With the 6.5 Creedmore being all the rage, the .260 seems to have very much dropped off the radar. Is it inferior performance-wise to the Creedmore or is it just a failure of Remington's marketing?

The 260's biggest enemy seemed to be poor marketing early on.

At the local Sportsman's Warehouse, 6.5 Creedmore takes up several shelves. The .260 has a tiny little corner to itself.

My primary varmint gun is a .260 Remy and I love it. Reloading for it is a breeze as there are many combinations of bullet and powder loads available. Brass is a snap as one can easily make their own by opening up .243 brass plus Starline brass offers affordable quality brass in .260. Right now the 6.5 CR is the rage but there are still a lot of .260 enthusiast out here. Biggest problem .260 has is available factory ammo and what is available is rather pricey.

It’s a clue to its popularity when companies like EuroOptic start blowing out high tier rifles chambered for the cartridge.

As for Why? there have been countless good cartridges that didn’t make the popularity cut while others did for reasons having nothing to do with their suitability for any particular purpose or superiority (or inferiority) to others. A prime example, IMO, is the 308 Winchester. I have owned four rifles chambered for the cartridge despite the fact that I knew from the first that there were others that had better ballistics and were more suited for any particular purpose I could name. Ballistics, however, aren’t everything. Even the 6.5 Creedmoor wasn’t an overnight success if we count all the years since its development.

And FWIW, I don’t believe that any cartridge has succeeded or failed in popularity because of the marketing by its developer. Remington may be guilty of many missteps regarding its firearms, but the lack of popularity of a cartridge bearing its name? Nah.

(I have a theory that no cartridge will ever really be popular if it doesn’t have at least one odd number [1, 3, 5, 7, 9] in its name. There have been exceptions, of course, but how many?)

I like the 260 Remington, even though I don’t have one. Often, performance that is old, is new again, with some of these cartridges. One needs to be careful, just look at the 223 WSSM, the 25 WSSM, & others. Yes, you can find ammo, with effort.

We have two rifles in 6.5 Swede, older milsurp and a modern CZ. The cartridge is longer, but more case capacity. I can take it up to Creedmoor speeds if desired in the CZ.

The 270 Win is within fractions of the Creedmoor, but slightly more performance. My neighbor has a Creedmoor & likes it, Browning.

I do like my 284 Winchesters, don’t plan on ammo at Walmart though.

I’ve always said, it would be boring if we all used a Savage 110 in 30-06.

quote:

Originally posted by Dawes:
With the 6.5 Creedmore being all the rage, the .260 seems to have very much dropped off the radar.

If we go by the factory ammo selection, 260 Remington is more popular today than it was 10 years ago. Back then, the factory loads were limited to lighter varmint bullets and hunting bullets of 120 grains or less. When Remington received SAAMI approval, 6.5mm bullets were lighter and shorter. Therefore the 260 case design and the twist rates at that time were OK. IMO, the popularity of 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5x47 actually increased 260 Remington sales.

In more recent years, longer and heavier bullets have become popular. Barrel twist rates changed to allow the 260 to stabilize 140-ish grain bullets, but the case still isn't optimal for the longer bullets.

Hornady's 6.5 Creedmoor case was sized from the beginning for 140-ish grain bullets. Compared to the 260, the 6.5CM case has a little less powder capacity, but it handles long & heavy bullets better.

Hornady's marketing folks were smart in getting quite a few gun makers to offer 6.5CM rifles as 6.5CM ammo hit the market. Furthermore, Hornady sold true match-grade ammo at quite reasonable prices. It was a coordinated effort that worked. Not overnight, but they got the ball rolling and it never stopped.

***
From a performance standpoint, 260 pushes the same bullet a little faster than a 6.5CM. But in the overall scheme of things, the additional MV has insignificant effect or drop and drift. Accuracy wise, the reloaders tell me that 6.5CM is a little easier to tune for accuracy than 260. However, the 6.5x47 evidently is the accuracy king of the 6.5mm bores.

In my neck of the woods there's a family of very talented shooters who compete with rifles chambered in 260AI. One of them one this year's Steel Safari with his 260AI. IIRC, loaded with SMK 142, he has a really accurate rifle with great flight ballistics.

Thanks, fritz, for that discussion of the 260 Remington. Although I’m vaguely aware of how case design can affect how a cartridge performs, it’s not something I usually think about.

I’ve had a Remington Mountain Rifle in .260 for many years. It’s light, accurate and powerful enough for Kentucky white tails. My son hunts with his grandfather’s Model 7 in .260. Just enough, not too much. I like it the caliber.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
(I have a theory that no cartridge will ever really be popular if it doesn’t have at least one odd number [1, 3, 5, 7, 9] in its name. There have been exceptions, of course, but how many?)

You know, I have also wondered "what's in a name" so to speak, and I believe you have a solid hypothesis.
.243, 7-08, .308, all in the cool kids club, .260 and .338 Federal (outlier for odd numbers) not so much.

Apologies for the drift, but marketing vs. logic fascinates me at times.

