Talk:Cartridge (firearms)

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Therefore, a bullet with twice the powder, going twice as fast has four times the destructive energy.

This can not be generally true, because the total energy in the powder is proportional to the amount. Patrick 09:44 Dec 29, 2002 (UTC)
In practical terms depending on the burn rate of the powder, twice the powder can cause detonation (picture the breach bursting, bent operating rod, etc.) instead of a controlled explosion. With slower burning powders, not only can detonation occur, the powder will burn outside the barrel and can cause a large muzzle flash as the powder burns outside of the barrel, wasting its potential energy. --Buster 19:01, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Error in Photo Caption

The smaller cartridge on the right is a 9mm Luger Parabellum. A .40 S&W has a flat head, this one has a rounded head.

[edit] Use of Britannica without credit?

At least a part of the material on cartridge manufacture appears to have been lifted verbatim from the 11th (1910) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, with no credit given. I am sure this is contrary to Wikipedia's policy, and would like to see it corrected.

Marc de Piolenc

Technically, Britannica is in the public domain, which means that it can be used freely with no attribution needed. Attribution is only done as a courtesy. =) --Jtgibson 22:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Wadding

Is it only shotgun shells that have wadding between the projectile(s) and the propellant, or do rifle/pistol rounds have wadding as well? I do recognise that the bore of a shotgun is much larger than the bore of a rifle or pistol, so I imagine that too much gunpowder would be more dangerous to the firer -- the reason shells have wadding in the first place -- but I'm curious whether a thin wad is also included in the manufacturing process of regular cartridges or whether they simply load the bullet flush with the powder. (Like many other action-movie and gunplay afficionados, I don't tend to know the truth behind the fiction. ;-)) --Jtgibson 22:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


Wadding is not used in rifle or pistol rounds. Arthurrh 18:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Casing

(i.e. brass or hull) It was said on the casing page that it was discussing merging it with the cartridge page. This would not be a good idea being that the case or hull is only one component of a complete cartridge. The casing is not a cartridge without the primer, the propellant, the wad (in shotshells) and the actual projectile or projectiles. Much more could be elaborated on the casing or hulls. Some rifle rounds do require wadding to take up space. A few in particular would be the 45-70, 45-90 and the 45-110.

74.69.252.224 05:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)Driftpin74.69.252.224 05:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

"Casing" is a word that has for years been misused in regards to the case of a cartridge...aka [the correct term is] "cartridge case". "Casing" is a housing used for sausages. "Casing" should not be used in reference to any part of a firearm or it's projectiles.


I reload my own cartidges and have an extensive reloading reference library. I don't have ANY referencees to using wadding in rifle rounds. In particular, I do load the .45-70 and it definitely does not use wadding. Some recommend the use of fillers such as cornmeal or babypowder, but others recommend against it. In a rifle if the load is sufficient to propel the bullet and the primer is correct for the powder/load/case combination, wadding is not needed. Filler seems to be in some dispute as to it's necessity. Arthurrh 18:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Blackpowder

The history doesn't seem to really cover the transition from blackpowder to smokeless powder, I wonder if that should be elaborated here. Arthurrh 18:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I agree that the Firearm brass article should be merged here. I've never done a merge, so if others are in agreement, maybe someone can do it. Arthurrh 22:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

I've moved the whole Problems section here for now. The first claim is spurious, the other two have more to do with firearms than with cartridges, and belong elsewhere. == The conventional cartridge also adds certain problems to the gun.

The casing is both expensive and heavy, and the single most difficult part to manufacture. Generally, they were manufactured by deforming a disk of brass with a series of progressive dies. Cases are generally round, and this decreases the volumetric efficiency of the gun's magazine. A caseless cartridge can have the propellant molded in a square shape.

The gun has to have an ejection port to eliminate the spent cartridge-case. Dirt and fluid can enter the gun through the ejection port and adversely affect functioning. Stoppages can occur if a badly cleaned or maintained weapon fails to properly eject a spent casing, which will subsequently block the passage of the next live round from the magazine to the chamber.

The primer, and associated firing pin add a short delay between the time the trigger is pressed and the time the bullet leaves the barrel. Experiments had decisively demonstrated that this delay reduced accuracy for most shooters. Light replacement firing pins and hammers have been produced to minimize the delay. == Arthurrh 20:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


I apologise if I get the syntax wrong here, I really don't know how to leave well-formed comments on a talk page.

As you can see from the information "Arthurrh" pasted, firing pins introduce firing delays; this is mentioned in the article on electrical firing, which this page links to. It explains that electrical firing uses electricity to replace the firing pin in activating the primer. On the other hand, this article claims that electrical firing does away with the primer. One of these two pages must be wrong, since either there is still a primer or there isn't, or if there is some sort of pseudoprimer, that should really be explained in the electrical firing page. I'm leaving this comment here since I think the most likely case is that this article has it wrong, but I'm hardly an expert. 71.234.27.153 04:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Case definition lacking

I just spent some time now trying to understand what happened with the case here ?
First I have been surprised to see that the case article disappeared. Probably it became enormous over the time. But now, we are on the other extreme, there a no definition anymore of what a case is !
Even worth, there is an paragraph about caseless ammo !
I don't understand why this whole discussion here about caseless ammo. The only caseless ammo on the market today is the 5.7mm UCC Voere, not a big deal man :-)

I'm going to work a bit on this article today. At least provide the official cartridge classification as seen by the CIP. I have updated this CIP page yesterday so that in the references, it points directly to the official 2007 cartridge list (as seen from all European CIP member countries). A *very* good job we could do here is to provide a clear comparison table between Saami and CIP data.

--Michel Deby (talk) 12:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] What is this 'gameplay' you speak of?

Several times in this article, in the sections on jacketing and caliber, the phrase 'for gameplay puropses' (or some variant thereoff) is used. I was under the impression that this was an article on firearm cartridges and not on video games. 12.108.61.66 (talk) 18:20, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Have addressed this jargon, replacing "gameplay" with metallic silhouette. Good catch. Yaf (talk) 04:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


The whole part on cartridges is filled with errors because they appear to be based off of playing video games. Some of the cartridges listed have never been used in combat like the 4.6mm. 69.252.176.70 (talk) 07:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jacketing/Calibers

The 'Jacketing' and 'Calibers' sections sound like role-playing game descriptive text, and contain a lot of vague and very dubious information. Many or most of the rounds and concepts dealt with in these sections have their own articles, featuring far better information. I would recommend these two sections be deleted or summarised. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.216.24.213 (talk) 00:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


"The Hague Accords - The Hague Accords ban the use of expanding projectiles against the military forces of other nations. Some countries accept this as a blanket ban against the use of expanding projectiles against anyone, while the U.S. feels free to use JSP and HP against terrorists and criminals.[1]" despite the reference needs citation and/or context as I believe it is incorrect at least in a military context. Also several nations' police use hollowpoint ammo domestically. Do you think this should be organized--possibly with applicable jacket types (i.e. JSP,HP,frangible)and not thrown in so haphazardly? Hereward777 (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The Calibers section is just a listing of cartridges and has little to do with calibers.Hereward777 (talk) 03:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)