I will never figure everything out at once, so I'll just start off easy: I'm pretty sure the .30-06 is a .30 caliber bullet created in 1906, from what I read once. Easy, right? So, what does the 2nd "30" in a .30-30 mean or designate? In reading here & there, I've never found out how to actually figure out what all these cartridge numbers mean. Is there a super-secret code book somewhere?
Then there are, for example, the .32 caliber cartridges. There are names instead of numbers after the .32. I read when Federal made the .327 Federal Magnum, they just threw in the 7 for, lack of a better term, the cool factor. It's still a .32, but much higher pressure than the .32 H&R Mag. I think. And the case is longer for more powder/power.
Thanks

30 grains of powder under the 30 caliber bullet.
OR
Not many earplugs and muffs worn in 1895, so hearing loss was common, and the second 30 was spoken louder to prevent the 45-70 from being handed to the best marksman.

It could be true.

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Once upon a time there was some logic behind cartridge names (maybe), but then marketing got involved.

Yes there is absolutely no secret decoder, it seems like every different one is it’s own animal.

“Cartridges of the World” by Frank C. Barnes is a fantastic reference book for this subject. And yes, the second “30” was indeed meant to represent 30 grains of the then-new and cutting edge smokeless powder charge.

Which was much like IMR 3031 or Hercules HiVel #2. And European cartridge names normally include the case length (8x57, 9x19, etc.)

Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester were successful, because of the way they marketed their products. Christopher Spencer took one of his rifles to Abe Lincoln and let him shoot it on the White House lawn. I’m pretty sure marketing has always been involved in the firearms industry.

There is no standardized format for naming commercial US cartridges. It’s left to the designer/inventor to name it. The .38 S&W Special cartridge shoots a .357” bullet.

The one that really strikes me as odd is the .38 WCF cartridge. .44 WCF (.44-40) makes sense - It was originally a .44 caliber bullet, backed with 40 grains of black powder. The .38 WCF (.38-40) used a .40 caliber bullet (.401”), backed with .38 grains of black powder. Apparently, Winchester didn’t think .40-38 had a nice ring to it!

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The Swiss designated their 5.56 X 45 ammo as 5.6 mm GP90 (Gewehr Patrone 1990, meaning rifle cartridge 1990).

Consequently many shooters here believe it’s a different caliber and not compatible with other 5.56 X 45 NATO weapons. Since it’s a 63 grain boat tail projectile, it’s actually superbly accurate in AR-15 rifles with a 1:7 or 1:9 barrel twist. I’ve shot some in my Delta Hbar with great results at 300 m.

Good suggestion and it remains about the only source for a compiled listing of cartridge information.

Over the years, some have mentioned factual flaws in that book, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to spot them. I've been referring to various editions of "Cartridges of the World" for decades.

I'm not a cartridge collector, so I cannot point at examples of actual samples, but there has been speculation that cartridges such as the 44-40 were originally to use heeled bullets. That would have matched the case diameter and would have been a 44 caliber.

Someone that collects old cartridges may be able to show whether or not this could be the reason.

Alternately, since even cartridge such as the 38 Special have a 38-caliber case diameter, maybe they were using the case diameter even though a heeled bullet was not being used.

And then there are some that have two different names for the same thing. A 7X57 and a 275 Rigby are the exact same cartridge. Rigby sourced actions from Mauser and after the war didn't feel their "clients" would want something with a German slant to it so they went with the 275 Rigby It's the difference in measuring from the lands or the groves.
This is one of my all time favorite rifle cartridges.

There is totally no rhyme or reason for cartridge designations .
For example 38-40 Winchester ... it's not a 38 but a 40 cal ...
With 40 grains of black powder ... should be a 40-40 right ???
When I started reloading in 1967 there was no inter net ...but if you buy a copy of "Cartridges Of The World" it will almost make you an expert on cartridges and their history . Every few years I buy the latest edition , most interesting are the obsolete and foreign cartridges ... every round has a little history and even some load data and what brass can be used to form the case . It was in this book I learned the 7.5 Swiss could be easly formed from 284 Winchester ... had the rifle but all the 7.5 Swiss ammo was Berdan primed and not reloadable ... 284 Win. was easyly available then and reloadable .
You want to become an "Expert" overnight ... grab a copy of "Cartridges of the World" . The book , the 16th Edition , is around $30 ... and worth every penny !
And don't believe everything about cartriges you read on the net ... some of it is just not correct ...Get the Facts Jack !
Gary

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Well the 44-40 is actually a tapered (or small bottle necked) design. Never seen an evidence of it using a heel type bullet even in development. Winchester's earlier designs used the 44 Henry rimfire cartridge which did use a heeled bullet. I suspect marketing had something to do with the name when developing the "New, Improved!" 44-40 cartridge.

