Talk:Cartridge (firearms)

Powder to energy

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)

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.

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)

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 often used in pistol rounds, but is often seen in older black powder rifle rounds such as the .45-70. These cartridges were designed to be filled nearly to capacity with black powder when they were first invented. Adding wadding to them, many people use Dacron, the "stuffing" found in many plush toys, to take up extra space present inside the cartridge when loaded with smokeless powder to promote uniform ignition.

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) because they are components,perhaps they belong in the page,unless they have too much info,like sufficient to fill something a whole lot bigger than a stub or page section or something,andprimer could be an eception,because it is used in muzzleloaders as well,not just cartridges.haha,i just realized everything but th case is,but they should have a little detail on this page,with more on the case.Keserman (talk) 17:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

Electrically-fired cartridges still have a primer. Instead of using a percussion-sensitive chemical, they use an electrically-sensitive chemical to ignite the main charge. BBODO (talk) 07:51, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Timing is off here 46 comes before 55 not later... and which was it 46 or 47?

"This cartridge was introduced in England by Lang, of Cockspur Street, London, about 1855. Later in 1846, M.Houiller, another Paris gunsmith, improved on the system by introducing a fully metallic cartridge in 1847.[6]"

D Fortini 20:14 14 Dec 08 EST —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.229.217.242 (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

I suggest the Caliber section be reduced to a brief definition of what caliber means and then finish the section with a link to the caliber page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliber Lrenh (talk) 05:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

In need of work...

This article is overly long and disorganized. Here are some thoughts on things that could be done to tighten it up and make it more readable.

1. Remove the lists, as suggested above. This article is too long to have such lists in it.
2. Move the History section up in the article. Understanding why cartridges are the way they are requires some background on the subject.
3. Put in a short section up at the top, directing to main articles on things like paper cartridge, rimfire, centerfire, caseless ammunition blank (cartridge), Dardick tround, and other specific sub-topics that users who end up here might be more interested in.
4. Shotgun ammunition should not be mentioned here, other than as a "see also"; shotgun ammunition is called "shells" not "cartridges", and is covered in shotgun shell.
5. "Drill round" needs to point to military dummy
6. And, of course, references are needed.

Anyone have any additions or comments? I going to stick this article on my "to do" list... scot (talk) 15:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

1. Shotgun shells ARE cartridges, and they're even called so on the shotgun shell page. A google search for shotgun cartridge also confirms this use. Shotgun shells should be reintroduced and covered as well.

History section in need of work...

On the History section, in particular, I'm in agreement with scot, 14 Aug 2008. I had to re-read the History section quite a number of times to get a feel for the overall history of the cartridge, and I still feel a bit confused about some points. The narrative of the history of such a well known object should be sufficient in itself for a normal well-educated reader to gain a basic understanding of the subject matter without requiring them to make frequent side-missions of research. Not the case with this article. And after two hours I still couldn't tell you why "Integrated paper cartridge" merits a heading, or even really what such a thing is.

Feel free to contact me via email if you'd like to collaborate with me in fixing up the History section. (I'm not a confident solo wikipeditor) - Permacultura (talk) 14:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Cartridge made with aluminum cases

The article writes:"Some ammunition is also made with aluminum cases (see picture)".Well, there's advantages (and at least one problem} with cartridge made with aluminum cases.The article hasn't deepness about aluminum cases.Agre22 (talk) 22:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)agre22

should be moved,perhaps?

just to suggest,perhabs this article would be better moved to "firearms cartridge".it seems better and more understandable,in situations in real life where the word "cartridge" may be confused in definition,"firearm(s) cartridge seems more proper,especially in speech.thanks,Keserman (talk) 17:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

No, Cartridge (firearms) is a good example of the appropriate use of mediawiki naming and the use of a disambiguator (in brackets). No-one calls them "firearms cartridges", so there is no real value to an ability to directly wikilink as firearms cartridge. Within the context of firearms, they're called "cartridges" pure and simple, so a wikilink and WP:pipe trick allows cartridge to link easily. If they have to be linked from elsewhere, under any name we can't predict in advance, we can still pipe links manually, e.g. "bullet _(sic)" Andy Dingley (talk) 08:44, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Long calibers section

The section titled "Calibers" has become extremely long and has many obscure rounds. I think it might be better to trim it down to most notable cartridges and then using the "main article" tag send it to something like "List of rifle cartridges" and "List of pistol cartridges" or something similar. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 03:01, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit?

