One of the main reasons companies and individuals keep trying to reinvent the wheel is to overcome the fallibilities of the original and those that have come along later.
The 300WSM for example had all sorts of claims about accuracy, velocity, and recoil.
It really didn't do more than a knowledgeable hand loader could do with a 30-06 cartridge., when compared to off the shelf, factory loadings.
Claims on factory loads needed to be taken with a grain of salt as well.
Many of the "older/boring" cartridges were designed well over a century ago, to utilize much looser specifications, radically different components, many of which were just the beginning of experimental stage development and rushed into production for all sorts of nefarious reasons.
The "concepts" haven't changed, but the materials available have been refined to much tighter parameters, designed for specific purposes.
There are some great cartridges that have survived to the present day, some of the more recognizable are 6.5x55/8x57/30-06/45-70. Lots more but you get the idea.
Another, which should have been included as an example is the 257 Roberts.
All of the mentioned cartridges and there are many dozens of them on the list were designed at least a century ago.
The firearms they were chambered in were not the equals of even lower end, recently produced firearms on the shelves today.
When these cartridges were developed, they were cutting edge, producing pressures around 45,000 pounds per sq in.
Considering, less than a two decades previously, high pressures were in the 30,000 psi ranges and maybe a decade earlier, 20.000 psi was the norm.
By today's standards those pressures, although still very capable, are considered to be sluggish at best.
Factories will not increase the pressures of these cartridges when they produce them because there are still a few million of the older firearms still being used in the field and being passed on to heirs. They load these original cartridges to specifications that will be safe in any firearm designed to handle them.
So what do they do?
Because of legal constraints, their hands are tied.
They design a new cartridge, which will at the very least duplicate the old design and hopefully, mostly because new manufacture components allow it, exceed the capabilities of the old design by a decent margin, and be able to produce it in commercial quantities at prices which will enable them to make a good profit.
Much of what we read about many of the new wonder cartridges is HYPE. Many of the old designs, when chambered in equivalent strength firearms, with close attention and tight tolerances, will deliver very similar or in some case even exceed the new one.
I often shake my head at the guys who compare their cartridges. Usually they're "splitting hairs" which have already been split.
I'm not going to say I don't like the new cartridges, because I do. But going on about the design making the cartridge more accurate???? Poor barrels, poor fitting, poor chambering and boring make for poor shooting firearms. Mix that with components that don't utilize the parameters???
For newbie shooters, be careful when choosing some of these new offerings, many of them aren't going to pass the test of time and will disappear or only get manufactured sporadically, until they die out.
Try going into a local gunshop or Canadian Tire and finding a box of new manufacture 225 Winchester, which was replaced by the 22-250 and 220 Swift.
Most of the new cartridges are "better" but only because they've been designed and marketed in a time when all of the other parameters have been supercharged as well.
65,000 pounds per sq in of chamber pressure used to scare the sweat out of people. Not any more, and that's not a bad thing, until some nimrod tries to chamber the new cartridges, designed to generate those pressures as a steady diet, into a century or even 50 year old firearm whose metallurgical limits are designed for a steady diet of 55,000 psi or slightly lower.
You might get away with it for a long time, but it won't be a matter of "IF IT WILL FAIL, but WHEN"
These new cartridges, such as the 6.5PRC are great, IMHO and hand loaders can make them better. But how much are you gaining over the original cartridge it was designed to replace?
There are all sorts of ways to make some of the old designs as good or very close, but that takes much more effort than purchasing a new factory rifle, and feeding it factory ammo.