As to the 38 Special it does owe a bit to the cartridge case dimensions as it was a development from the early 38 Short and Long colt rounds. Those did use heel type bullets the same diameter as the case and were developed for use in both converted cap & ball revolvers as well as new guns that used the same (@ .375) bore dimensions. The 38 Short Colt still uses a heel type bullet and has seen at least some limited production in that form into current days. Colt tried to improve the 38 Long Colt by redesigning it to use a hollow base bullet that fit inside the case and expanded into the rifling of the older guns. Mean while newer designs tightened the bore up to the current specs for improve accuracy and overall performance. S&W took that ball and ran with it resulting in the popular 38 Special round.

So, "Cartridges of the World" seems like a book that might be in my future. I'm just hoping the reasons for the different editions of that book would be to update it with newer cartridge recipes. I don't reload (I know my limitations!) but it should help me understand the cartridge names better. That book is kinda the answer I was looking for, but didn't know it! I should have known there would be something like that in existence. I suppose I should get some reload equipment, mainly for the elusive .327 FM and the more expensive .44 Mag & Specials.
Thanks, guys, & have a Merry Christmas! I'm a little less confused now, which in itself is a miracle.

Not sure if your question was answered? First, a 30-06 is actually a .308 and the first US 30 caliber military round was a 30-40 Krag, carrying a 200 grain and the first .308" bullet and a rimmed case. The year 1906 is for the most part meaningless for this cartridge, but it is the one that stuck. The early Model 1903s used the same caliber and case, but with a different bullet and only 0.07" longer neck, plus was called the 30-03. The 1906 round would fire in an original 1903 and the 1903 round would chamber in the 1906, so that is where the confusion comes in, why bother to change the name from 30-03 to 30-06? To confuse things even further, there was another change made to the cartridge in 1926 with the introduction of the 30, M1 cartridge, so why didn't the military re-name it again the 30-26?

As stated above, many vintage calibers were invented in the days of black powder, using the caliber and adding the amount of powder as the second number. An old military round from the 1800s has more designations that you can shake a stick at. When gunmakers started changing the amount of powder in the 45-70 round it turned into calibers like 45-62, 45-75, 45-90, 45-100, 45-120, and that is only some of the calibers that were developed from the famous 45-70 round.

As for the 30-30, the name was done the same way, but the last 30 no longer referred to black powder, but rather bulk smokeless powder.

Having any one of the editions of Barnes Cartridges of the World is all you need. There are minor errors in the various editions, some old and new entries added, but the biggest change is that there are different articles in the back of the book that is of interest to some readers. I bought mine in 1989 and never felt I needed an update. You can find the old editions on ebay for $10 with free shipping or pay near $40 for the latest edition, but either way this should be required reference for any firearms enthusiast.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

The most current edition is likely worth having. I haven't bought one in years, but used to purchased the updates. It was never published on a regular basis, but did come out every few years.

Frank Barnes, the originator of the publication died a long time ago. He was also a long-time gunwriter and among the better ones. I don't know who updates the book now.

In the beginning cartridges were sold and identified by 3 digits. First was the bore diameter, second was grains of black powder, third was bullet weight. The original designation for the 45-70 was 45-70-500. One of the first names for the 30WCF aka 30-30 was 30-30-160. Thirty caliber, thirty grains powder and 160 grain bullet.

My two favorite obfuscatory cartridge namings are the 19th Century 38-40 which actually uses a bullet of approximately 40 caliber with (originally) a case designed to hold 40 grains of BP, and the 21st Century 327 Federal Magnum that, while truly a magnum cartridge design, uses a .313" diameter bullet. The former seems to be going against common practice by sneaking in an oversized bullet, while the latter carries a bullet with no discernible relation to the designation. Urban Legend holds that the 327 FM was named by taking the nominal bullet diameter (32 caliber) and adding a gratuitous "7" to the end to make it suggest the "real" Magnum, the classic 357. Who knows?

As for the COTW, updates, I think Frank Barnes gave up the franchise after about 6 editions, and the succeeding ones have been edited by several men, some fairly expert, some apparently mercenary hacks. However, FB got it off to such a good start that even the worst of the more recent editions are still useful for basic information.