Well that explains why .22lr has been an absolute marketing failure. For decades now.

Ah, fritz, fritz, fritz: You take things here so seriously.
Did you see this part?

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
There have been exceptions, of course ...

The number thing reminds me of Horace Greely’s comments about horse thieves and Democrats.
“Not all cartridges with odd numbers in their names are popular, but [almost] all popular cartridges have odd numbers in their names.”

And if my number hypothesis is true, it is mostly about more modern cartridges. At one time firearms marketing tended to exaggerate size: 38 Special and 44 Special are the most common enduring examples. “Magnum” has declined in usage as well. As I say, though, there are exceptions to the number thing as evidenced by the rise of the so-called* “6mm” cartridges with their metric designation rather than 0.243" or some variation more familiar to U.S. shooters. That, however, could be, at least in part, because Americans are becoming more accustomed to metric measurements, but not enough for them to have completely lost a bit of exoticness.

* 6mm = 0.236" But it would have been a marketing disaster to name a cartridge the “243 Creedmoor” or “243 Dasher,” as would have been “6.2mm Anything” with its two even numbers.
(“6.17mm Something” might have worked, but, eh …, probably not: not distinct enough from 6.5—which should have been 6.7mm.)

There's are difference between correlation and coincidence.

Continuing making ludicrous statements, and yes, I will respond to them.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I will respond to them [ludicrous statements].

If you have time for anything else, I gather that you don’t pay much attention to the rest of the forum.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
There's are difference between correlation and coincidence.

Continuing making ludicrous statements, and yes, I will respond to them.

Fact of the matter is that we don't know if there's a correlation. Marketing is everything and some chamberings become more popular than others based solely on marketing. Part of that marketing is what the cartridge gets named.

I don't buy the "numbers as a part of the cartridge name" as a reason for success or failure. Not for a moment. Not odd numbers, not evens, not prime numbers.

A "3" appears in many North American chamberings, because that's a common caliber range. Woohoo -- it must be a magical part of the success story.

Consider AR15. Is the 6.5 Grendel successful and the 6.8 SPCII a failure? Is the 300 Blackout selling because its name includes an odd number, or because it uses a bullet size that is common in North America? Are 224 Valkyrie and 22 Nosler doomed just because of a number? Will the 6mm ARC go the way of the dodo?

There are a bunch of precision rifle shooters who evidently don't understand the "name marketing". Time to throw away 6BR, 6BRA, 6 Dasher, 6XC, and 6 Creedmoor since they will never make it. The .284 wasn't really a success with factory loadings, but that hasn't stopped precision shooters (like F-class) from chambering it in rifles.

Nosler better get with the game and rename 22 Nosler, 26 Nosler, 28 Nosler, and 30 Nosler.

20 gauge and 28 gauge shotguns have been such failures. Thankfully, the 16 gauge exists.

We all know that 44 Magnum and 44 Special died because of the names.

****
Back to .260 Remington. Its following pales compared to the 6.5 Creedmoor, and I seriously doubt the number within the name has anything to do with it. The 6.5CM has a better case design, had a coordinated marketing and manufacturing rollout, was the right cartridge at the right time for many shooters, and factory ammo was properly priced.

However, maybe with Bendable-speak, someone might find different reasons.

I just had this very conversation with a shooting friend. We both considered the .260 just as the 6.5 CM arrived. In order to use all the available case capacity with the growing long match bullet market, .260's needed a something longer than the short action by Remington and others.

He built his on a custom length action and chambered to use the high BC bullets. 6 mm Creedmoor is his latest build with a 6 ARC bolt gun also in the works. I'll stick with the 6.5.

quote:

Originally posted by TRshootem:

In order to use all the available case capacity with the growing long match bullet market, .260's needed a something longer than the short action by Remington and others.

Exactly. Ideally if loading a bullet such as a Berger 140 Hybrid 260 should be built on a long action to take advantage of the case volume. The 6.5CM and 6.5x47 are better option for a SA. A 20 degree shoulder case will not have the inherit accuarcy of a 30-40 degree shoulder. Look at the record setters regardless of caliber. Handloader.... 6.5CM or 6.5X47, no contest 6.5x47.

The 6.5CM has seemed to benefit from time & Ammo mfgs Attention to it with high BC & long bullets tailored towards its 1:8 twist rate. Most of the 260 Rem chambered rifles I found used a 1:9 twist rate which didn’t have similarly efficient commercially ammo suitable for long distance precision accuracy. Not to say the 260 Rem is not precise. You can hand load a few rounds with similar effects of the 6.5CM. Now that the 6.5CM has simmered a bit, mfgs have focused back on the 260 Rem & I expect some better performing loadings for it in the near term. If you can get a 260 Rem at a good price, you might consider it as it is a great mid to long distance hunting gun..

Military-wise, the Dutch seem to be the odd man out by specifying a new Designated Marksman Rifle in .260 Remington:

https://www.thefirearmblog.com...-marksman-rifle-dmr/