Exactly what happened here? 71.146.26.8 (talk) 00:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Missed the bull

I deleted this:

"Most high-powered firearms launch relatively light bullets at high velocity to achieve a specific desired level of kinetic energy. To achieve any given level of muzzle energy, a relatively light bullet at high velocity is more desirable than a relatively heavy bullet at low velocity because the lighter bullet will generate less recoil. This is true because bullet energy increases in direct proportion to bullet weight (at any given velocity, if the bullet is twice as heavy it caries twice the energy) but energy increases in proportion to bullet velocity squared (for any given bullet mass, if the bullet is moving twice as fast if carries four times the energy), see physics of firearms). But, gun recoil is proportional to bullet mass (weight) times muzzle velocity. So, for any given muzzle energy, in any given gun, the lighter (and faster) the bullet is, the less recoil is generated and recoil is always an issue. Also, lighter bullets can shoot flatter across the useful range and offer other advantages.

"Bullet speeds are limited by maximum chamber pressure, which in turn is limited by strength of the case and sometimes the gun chamber. At least among rifle designs, most modern guns and cases have a similar pressure limit. Up to a point, larger cartridges in any given bore size can generate more velocity with any given bullet. However case size has practical fundamental limits related to how the best feasible modern propellants burn and to the fact that as case capacity increases bore damage with each shot increases. At some point, increasing case size merely creates a design that will destroy the barrel before one could develop a safe and useful load. See Cartridges of the World, various articles and discussions in various editions.

"Velocity is also limited by fundamental characteristics of the propellant gases (mean molecular mass). With conventional propellants, within feasible pressure limits, a limit exists at about 6000 fps (1830 mps), regardless of case size or barrel length. See Cartridges of the World, various articles and discussions in various editions."

because it's more about ballistics than cartridges... TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 01:39, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Good delete. Definately "ballistics", not "cartridges" and the stuff about recoil is untrue anyway. Energy in one direction always means the same energy in the opposite direction. Can't get something for nothing.BBODO (talk) 07:57, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

MAJOR Re-write

This article's a mess. MANY changes today. Rearranged. Deleted a lot of superfluous stuff. Corrected a lot of bad info. Added many links. Fixed all the bad "Primer" links i could find. (Primers aren't "Percussion caps", they're "Primer (firearm)". Tried to excise the opinion. Still needs more chopping. Hope to add an original wikicommons diagram to illustrate cartridge parts. Bit off more than i could chew this round.BBODO (talk) 09:57, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Pinfire

Centrefire and rimfire have been covered prehaps pin fire should be as well? Pinfire — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdsdh1 (talk • contribs) 18:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Done. When I checked just now it was already mentioned in the lede. I also added it to the beginning of the section on all-metal cartridges. — ¾-10 17:09, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

"citation needed" tags...

The article currently has 20-odd inline tags requesting citation/clarification. My knee-jerk reaction is just to go through the text and remove any content that ain't adequately referenced, but maybe it would be better if those of you out there who know more about this subject sort it out first to ensure that no essential content gets removed. --Technopat (talk) 10:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to trim out the tags, not the info. Many of them fall under the "sky is blue" rule, and are attached to quite obvious bits of info. Eg, the bit about firing a flintlock is fairly standard information about the system. The sentence about cartridges being almost universally used is another titbit that doesn't need support. --Dmol (talk) 11:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Revolver cartridge in automatic firearms

Was there ever a type of automatic firearm that used revolver cartridges? I know that SMGs use semi-auto cartridges, but have never heard of a similar weapon firing revolver cartrdiges. 65.42.26.36 (talk) 14:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)