“reloading the .300 whisper”
if you are conservative, and i assume you are because you are reading this, and you have as yet to join the n.r.a. you are an idiot and a damned fool. no other organization does as much to protect your rights, liberties and privileges as the national rifle association, and if you don’t know that you are an idiot twice over.
JOIN THE N.R.A.!! NOW!!
good. we have that squared away between us, and we can get on with things.
in the may 2008 issue of the american rifleman, author aaron carter discusses handloading a most interesting cartridge, which has a broad range of uses from hunting small game, being a very useful clandestine/dirty ops/sniper weapon capable of operating under full automatic fire while having decent noise suppression, to being a big game weapon of the .30-30 winchester class and useful for hunting deer. all one caliber/cartridge, and all in one rifle platform, and capable of all the functions described above. in addition, if you feel like it, it is also capable of being a “plinker.”
the cartridge was developed by j.d. jones , proprietor and guiding spirit at ssk industries, who has the audacity to think that in our capitalistic system he should benefit from his labors and inventiveness. the following passage is taken from the article:
as for ar-15’s, ssk offers complete packages (gun included), custom-built upper assemblies and rebarreling of existing uppers in .300 whisper. … .
when considering the purchase of .300 whisper products, know that outside of ssk industries, only thompson/center arms is licensed to produce .300 whisper contender and encore barrels, and rcbs and hornady make the only licensed dies for the cartridge. some companies have worked around this restriction by slightly changing the cartridge’s name. … . let the buyer beware. may 2008 american rifleman, page 50, author: aaron carter.
this is not an entirely unknown situation in the firearms business, and others before j.d. jones have tried to patent or trademark such cartridge innovation, usually to no avail: it is very easy to change a dimension or specification here, or there, and call something something else.
but, jones did something beside simply neck up an existing cartridge and put a different bullet in it. he conceptualized a different use for the cartridge by going against the historical grain of development for the last 150 years, which has been to lighten projectile and increase energy delivery by increasing the velocity of the projectile. the byproduct of this has been noise, recoil, muzzle flash produced at the point of firing a modern cartridge, and by adding a sonic boom that travels along with a bullet just as a sonic boom follows a supersonic jet, thereby adding one other factors which help someone being shot at, should he survive the experience, or his fellows, ferret out the location of the shooter. if you are a shooter that doesn’t want to be ferreted out, a sniper say, this is highly undesirable.
jones went the opposite way.
he took a very small cartridges, expanded the cases necks to accept larger caliber bullets, and stuffed very long and very heavy projectiles (compared to the original projectiles) into the cartridge case, and kept the overall length of the bullet about the same, so that the new cartridge would function in rifles that would handle the original cartridge case. to do that, he had to stuff most of the bullet into most of the cartridge case formally occupied by lots of power (remember the velocity & energy thing, produced by lots of power relative to the capacity of the rifle’s bore), thereby greatly reducing the amount of powder capable of being placed in the cartridge.
the result, a heavy bullet traveling at speed’s below the speed of sound, producing no sonic boom. the origin of the shot cannot be identified by the sonic boom of the bullet.
the further result, one not entirely anticipated by most people as the thinking has been toward ever increasing amounts of powder relative to the bore capacity to eke out further marginal units of velocity, e.g., increase powder capacity 10%, get a 2% raise in velocity, was that it turned out that very little powder was needed to propel the heavy projectiles (relatively speaking) to speeds below the speed of sound.
another further and very desirable effect for that fellow not wanting to be ferreted out, is that the less powder used to power a projectile, the smaller volume of propellant gas produced for a given bore capacity means, … , well, less gas; gas that cools faster in a bore, and, less pressure associated with less gas cooling more rapidly, as all of this decreases the volume of the propellant gas, and, finally, if the gas is pushing the bullet out the barrel slower, it is also going slower. finally, a large component of the bang of a rifle is unconsumed incandescent propellant hitting an oxygen rich environment as it leaves the barrel of a gun, and exploding, in a sense, adding more gases to the propellant column as it leaves the barrel, and greatly increasing the velocity of the propellant gases.
the whisper tames this vicious cycle, turns it the other way, producing less recoil and blast effect.
the final result, is that this reduced column of gases is easier, much easier to “silence” and “hide,” in short, the blast effect can be attenuated in terms of sound levels, decibels, and in terms of muzzle flash. if you have ever seen a high powered rifle fired at night, the effect is spectacular, with a muzzle blast and flash of extending as much as several feet past the end of the barrel, and in high velocity weapons, the noise is horrendous, enough to cause permanent ear damage upon only several exposures, in really bad weapons.
the whisper cartridges are capable of producing no more noise or muzzle signature than an ordinary air rifle, or pellet rifle, when properly suppressed.
i do not know if jones expected this entirely when he started, but it can be said with some degree of assuredness, that no one the hell else did.
his work was novel.
so, if i buy any whisper products, such as a suppressed upper for my ar-15 rifle in a .300 whisper, you can be sure that it will be from ssk industries, and the loading dies from rcbs.
