What is the obsession with FPS?

[dubber123]

I tend to lean on the gas a bit with most of my loads. I have personally had better results, Ie. cleaner burning, lower velocity swings, and better overall accuracy with loads on the "warm" side. There are exceptions of course, and it doesn't take long to find them with a particular firearm. I find the guys who insist on loading as light as possible as entertaining as the ones who must have that last single fps.

[TXGunNut]

I don't use my Chrony to chase velocity, I use it to chase accuracy. It's also good to know the velocity of a hunting load to calculate energy and bullet drop at hunting distances. It's also good to know if the boolit if going too fast for a number of reasons.

[45 2.1]

Semi-automatic rifles don't operate with cast at low velocity too well or not at all. I do like using them on prairie dogs at long range also, so that requires very good accuracy also. There is a place for everything in the scheme of shooting. Bolt guns became boring.............. at low velocity.

[Tackleberry41]

There are some that FPS is everything, I admit there was a time when I first started loading, I went for near max on some loads. I loaded for a long time without a chrony, went with book loads, never had a problem. They are safe, but your just guessing on velocity, and you sort of need that to use the ballistics tables, or plug it into a computer and come up with some numbers. Yea you can go off the book, but now that I have a chrony find they are seldom what the book says.

Then I started messing with subsonic ammo, yea you can fire a round and say yea no crack its subsonic, but how much? Maybe that load works today, but then when its hot or cold, it isnt. Or you load some and find well a few are not subsonic, your right there on the edge and a little deviation your over. Or maybe you can go hotter, its all guessing and wasting ammo. Now I can ran a round over the chrony and go well now I know, I need to drop a few 10ths of a grain, or I have a little room and can add a little. No more guess work.

I dont use my chrony to get some absolute maximum, I find a good load, I will chrony so I know. And if you start messing with something thats not in a book. Your going to find plenty of 45 colt numbers in the book, but almost always out of a pistol, you go pushing them down more barrel, those numbers are worthless. No chrony, who knows. A chrony was one of my better reloading investments.

[1Shirt]

Many years ago when we were in a muzzle loading phase, BTroj and I were playing with a 58 cal musket and minie's seeing just how small a charge would still propel a projectile to 100 yds. If memory serves me right, we got down to about 5gr. of 3F, and quit there. Standing behind the shooter, you could see the minie in flight. It was sort of a bang, pause, thump type of thing, and would really like to know the time to target. And, believe it or not, even with only a 5 gr charge, we had one Minie stick in a 2x4.
1Shirt!

[MBTcustom]

Personally, its about seeing what can be done with cast lead. I've shot thousands of boolits at normal speeds and I got bored with it. My first challenge I set for myself was to be able to shoot a 1" 5 shot group at 100 yards off hand with a Marlin 30-30. It took me two five gallon buckets of COWW to do it, and a lot of discipline, but I succeeded. Went on to other calibers and got to where I can work up acceptable hunting loads easily, and accurate target loads were no problem either. What I wanted in an accurate target load was 25 shots inside 2" at 100 yards. I got bored with that. I needed something to stimulate my mind. A new frontier to explore.
The first time I started shooting with fps being my goal was when I discovered the 358 Winchester and worked up to 2400fps with accuracy. That was fun, but there was still speed there I couldn't tap because I ran out of case capacity. I started building rifles for the purpose and seeing how fast they could be shot, and I even built several for members of the site and testing different theories of the HS cast boolit.
its been a wild ride with lots of wins, and several disappointments, but all in all very mentally stimulating.
FPS is not the only unit of measure that people dedicate themselves to pushing. There are several here who are interested only in high RPM, and emphasize that facet rather than FPS.
Others focus on boolit expansion. Some look only at group size. Some require a combination of these.
The point is, it's human nature to find limits and then find ways to trample those limits and push further. It's one of the best parts of being human. But in order to do that, you must have a standard of measure by which to judge failure and success by. Otherwise we are all winners and get graded on a curve, which is extremely lame.
With chronographs being cheap enough that almost anyone can afford them, FPS (and calculated from that, RPM) has become a very popular unit of measure.

