Freezing Moon
FNG
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2021
It's common knowledge that heavier guns reduce felt recoil. Specifically, that the recoil will be inversely proportional to gun weight.
But recoil is measured in recoil energy and recoil velocity, and recoil energy varies a lot more than recoil velocity. For example, a 270 has 83% of the recoil energy of a 30-06 but 93% of its recoil velocity (I'm using representative loads for each but you get the idea).
If I want my rifle chambered in 270 to have no more recoil energy than my 8 pound 30-06, it can be as light as 6.64 pounds. But if I'm looking for equivalent recoil velocity, I can't go any lower than 7.44 pounds.
My questions are 1 Does anyone actually do the math like this when thinking about recoil and rifle weights and 2 Which metric do you use? I know energy=getting pushed out of the scope and velocity=how snappy the recoil is, but not sure which would correlate more to perceived recoil (or pain).
But recoil is measured in recoil energy and recoil velocity, and recoil energy varies a lot more than recoil velocity. For example, a 270 has 83% of the recoil energy of a 30-06 but 93% of its recoil velocity (I'm using representative loads for each but you get the idea).
If I want my rifle chambered in 270 to have no more recoil energy than my 8 pound 30-06, it can be as light as 6.64 pounds. But if I'm looking for equivalent recoil velocity, I can't go any lower than 7.44 pounds.
My questions are 1 Does anyone actually do the math like this when thinking about recoil and rifle weights and 2 Which metric do you use? I know energy=getting pushed out of the scope and velocity=how snappy the recoil is, but not sure which would correlate more to perceived recoil (or pain).