Wildcats?

D

Drae

New member
Is anyone here experimenting with wildcat cartridges? I always wanted to see something like .223 necked out to 9mm or some other silly stuff.

(also, if someone stumbles upon this topic, please tell me why cartridge names are nearly never 'correct', like 7,65x21 Luger bullet being 7,85mm and so on)
 
I've built two wildcats so far, a 270AR (6.5x7 necked up to .227) and TAC6 (6mm on a 6.8 case). Getting something with easy to form brass is important to me. Making brass for the 270AR is a lot of work since you need to turn, ream and trim the brass. TAC6, easy. Just a simple resize of the brass then trim.
 
I could *technically* make some wildcats given a nearby range gives out leftover brass for free... buuuut what would i fire it out of?

Also i love the idea of necking out cartridges out to the case size (or, to simplify, un-bottlenecking them).
 
I own and load for just one wildcat because making ammo is fun and easy for me but altering or building firearms is not something I have skill or tools to do.

Mine is a .357-44 Bain & Davis, it's simply a .44 Magnum case with a tame bottle neck down to a .358" slug. The handgun I shoot them from is a late-70's Smith & Wesson Model 28-2 revolver.

Basically, you can put a little more powder behind your 110-180 grain bullet than you would otherwise be able to in a .357 Magnum case.

It was much more relevant in the 1980's than it is these days. It makes a big fireball, it's certainly some oddity that nobody else on the range is likely to have but it's basically just for fun and goofing around. Handloading it and forming brass is very easy.
 
Testing rimmed wildcats seems like a matter of finding a couple steel pipes and some way to strike the primer... rimless thought might be a bit more tricky.
 
I have a few. With the 223 case, I have both a 6.5 and 7mm TCU. With the 444Marlin case, a 375JDJ and the 30-30 case - a 7x30JDJ.

9mm wouldn't give much of a shoulder. I know the 7mm TCU doesn't give a lot more room to expand the neck. You'd have to be very careful of not splitting the neck. I've done that with a few of the 7mm. You would probably need a couple of expanders to open it that far.

The biggest issue with them is the lack of published loading data. JD Jones put out limited information with his wildcats. The TCU cartridges have been around for so long, there are numerous publications with data.

A good place to look would be the metallic silhouette community. They've wildcatted just about every cartridge prior to the stronger actions of the modern single shot pistols being produced. Another is JD Jone's website. Although I haven't been on it for a while, there was a host of wildcats from which to choose. If you wanted something he didn't already chamber, he would chamber it. Hornady was making his dies for a while - which is another consideration.

The thing most people miss is that you need to have a purpose for the round. Once you have a purpose, you need to find a company that produces a bullet which will perform at the speeds your "proposed cartridge" will produce. There's no sense in building a cartridge that will send a 9mm handgun cartridge down a barrel at 2000+FPS [just an example] if there are no 9mm bullets that will handle the velocity. This, IMO, is where JD Jone's had all his success.
 
I'm not planning on selling anything, can't we do something for fun not for profit? As for 9mm not giving much of a shoulder, that's kinda my point. Non-bottleneck cartridge, or straight cartridge, or whatever's the term.
 
"...tell me why cartridge names are..." Geez. Never try to figure out why a cartridge is called what it is. That can give you brain damage. Moreso with military cartridges. Commercial cartridge names are about marketing. Military can sometimes be about 'secrets' but are usually an obscure nomenclature standards. 7.62mm, for example, is the nominal bore diameter. And it does not convert from .308" to that mathematically. .308 converts to 7.82mm. The 7.62 x 39 uses a .311" bullet in a 7.62mm bore.
"...9mm wouldn't give much of a shoulder..." A shoulder isn't required. Think in terns of the .444 Marlin.
 
One last quick question before i start squeezing vaguely bullet shaped chunks of metal into reshaped cartridges and firing them out of a pipe.
What would happen if theoretically i used a round bullet? Like, completely round, a sphere of lead. Stuffed into a conventional case.
 
A couple things that you can count on if using a round ball as your projectile...

It difficult to place it in to your cartridge AND get it to stay exactly where you want it to stay. It should go without saying that it's extremely important to have your bullet locked in place for many obvious and less obvious reasons.