Froggie

Can any of you suggest which issue, apart from "get the latest" would be the most accurate? It appears that successive issues didn't always get better.

During the black powder era one of the conventions was to use three numbers such as .45-70-500, with the third number being the bullet weight. That helped distinguish the later 500 gr .45-70 cartridge from the earlier .45-70-405 infantry rifle round and the .45-55-405 cavalry carbine round.

Another convention was to refer to caliber and length of the cartridge, such as the .38-90 Winchester which was also called the .38-3 1/4”.

Then there are marketing considerations. The .38-55 Ballard was renamed the .38-55 Winchester when Winchester started selling their Model 94 chambered in it.

Conversely Winchester developed the .30 Winchester Center Fire (.30 WCF) as a smokeless powder round for the Model 94, but when Marlin started selling their own lever guns in the cartridge they called it the “.30-30”, even though it had never been designed as a .30 caliber black powder cartridge holding 30 grains of black powder. Oddly enough the .30-30 name eventually stuck.

More recently, Remington did what they do best (screw up new cartridge introductions) by mis reading the market and getting the rifling twist wrong in rifles made for their .244 Remington. They eventually corrected the problem with a faster twist that would stabilize 100 gr spire point bullets, but they’d lost market share to slightly inferior .243 Winchester. Changing the name of the .244 Rem to the 6mm Rem didn’t really help. Similarly, they were late to the party with the superior .280 Remington, and a name change to 7mm Express didn’t help it gain any ground on the well established .270 Win.


There’s also the confusion caused by using groove diameter or land diameter. For example the .276 Enfield (intended as a replacement for the .303 British) used a .284” bullet, but they referenced the land diameter in the caliber, not the groove diameter.

The post WWII .280 British also used a .284” bullet but rather than calling it the .276 British, or the .284 British based on land or groove diameter, they averaged the two and went with .280 British.

The of course there is confusion caused by heel based bullets and a related temptation to use the exterior case diameter at the case mouth rather than bullet diameter - such as the .38 Special (.379” case mouth diameter) in cartridges that didn’t use heel based bullets. I suspect the motive there was to not lose ground and have a “.36” caliber pistol competing with rimfire cartridges like the .38 Rimfire Long that did use heel based bullets.

There’s also the military versus civilian designation issue. The .30 US Army was of course the .30-40 Krag, depending on who was talking about it, which is similar to the current situation with the .223 Rem and .308 Win, and the 5.56x45 NATO and 7.62x51 NATO that respectively share identical case dimensions with sometimes minor chamber differences.

I have also heard urban legend that “327” sounded extremely cool and a neat reference to a certain screaming Chevy small block V-8. Which seems absolutely ludicrous, given that handguns and muscle cars have nothing whatsoever in common but at this point I think we can agree that literally ANYTHING is possible, regardless of how ludicrous.

While on this subject, I must point out that I’ve always been moderately annoyed that the .32 H&R Magnum was so named. A fine cartridge in it’s own right, this cartridge is the epitome of of a .32 Special, not a magnum, and if I could re-write history, I would so name it the .32 H&R Special.

"The 1906 round would fire in an original 1903 and the 1903 round would chamber in the 1906"

While the '06 round will fit and fire in the '03 rifle, the reverse is not true. Or shouldn't be. Aside from the case length, the real difference between them was that the .30-'03 cartridge had a different and heavier RN bullet and had much different external ballistics to the .30-'06 cartridge and spitzer bullet. Therefore, the rear sight of the .30-'03 rifle had to be changed to match the ballistics of the newer .30-'06 cartridge. Therefore, the Army purposely made the .30-'06 rifle chamber dimensions shorter so that the .30-'03 cartridge could not be used in it, only the .30-'06 cartridge.

These should be available cheap on the used market. I'd get several, maybe an early one, one from ten or twenty years later, and a current one. That should cover most everything.

It's important to note that this started as a GUN DIGEST publication when John Amber owned GD. He also published GUNS ILLUSTRATED and HANDLOADERS DIGEST. Amber was a gun guy but he's been dead a long time. The company that owns the GD publications now may not be composed of gun people and that may have some bearing on the quality of the publications, even though some of the individual editors of the various publications are decent gunwriters in their own right.

I have used an old (7th Ed?) copy for years… I think it was the last one from Frank Barnes. It lacked a lot of newer cartridges so somewhere around here is a 10th or 11th Ed, IIRC. If I were starting fresh I’d look for a deal on the newest edition I could find reasonably for all the recently introduced cartridges, then try to find an early one from the FB era to get the original spirit of the project. Off topic, but I’d also buy the new Hodgdon annual for up to date info and loading data.


