Why The .25-45 Sharps Is The Worst New AR Round
This is one of those posts I’ve been meaning to get to for a while, but haven’t really felt the urge to write.
The subject came up recently* in my comments, though, and I really enjoy responding to people, so I might as well kill these two birds with one stone. This won’t be an in-depth analysis like that infamous article I wrote on the 6.8mm SPC, but something a little more lighthearted.
Have you ever seen the movie Kung-POW! Enter the Fist? I haven’t, but there is this scene in that movie:
.25-45 Sharps is sort of like Wimp Lo. Purposefully designed wrong as a joke. At least, I hope.
Sharps’ quarterbore round is based on the .223 Remington, using the same case head and brass, with the same case length and overall length – the only real change is that the caliber has been increased from 0.224″ to 0.257″. That means, to fit inside the cartridge’s envelope, bullets for the .25-45 Sharps have to be short and stubby for their size, a characteristic shared by such ballistic wonders as the .30-30 Winchester, and .30 Carbine.
Unlike .30-30, though, .25-45 Sharps is a new caliber, and one that shooters have to go out of their way to use, at that. Let’s face it, the ol’ .30-30 WCF has the ballistics of a dropped potato, but at least it makes up for that with ubiquity. The .25-45 Sharps? Nope.
Sharps Rifle Company (or rather, the company that is wearing Sharps’ tanned skin on their face name) claims that the .25-45 Sharps is capable of high velocities of around 3,000 ft/s with 87 gr bullets, although there seems to be some confusion as to what barrel length gives those velocities:
…
Those are coincidentally the exact numbers originally advertised for the much larger .250-3000 Savage round when it was introduced in 1915, a cartridge that has a dramatically larger case with much greater internal volume – 47 grains H2O, versus the 31 grains of the .25-45 Sharps, to be exact. Somehow, Sharps found a way to get the .25-45 to perform like a round with 50% more internal volume, possibly through mystical Eastern arts involving a backspace key.
So what’s the point of a rifle cartridge that you can’t find, that can only fire dumpy, low-BC bullets, and which probably won’t give its advertised performance from your rifle? Well, Sharps claims:
Just like the famously brush-busting .250-3000, right?
Finally, we get to the name. Sharps takes the Dream of the 1890s to a whole new level with “.25-45”, mimicking the 19th Century naming convention of caliber followed by charge in blackpowder. Apparently not content with the name “.25-27”, however, Sharps altered the format by changing the number after the dash to the case’s length in millimeters, further proving that hipsters can’t decide which is cooler, Europeans, or the Time of Cholera.
Really, at that point why not just name it the 32.5 Microfurlong Center Fire?
More seriously, the .25-45 Sharps isn’t really that bad, and I’m sure that someone somewhere will get some use out of it (it’s legal for deer hunting in all 50 states! Something Sharps was sure to stamp all over their marketing lit), but it doesn’t really seem like there’s a strong case for the round to exist. Sharps has tried very hard to convince us that the .25-45 is an old friend, like the .45-70, .44-40, or .30-30, even going so far as to appropriate the name of one of America’s great & gone gunmakers in the process. The problem for Sharps is that we put up with the dumpy performance of calibers like the .30-30 not only because they follow naming conventions dating to the time of our great-great-great-grandparents, but also because we can find them on the shelves of every gun store in America.
So, I ask: What’s the point of an uninspiring newcomer like the .25-45 Sharps? Besides selling uppers for SRC, I mean.
*EDIT: This actually has been sitting in my drafts folder, completed, for over a month. Better late than never, I guess!
Nathaniel is a history enthusiast and firearms hobbyist whose primary interest lies in military small arms technological developments beginning with the smokeless powder era. He can be reached via email at nathaniel.f@staff.thefirearmblog.com.
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As promised, Nat, here is my rebuttal to you but posted in the main stack of comments.
On the subject of performance, 25-45 Sharps suffers more from perhaps vaguely deceptive marketing practices than outright impotence or fabrication. Most people who just see AR15 are going to assume it's for a 16" barrel instead of the 20" barrel that the company used for the numbers on 25-45 Sharps. Granted, 16" seems to be just assumed for tactical applications and unspecialized AR's and other carbines in general, but I have no idea if hunters, for whom this round seems to be intended, go with longer barrels as a matter of course.
In dimensions, 5.56x45 has a bullet diameter of 5.7mm, or .223". 25-45 Sharps has a bullet diameter of 6.5mm, or .257". Equivalent length wound channels will favor 25-45 sharps. Let's do some math to find the volume of 1 inch of wound channel for the different rounds. First, let's do 5.56x45. Formula: V=Pi*r^2(h)
r=.223in/2 = .1115in; h=1in
So
V=3,14x(.1115^2in)x1in
V=3.14x0.01243in^2x1in
V=.039in^2x1in
V=.039in^3
So the volume of 1 inch of wound channel of 5.56x45 is .039 cubic inches.
Now for 25-45 Sharps
r=.257in/2 = .1285in h=1in
V=3.14x(.1285^2in)x1in
V=3.14x(0.0165in^2)x1in
V=.052in^2x1in
V=.052in^3
So the volume of 1 inch of wound channel of 25-45 sharps in .052 cubic inches.
5.56x45 = .039in^3
25-45 Sharps = .052^3
And now for surface area of the wound channels per inch of length.