Some people drive a Prius to work, but build and race dirt track on the weekends. They too are very concerned with RPM and MPH even though it is the last thing on their minds when they are driving to their 9-5 jobs. For me, when I'm hunting, the last thing on my mind is FPS, RPM, group size, or any other sundry detail I ponder when shooting. All I'm concerned with is that first cold bore shot (as in singular). Totally different objective. However, all the work I did with he aforementioned parameters can give me a much improved range of confidence in that in that moment of truth.
You are right though. There comes a time to quit experimenting and shoot a lot to get to know a standard load. I have done this with both of the rifles I hunt with. I got all the fussing and pitling done with a long time ago, so I can just grab my gun and make it happen.
However, there are some guns (like the XCB rifles) that I never intend to hunt with. They are designed and built to find the limits and push them. Their only purpose for me is a test bed to see what does or does not work. Therefore, FPS and RPM are constantly considered. They are nothing more than units of measure. Just like ten-thousandths of an inch, minutes and seconds of angle etc etc etc. which has nothing directly to do with practical hunting accuracy.

[Newtire]

Pb2au I have always had a hunger for knowledge. It's why I am considered a "jack or all trades" by some and a "know it all" by others. I don't know it all of course, but when you can have a good conversation on almost any topic some folks get almost irrationally irritated by it. I have built bows, I have driven cars too fast when I was too young to know better, I just can't see the max FPS crowd in that light. I guess I can see how somebody might be retentive enough to want to know what every bullet is traveling, but that still doesn't necessarily equal accuracy. And as for max FPS crowd... I constantly see posts (again not always on cast boolits) about how they exceeded max speed or max load by X or Y. Shortly thereafter I usually see posts with blown guns, and damaged flesh. That is no more a quest for knowledge than a guy redlining a car engine until it blows because he thinks its "cool". And 9 times out of 10 after the gun and load are redlined to detonation I see a "X caliber is weak" or "X brand is horrible" argument by the very same folks.

Gunshots at ranges and accuracy considered mythical were made by men without a working encyclopedic knowledge of the higher mechanics of cast boolit shooting.

GoodOlBoy

Different strokes for different folks. Good to not be mandated by anyone to be forced into doing anything. If someone wants to chrono and someone doesn't-just shows we live in a free country. I myself like to know about how fast my boolits are going so nice to have a chrony for me.

[TXGunNut]

A Chrony and a good spotting scope are two of my favorite pieces of shooting equipment. Without them I do a lot of guessing and I'm not very good at guessing. If I don't know exactly what's going on I waste a lot of time and components and both are precious these days.

[GoodOlBoy]

Yeah a good spotting scope is a must when your eyes are going like mine are.

GoodOlBoy

[obssd1958]

I may be mistaken, but for me, I use the chrony to find at what fps my loads for a specific cartridge get more accurate. If I then have a different component that I want to try, I have a velocity range to start my load work up at (if it's a safe range for the components that I have chosen, of course).
It's worked pretty well so far!

and of course - YMMV!!!!

[Harter66]

I use the chrony to chase speed but in just a couple of rifles because we have to meet a minimum 100 yd energy for big game rifles. Weird things can happen when you have all the numbers to meet that requirement, like a 223 with a 55gr boat tail makes it with 64 lbft and a 45-70 misses by 6 lbft . Mind you that happens at the extremes but it does happen. I have a spire point 200 gr boolit and it comes closer to the 1910 fps in a x39 than the 06'. It was also interesting to see a pp'd boolit out run a jacketed lighter bullet in a minor wildcat.

[detox]

I use my chroni just to check velocity...grouping matters most. I am getting good at estimating velocity by felt recoil and not using the chroni. I can feel the difference between 1400, 1800, and 2200fps from my 308 rifle. Without my chroni I would not know this.

Chroni is weird, but cool tool. I purchased my cheap chroni thru Wal Mart.

[GLynn41]

I find it interesting-- as an example sometimes a harder lube is a little faster than soft does it matter not really but I find it interesting- I use it to help with my shooting distance- as i check accuracy= when it falls below a certain velocity--- i know where that is at -- often an accurate load has a small es but not always -- I find that interesting- and I use it to protect me-- I tried a load of H335 with the 250 speer and got way too much velocity-- It resized fine--looked fine as to primer-- i did not measure the the pressure ring because the chrono told me no go-- each his own I like having a chrono

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

As a good friend says "Speed Kills...".