Of course there was already a 32 Special, a rifle cartridge in the 30-30 family, so that would have been confusing. I think of the H&R as the “32 Magnum Wannabe” but it’s awkward to say and irritates my dear friend Dale53, so I content myself with “32 H&R” and quit. From the factory it is not and never has been a legitimate magnum. Handloads can be quite another story!

I have to admit to not thinking of the 327 Small Block connection but would readily admit the possibility. Like many of us here, I “grew up(?)” dreaming of fast cars and powerful guns. Then girls complicated my life!

Froggie

Another item of note is that when a barrel starts with a .300” hole drilled, it’s called a 30 caliber. Then rifling grooves are cut .004” deep, usually six of them. Then it’s .308” across to the bottom of the grooves, and that is the desired bullet diameter. That’s why a 35 caliber usually takes .358” bullets, .244” bullets are used in a 6mm, and the same is true of many cartridges.

So the 32 revolvers should be .328" at the grooves? Even the 32 Ideal isn't that big! My head is starting to hurt!

Froggie

Read the top of the cartridge box, bottom right. My 1895 Win is marked 30GOVT06.

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While COTW remains a worthwhile publication to have on your shelf of gun books, today, it's not really necessary. Also, unless later editions of COTW have become more comprehensive, there are many of the obsolete and more obscure cartridges not to be found in it.

Wikipedia has good writeups on most every cartridge you'd want to know anything about, including dimensions, ballistics, and general historical background information. And there are many other websites having similar information, and in some cases, very extensive details and historical narratives. While I have an older edition of COTW and a large number of other cartridge-related reference books, if I want to know something concerning a specific caliber cartridge, I go first to Wikipedia.

One excellent cartridge reference book which includes both common and somewhat obscure and obsolete CF cartridges is Donnelly's "Handloader's Guide to Cartridge Conversions". Not too much information is provided on cartridge history, but it is very deep in dimensions and includes some ballistics and handloading data. As you might imagine, it is principally intended for use by handloaders who wish to make up all sorts of wildcat, obsolete, or unusual (including metric) cartridge cases starting with more available cartridge cases.

The British also sometimes used the bore diameter, not the groove diameter, in naming cartridges. For example the .303 Enfield uses a bullet of around 0.312" diameter.

An old Boss of mine used to Metal Detect old Military Encampments.
He found some Rimmed Bottle Neck Rimfire Rifle Brass. Big.
What it is? I don’t know.
I’ll bring in my best Cartridge Book.
We found it, then he looked at the back cover.
Frank Barnes! I know him.
We went to Grad School together at the Univ of New Mexico!

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Before the Internet, as I recall, I read there were a number of errors in the Donnelly book. Regardless, lots of good information, but I'd double check figures if possible from another source.

I bought the Donnelly book not long after it was first published more than thirty years ago. I can't remember the whole story, but seems a revised edition was in the works or maybe it was published, but that probably would have been after Donnelly's death.

A similar book by the late Ken Howell, "Designing and Forming Custom Cartridges for Rifles and Handguns" is also an excellent information source. Howell was the editor of HANDLOADER and RIFLE magazines for several years.

Mine has a 1987 copyright date, and is autographed by Donnelly. So it is probably a first edition. I found it at a used book store about 20 years ago, maybe even earlier.

There are several of them, American and European. For example the .56-46 Spencer and the .41 Swiss. I would guess the latter. They were in fairly common use in the US back in the late 19th Century.

Fun, ain’t it? Wait til you get into Smith and Wesson model numbers, or Harley Davidson model designations.

Funny you bring up Harley designations. I had a '73 Superglide when I was 19. I'd go to the Harley store to buy some part or whatever, and I'd get "Is it an FX, FXE, FLH, etc.?" I'd just ask how would I know? All that's written on it is Superglide across the metal thing between the forks!
Then there are the different Corvette engines' designations. And versions of different cars of all makes. I've had 4 Impalas: an '03, 2 '08s, and a '16. Each one had several years of the exact body, lights, etc., so if one drove by you had no idea what year it was titled. They all pretty much have the same trim levels on each generation, but I think the generation of my '08s was the only one with the V-8 SS.
I'm done trying to think for today!

The European system gives case length and bullet diameter ( 9x19) and f it has a rim ( 7.62x 54 R) but gives not clue one if the described cartridge is straight walled or bottle necked. Not much more helpful.