the article at hand in the american rifleman details the bullets that can be loaded in the .300 whisper, and all made to function reliably through an ar-15 style of rifle.
the loads range from a 125 grain (1/4 ounce plus) at 2,100 feet per second from a 24 inch barrel, making a load comparable in power to a .30-30 winchester, to a bullet weighing 240 grains (1/2 ounce plus) traveling at 1040 feet per second at the muzzle, which is below the speed of sound. here is where it starts to get interesting: the 125 grain bullet requires about 15 grains of powder to achieve its velocity, while the 240 grain bullet requires a miniscule 9.5 grains of powder, a charge weight comparable to some pistol cartridges, and many, many grains less than some large pistol cartridges.
it simply is amazing that such small charge weights of powder can kick a 240 grain projectile to that velocity. by way of ridiculous comparison, a .300 winchester magnum loaded with a 165 grain projectile to 3200 feet per second, about 3 times the speed of the whisper, requires as much as 80 grains of powder to achieve that velocity at the muzzle of the weapon, approximately 9 times the amount of powder in the whisper cartridge with the heavy bullet. (this data from the speer reloading manual, edition the 13th.)
the difference.
a 165 grain projectile fired at an object 3,000 feet away, is going to take something over a second to get there, but in the process it is going to make a muzzle flash observable even in daylight from the proper vantage, and looking like a roman candle at dawn or dusk, and like a 4th of july fireworks display in total darkness, and is going to leave a noise signature in the form of a sonic boom along its entire path, and even the most bovine of humans is going to be able to instinctively follow it back to its origins, in a twinkling: the persons head will be looking in the right direction before the person knows what he is doing.
anyone struck in a remotely vital area is going to be d.r.t., e.g., dead right there.
by contrast, a 240 grain projectile fired at an object 3,000 feet away is going to take over 3 seconds to get there, and the bullet is going to arrive at a far greater angle of incidence, but, it is going to get there, later, not sooner, but it will get there. (i used to shoot a replica remington rolling block rifle in .45-70 caliber at metal gongs 24 inches in diameter at over 600 yards, using a 400 grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of about 1200 per second. in good sunlight, using a spotting scope, the observer/spotter could see the bullet falling to the target at a very steep angle: a professional ballistician could tell you exactly, but we always estimated that it would be about 35 degrees plus. at that range, it took about a second and a half for the bullet to reach the metal target, and about a second and a half for the “gong” to get back to the shooting station, enough time to load and fire again if one were in a great hurry.)
anyone struck in a remotely vital area by that big old lumbering bullet is going to be equally d.r.t., e.g., dead right there.
but, in this case, the .300 whisper having a sound suppressor on it is not going to make any noise discernable to the object/person/entity being shot at, nor is there going to be produced by the shot any muzzle flash, even at dark. now, if our shooter is so unlucky as to fire a shot when being directly observed by a light sensitive or heat sensitive instrument just as he shoots, he may very well be detected, but not, most probably, by the naked eye. nor is the projectile going to leave a signature noise track across the sky, its travel being almost totally undetectable. as an added bonus, should our shooter have chosen a hide behind a screen of leaves or other vegetation, those materials are not going to be agitated or moved or flutter in the muzzle blast, because it is so greatly reduced.
If our shooter is shooting in an urban situation, and has chosen to shoot from behind a layer or two layers of ordinary gauze hung in front of a window, or in front of his hide, or in his hide but behind other natural objects, his shooting position is going to be almost undetectable, at least from the aspect of any kind of signature caused by the effects of the shot going off.
the whisper is a very versatile and useful cartridge.
its uses, in light of the previous discussion, in terms of counter insurgency work or in terms of conflict between social or religious or political rivals, should be readily apparent.
and, speaking of suppression, articles like the american rifleman article recommended for your reading, are not yet suppressed. you should acquire, read and become familiar with this information while you can.
the article has a chart and accompanying discussion of many useful loads, and loading techniques. i have been reloading for 35 years or so, and considered it most informative, and educational. take that for what it is worth.
mentioned in the article, and most useful are:
the hornady handbook of cartridge reloading, sixth edition, and
the sierra 50th anniversary handgun reloading manual.
if you are new to reloading, i heartily recommend the speer reloading manual, the last edition i purchased being the 13th edition, and i am sure there is a newer edition. i also own the manual published by nosler bullets, and consider the nosler and speer books the absolute most useful in terms of good, safe and reliable loads.
all of these manuals discuss reloading in clear, simple and useful terms, and are loaded with wonderful illustrations, …. , well, …. , illustrating how reloading she is done.
in sum, the article in the american rifleman is a wonderful resource, and introduces you to many people and concepts in shooting and reloading. if, for instance, you google j.d. jones, or ssk industries, you will be rewarded with tons of useful information.
try it, you may like it. and, if you do, please reward mr. jones and his enterprise, by buying a genuine ssk industries .300 whisper product. he and thompson/center have long been known in the firearms industry for enterprise, innovation, and products that work and are backed by wonderful warranties and service. that is how they got to where they are today, as the saying goes.
--john jay @ 06.07.2008
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