Your round ball is also instantly at a disadvantage, ballistically speaking, than traditional "bullet shaped" projectiles... again, in obvious and less obvious ways.

A round ball is a poor choice for a modern cartridge.
 
Drae, I have copy of the Handloader's Manual Of Cartridge Conversions You could build 9mm Super Cooper and that's 223 case shorten to .90". They don't have listing for 7,65x21 Luger but they do for 7,65 Luger then it tell to look see 30 Luger and you have to look that up, find out how to form that case.

I also have copy of Wildcat Cartridges Vol II has about 800 pages on various Wildcats and loads. Not much on pistols.

I done some AI and 6talldog/22Waldog those are just shorten 6BR case and 22ppc case.
 
The concern with making a 9mm caliber from a 223 case is that the diameter of the 223 case is small (smaller than a 9mm Luger) and if the brass wall is thick enough, the loaded round will be wider at the neck than it is at the base.

I've made 9mm Super Coopers from 223 brass and that's exactly what happens. The case is bulged at the neck and measures wider than the base, which makes for a very unusual looking cartridge.

If 223 cases are trimmed to a much longer length, the brass toward the bottleneck might be thinner and wouldn't result in a muffin-top/mushroom looking round.
 
True.
There is such a thing as a .338x.223. The case has just a faint taper, no shoulder, and headspaces on the case mouth like an autopistol cartridge.

(also, if someone stumbles upon this topic, please tell me why cartridge names are nearly never 'correct', like 7,65x21 Luger bullet being 7,85mm and so on)
Click to expand...

Reason 1: Many cartridges are named based on the bore diameter of the barrel, not the groove or bullet diameter. This is increasingly confusing because of the Internet Habit of conflating the bore and groove diameters.

Reason 2: Once you have a cartridge firing a bullet of a given diameter through the standard barrel dimensions, what do you call the NEXT one? You have to differentiate it somehow, and the advertising department will come up with something, maybe in the name, maybe in the number, maybe both. My favorite example:
.218 Bee, .219 Zipper, .220 Swift, .221 Fireball, .222 Remington, .223 Remington, .224 Weatherby, and .225 Winchester ALL fire the same diameter bullet, .224".
But .22 Hornet and .22 Savage don't.
Or the other way: .300 Blackout, .300 Savage, .300 H&H Magnum, .300 Weatherby, and .300 Winchester Magnum all have barrels of about .300" bore diameter, .308" groove diameter, and shoot .308" bullets.
 
Drae wrote:
Testing rimmed wildcats seems like a matter of finding a couple steel pipes and some way to strike the primer...
Click to expand...

It's a little bit more involved than that.

First, you will need to have a way to support the head of the case when you get ready to strike it.

Second, mild steel pipe may not have the strength to resist the pressure you generate and may burst.

Third, steel pipe doesn't neatly come in internal diameters that match most common ammunition.

Please do your homework on the pressures you will be dealing with, the properties of the materials you will be using, and the legality of building what you are thinking of constructing.
 
Basically, you have to balance action type (headspace method) with case capacity with bullets that work at the velocity with a purpose.

Take 300 Blk: 5.56 NATO parent case for mags and feeding; shorten case and allow thick neck for easy forming and borderline super/sub velocities; 30 cal for lots of bullet choice; purpose make a short range suppressed AR that works. Weakness: needs sub bullets designed to expand at sub velocities. Supers needs a better bullet too, but are pretty close.

224 Valkyrie: 6.8 spcl parent is AR proven; shortened to fit mag with 1000 yd bc bullets; 90 gr high bc bullet; who doesn't want a 1000 yd AR

338 ARD: straight wall AR cartridge to shoot mag length 338 bullets from a 223 rem Case with the bottleneck cut off. Probably would fail due to lack of 338 light low speed bullets and would headspace off the mouth which is less than ideal for an accurate rifle.
 
450 Bushmaster is the 284 Win case shortened, no bottle neck.

Use a pipe cutter and see if a 9mm will fit.

Would recommend AGAINST using a piece of pipe to set the dang cartridge off!
BATFE calls that a pipe bomb.
 
BATFE... whas that... sounds... dumb.
450 bushmaster... love that thing!
Seen a website where you can get pipes with precise diameters... and not mild steel. Instead of going the way of calculating pressures why not get a very thick walled one? That'd be borderline cannon tho...
 
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