Formula: 2pi(r)h+2pi(r^2)
For 5.56x45:
A=2x3.14x.1115inx1in+2x3.14(.1115^2in)
A=.7in^2+6,28(.01243in^2)
A=.7in^2+.078in^2
A=.778in^2
For 25-45 Sharps:
A=2x3.14x.1285inx1in+2x3.14(.1285^2in)
A=.807in^2+6.28(.0165in^2)
A=.807in^2+.1037in^2
A=.911in^2
5.56x45 = .778in^2
25-45 Sharps = .911in^2
25-45 Sharps has a proportional wound channel a full 25% larger than 5.56x45. Per every inch of wound channel, 25-45 Sharps destroys 25% more tissue And when it comes to surface area of the wound channel which can bleed, 25-45 Sharps creates roughly 15% more surface area to bleed, which is in line with the comparative proportions of the rounds.
Note that these numbers assume both rounds are behaving as FMJ's which do not deform. Lack of deformation is a frequent occurence in 5.56x45 FMJ's even under ideal conditions. For 25-45 Sharps, all the information I can find indicates that only SP ammunition is sold for it. These numbers should be taken as baselines for tissue destruction, as tissue destruction will be higher in reality with the expanding ammunition used for hunting.
At the muzzle, 3000FPS and 1739FtLbs for an 85gr bullet is very zippy and quite stout.. I'd rather do these in meters per second and joules, but I do not wish to misrepresent data by botching conversions. Let us establish a baseline. 5.56x45 from a 20" barrel in its 62gr SS109 loading indeed gets 3100FPS and 1303FtLbs, I am using SS109 / M855 because data for it is more current, it is the most ubiquitous standard 5.56x45 round, and its performance numbers beat the 55gr M193, which does achieve roughly the same velocity from the same length 20" barrel, but is more distant and therefore harder to compare to 25-45 Sharps. Anyway, Green Tip from 20" gives ~3100FPS and ~1300FtLbs while 25-45 Sharps from the same gives ~3000FPS and ~1700FtLbs, so the velocities are extremely similar while Sharps has a roughly 33% power advantage, a 25% tissue destruction advantage, and a 15% wound surface area advantage. So 25-45 Sharps indisputably hits harder and inflicts more damage.
Now we get to your arguments, which focus on ballistics. For internal ballistics, we start with your critique of 25-45 Sharps somehow squeezing out performance in a small case which compares to the performance of the larger 250-3000 Savage, you admit that 250-3000 Savage was introduced in 1915. Ammunition technology has improved significantly since back then. Firearms technology has improved significantly since then. Modern cases are sterner, modern actions can handle more pressure, and modern propellants can push harder. Indeed, your shapshot of what SAAMI claims backs this up, with 25-45 Sharps hitting 2850FPS according to them, which is not very far from what is advertised, proving that modern rounds can do more with less. In the famous example of 7.62x39 and 30-30, 30-30 has a case capacity of 45grH2O while 7.62x39 has a capacity of 35.6grH2O. Both of these rounds have median muzzle velocities of around 2300FPS. As for 25-45 Sharps and 250-3000 Savage, the numbers I'm looking at for Savage with its 47grH20 case capacity indeed show 3000FPS+ performance attaining just under 1700FtLbs for light 75gr bullets from a 24" barrel, and for heavier loads from 90gr-117gr, the median velocity is around 2800FPS with energy averaging around 1800FtLbs. From a quick look at things, it seems as if 25-45 Sharps and its 31grH20 case capacity is living up to the velocity and power levels with a smaller case and a shorter barrel. The performance of 25-45 Sharps is nothing magical or peculiar -- for a round of its weight with its case capacity. 5.56x45 has a case capacity of 28.5grH20. You're forgetting that 7.62x25 gets an 85gr round going 1600fps with a case capacity of 16grH2O from a barrel just a tad shorter than 5 inches. 25 Remington, introduced in 1906, gets only about 2200 FPS with 100gr bullets from a 41grH2O case. 25-25 Stevens, introduced in 1895, has a capacity of 29grH2O but can only muster 1500FPS with 86gr projectiles. 6.5 Grendel has a case capacity of 35grH20 and can push 90gr projectiles to about 2900FPS from a 24" barrel. 6.8 SPC has a case capacity around 38.5 and can push a 110gr bullet out to 2500FPS from a 16" barrel. 25-45 does not have any special magic to which makes it perform above and beyond its weight and propellant in a barrel.
Now we get to external ballistics. 25-45 Sharps flies alright for what its destined role seems to be. 25-45 Sharps, and that is a medium game round. It hits hard enough for the role, In term of ballistic coefficient, 25-45 Sharps flies flatly within the 300Yd envelope, which covers most hunting shots taken by people who aren't sadists, and fits within the marketing of it as a brush cartridge, which means relatively short sightlines and ranges. It hits with comparable energy to things like 6.5 Grendel, which I know you just love hearing about. So now to figure out the point of this cartridge.
It's at this point I can't really find any reason for this cartridge to exist, other than to cram a 30-30 into 5.56x45 brass or finally make a 250-3000 Savage or 257 Roberts analogue for the AR15. This does give it a purpose, allowing a swap from 5.56x45 to a stouter 6mm caliber for hunting without having to change magazines or bolts. That actually ought to draw in some buyers. But from the perspective of bringing 6mm calibers to the AR15, that's already been done more than once, and 6.8SPC can fit in the STANAG magazine. 6.5x39 and 6.8x45 are both more affordable and more abundant, and they perform better. However, I like the idea of being able to easily change to a different caliber with as few swaps as possible. I could argue that 25-45 Sharps is the start of a new breed of AR cartridges here by allowing the same bolts and magazines to be used, only necessitating a change of barrel. However, its lack of standout characteristics, will make it always just a niche cartridge. Say hello to small bore 375 Reaper!
This is legal for hunting in Ohio?? Better do some more research man, it's not.