That's Wolf5013 seated in the center. The occasion was my Lady's birthday party.

Welcome to the Rimfire Roundup Group. Wolf is married to my sister. We shoot together whenever he gets out to the ranch.

Wolf is the best shot with a bow I have ever seen.

Rimfire

I would like to address the topic of Foot Pounds of energy. In order to understand foot pounds I will make it easy for you. A foot pound is the amount of energy expended when a force of one pound acts through a distance of one foot in the direction of the force.

Still confused? Ok. If you were to drop a one pound rock from one foot high over your foot you will have experienced one foot pound of energy. OUCH ! Now imagine that you drop an 80 or 90 pound rock on your foot...Please don't physically do any of these experiments just imagine doing them! Your foot would be crushed.

80 or 90 foot lbs of energy is usually what is transmitted by a .22 cal rimfire round at 100 yards.

To understand how much this is, think about shooting a 30-06 rifle. If you have done it, you will know what I mean. If you have never shot a 30-06 let me tell you, you will be surprised at the amount of recoil your shoulder receives. According to the NRA Firearms Fact Book, the recoil of a 30-06

Is 20.0 foot pounds! That would be the equivalent (at least in my little world of fantasy and imagination) of dropping a 20 pound rock (imagine a bowling ball which is only 16 pounds) on your foot from a height of one foot.

I don't know anybody who would willingly subject any body parts other than their shoulder to that kind of punishment. Bouncing a rifle stock off your head or stomach would be instructive, but very, very stupid. (since there is no intelligence test required to access this site, I am telling you all that you are not allowed to perform any of these imaginary experiments without a written note, saying you can, signed by your Psychiatrist which must be pinned to you clothing during the experiment.)

80 foot pounds confined to an area of the .22 bullet (.224 inch's) is going to do a lot of damage. Of course the faster the bullet is traveling the more impact the hit will produce. My point here, is that even though a bigger center fire cartridge will hit (MANY) with more foot pounds, I ask "So What" I know I don't want to be hit by a .22 bullet.

I will get into this more in another blog. For now if you want to determine the muzzle velocity of your rimfire bullets, or determine foot pounds of energy, it is sometimes found on the cartridge box. If not, the Pyramydair gun website has a nifty calculator designed by Tom Gaylord that is very helpful. Although it is intended for air guns, I have used it successfully with rimfire rounds. No math involved. Tom Gaylord has done all the work for us. All that is required is to put in the information about the round you need the data for.

Here is the url: pyramydair.com/site/articles/formulas/.

Thanks for dropping by

Rimfire