The .351 Winchester Self-Loading (.351 SL /.351 WSL) or 8.9x34mmSR is an American

rifle A rifle is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a gun barrel, barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus o ...

cartridge designed in 1906.

History

Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...

introduced the .351 SL in the

Winchester Model 1907 The Winchester Model 1907 is a blowback-operated, semi-automatic rifle produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company beginning in 1907 with production ending in 1957. It fired a cartridge of intermediate power, cycled through a semi-automatic ...

self-loading A semi-automatic firearm, also called a self-loading or autoloading firearm (automatic firearm, fully automatic and selective fire firearms are also variations on repeating firearm#Autoloading, self-loading firearms), is a repeating firearm who ...

rifle as a replacement for the

Winchester Model 1905 The Winchester Model 1905 (also known as the Model 05), is a blowback-operated, semi-automatic rifle produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company beginning in 1905 and discontinued in 1920. This rifle loads cartridges from a 5 or 10-round c ...

and the .35 SL. The .351 SL proved popular with police and security forces as the only chambering available in the model 1907, and was used by France in both world wars.Barnes & Amber, ''Cartridges of the World'', p. 86. The 8×35mm cartridge of the Ribeyrolles M1918 was based on the .351 SL. An experimental

Thompson submachine gun The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy gun", "Chicago typewriter", or "trench broom") is a blowback-operated, selective-fire submachine gun, invented and developed by Brigadier General John T. Thompson, a United States Arm ...

was also made to fire .351 SL in 1919 but was never produced commercially.

The modern day

While a few gun writers in the 1960s criticized the .351 SL for being inadequate as a

deer hunting Deer hunting is hunting deer for meat and sport, and, formerly, for producing Buckskin (leather), buckskin hides, an activity which dates back tens of thousands of years. Venison, the name for deer meat, is a nutritious and natural food sourc ...

round, and the round's power has sometimes been compared to a

.357 Magnum The .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum, .357 S&W Magnum, .357 Magnum, or 9×33mmR (as it is known in unofficial metric designation) is a smokeless powder cartridge with a bullet diameter. It was created by Elmer Keith, Phillip B. Sharpe, and Douglas B. ...

carbine load, the .351 SL's killing power falls somewhere between the .30-30 Winchester and the .35 Remington. Townsend Whelen praised it as a "good cartridge for deer and similar game in close timber." Most commercially available loads for the .351 SL launched a 180 grain .351 caliber bullet at between 1,850 and 1,925 fps from a 20-inch barrel, yielding identical muzzle energy to the .30-30 when fired from a 20-inch barrel (rather than a manufacturer's long test barrel). When compared to other medium bore rounds, the .351 SL is closer in power to the .35 Remington (200 grain .358 bullet at 1,950 to 2,000 fps from a 20-inch barrel) than it is to the

carbine (158 grain bullet at about 1,800 fps). The .351 SL cartridge used an unusual bullet diameter of .351 instead of the .357 or .358 more commonly used in .35-caliber rifle cartridges. Most ammunition available today for the .351 SL is produced by a few boutique manufacturers, often using either cast lead bullets or copper-plated bullets or, occasionally, .358 jacketed bullets resized to .351 or .352 caliber. This ammunition is often loaded to lower velocities in consideration of older firearms which have not been properly maintained, and large differences are seen over the chronograph relative to vintage .351 SL ammunition. But for the handloader who has taken the time to replace the recoil spring and buffer in the Winchester Model 1907, the .351 SL can be loaded to its original velocities. As of 2017, Hawk bullets still makes .351 jacketed expanding bullets with jackets of appropriate thickness."Winchester Model 07 Self-Loading .351 Caliber: Its Past and Its Future with Modern Brass, Bullets and Powders" (2011) Speckin, Leonard pp 88-96 File:351 Winchester Self-Loading cartridge.png, A ''.351 WSL'' cartridge. File:351 Winchester Self-Loading.JPG, ''.351 WSL'' advertised. File:Munit07.jpg, .30-30 Win, .35 Rem, .351 WSL, a.o., sizes.

References

External links

''.351 Winchester and .401 Winchester: Auto-Loading Pioneers''
thebiggamehuntingblog.com
''.351 Winchester Self Loading''
cartridgecollector.net

hensleygibbs.com
''Early Semi-Automatics: Winchester's first Self-Loading Rifles''
americanrifleman.org {{DEFAULTSORT:351 Winchester Self-Loading Pistol and rifle cartridges Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1907 Winchester Repeating Arms Company cartridges

History

The modern day

See also

References

External links