review, 27 nosler vs 6.8 western, 270 cartridge, 270 cartridge dimensions, 270 cartridge review, 270 western cartridge, 270 vs 6.8 western, Understanding The New 270 Cartridges, 277 fury vs 270, 277 fury performance, 270 weatherby magnum

Id: M2jJLbIJQpA

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021