setting and allowing my mind to wonder the other day I pondered an oft asked question...what does barrel length have to do with velocity?
in smokeless powder you lose a fair amount of go with the shorter barrels so for grins I decided to look in my Lyman bp book for the difference in velocity versus barrel length.
shocked I found that the difference between a 24 inch barrel shooting a Lyman shocker of 420 grains versus a 32 inch barrel with the same boolit and charge of ...[arbitrarily]...80 grains GOEX 2f powder. the difference is around 100 FPS... 50 cal. looking at the 22 inch barrel in the same category I find that the loss is just about the same...not much more.
comparing the 54 cal I found just about the same thing.
so my question is thusly...what is the advantage of a 34 to 36 inch barrel in BPCR rifles instead of the shorter ... more compact barrel length of say 24 or 26 inch? I do know that the longer sight radius gives a more accurate and repeatable sight picture but as for ballistics...what is the advantage?
there has to be a length of barrel that is optimum for all area's of concern but is this measurement the 30 plus length that we always see on these rifles? there has to be a point of diminished returns and I guess that is what im looking for here.
take for example my22 inch barreled Ruger #1 in 45-70... I shot it the other day with 70 grains GOEX cartridge pushing a 405 grain accurate arms boolit with a 1/8th cookie and im saying that it spits that boolit rite down the lane. I would not feel under gunned shooting a moose with that combo so hence the question on barrel length versus power and ballistics.
just an exercise in mind m@$!&%#@(!0n... thankyou for the opportunity to resurrect this subject for some thoughts.