The .700

Nitro Express The Nitro Express (NE) series of cartridges are used in large-bore hunting rifles, also known as elephant guns or express rifles, but later came to include smaller bore high velocity (for the time) British cartridges. Name The term "Express" was ...

(17.8×89mmR), also known as .700 H&H, is a big-game

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. The cartridge is typically charged with around 250 grains of powder, in addition to a two-grain igniter charge (to reduce the tendency of the cartridge to

hang fire Hang fire is an unexpected delay between the triggering of a firearm and the ignition of the propellant. This failure was common in firearm actions that relied on open primer pans, due to the poor or inconsistent quality of the powder, although ...

from such large powder charges). The cartridge was introduced in 1988 by the boutique gunmakers

Holland & Holland Holland & Holland Limited is a British gunmaker and luxury clothing retailer based in London, England, which sells handmade sporting rifles and shotguns. The company holds two Royal Warrant of Appointment (United Kingdom), royal warrants. His ...

(H&H) of London. It was developed by Jim Bell and William Feldstein and built by H&H. Feldstein had tried unsuccessfully to get H&H to build a

.600 Nitro Express The .600 Nitro Express (15.7×76mmR) is a large bore Nitro Express rifle Cartridge (firearms), cartridge developed by W. J. Jeffery & Co. for the purpose of hunting large game. Design The .600 Nitro Express is a slightly tapered walled, Rim (fir ...

for him, but they had already ceased production. However, when Bell and Feldstein produced an entirely new .700 Nitro Express cartridge, they were able to attract the interest of H&H, which was looking for a new big-bore cartridge. After production began, the backlog of orders was so great that it continued to 2007 and H&H restarted the production of .600 Nitro Express guns.''Cartridges of the World 11th Edition'', Book by Frank C. Barnes, Edited by Stan Skinner, Gun Digest Books, 2006, pp. 406, 409

Specifications

In many respects, this cartridge parallels the .600 Nitro Express. It is essentially a scaled-up version of that cartridge, but is somewhat more powerful, and fires a heavier 1,000-

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

(64.8 g) bullet. The case itself is a completely new case, not simply another case resized.

Double rifle The double rifle, also known as a double-barreled rifle, is a rifle with two barrels mounted parallel to each other that can be fired simultaneously or sequentially in quick succession. Synonymous with big game hunting found primarily in Africa an ...

s are extremely expensive, starting at about US $10,000 and selling up to US $260,000 in 2015, and have generally been replaced by repeater-rifles using rounds such as the .458 Winchester Magnum. A new H&H .700 Nitro Express had a retail price of $115,000 in 1990, as of 2022 that price has risen to $400,000. Single factory loaded .700 Nitro cartridges are available, typically at US$100 each. As of July 2022 Holland & Holland had produced only 17 rifles chambered in .700 Nitro Express, with the 18th rifle being completed and sold by 2024.

Ballistics

The .700 Nitro Express develops an approximate average of of muzzle energy with a bullet at . Handloaders can push the cartridge to generate as much as of energy in a modern bolt action, by using a bullet fired at . However, doing so necessitates a rifle so heavy it is almost inoperable for hunting purposes. Lathe turned cases as used in the Accurate Reloading rifle above will suffer blown primers at this level though a good source of drawn brass would allow (in theory) velocities up to . The typical average muzzle velocity of a factory-loaded cartridge is . In the rifle used by Accurate Reloading this would result in recoil energy of approximately , causing the average shooter's heart to skip a beat. This is more than ten times the average recoil from a .308 Winchester (16 ft-lbs), eight times the recoil of a

.30-06 Springfield The .30-06 Springfield cartridge (pronounced "thirty- aught-six" ), 7.62×63mm in metric notation, and called the .30 Gov't '06 by Winchester, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 and later standardized; it remained in military us ...

(20 ft-lbs), and five times the recoil of a strong .45-70 Government (30 ft-lbs), which are all popular big game hunting cartridges; plus four times the recoil of a .375 H&H Magnum (40 ft-lbs) and twice the recoil of the .460 Weatherby (80 ft-lbs), which are both popular for hunting extremely large game, prior to the .700 Nitro the .460 Weatherby was considered the world's most powerful sporting rifle.

Regulation

In the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

any .700 Nitro Express rifle is classified as a

destructive device In the United States, a destructive device is a type of firearm or explosive device regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934, revised by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and Gun Control Act of 1968. Examples of des ...

by the

National Firearms Act The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as . The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufact ...

(NFA) making them strictly regulated by the

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and prevention ...

(ATF).

Comparable calibers

Rifle calibres comparable to the .700 Nitro Express in terms of power and recoil include the following: * .458 Winchester Magnum * .460 Weatherby Magnum * .475 A&M Magnum * .577 Tyrannosaur * .585 Nyati *

* .600 Overkill * .950 JDJ (the world's largest rifle cartridge) *

4 bore Four bore or 4 bore is a black powder caliber of the 19th century, used for the hunting of large and potentially dangerous game animals. The specifications place this caliber between the larger 2 bore and the smaller 6 bore rifles. This caliber ...

12.7×108mm 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

* 14.5×114mm *

.50 BMG The .50 BMG (.50 Browning Machine Gun), also known as 12.7×99mm NATO, and designated as the 50 Browning by the C.I.P., is a caliber cartridge developed for the M2 Browning heavy machine gun in the late 1910s, entering official service in 19 ...

(One of the most powerful rifle rounds, used in anti-materiel rifles) *

20 mm caliber 20 mm caliber is a specific size of popular autocannon ammunition. The dividing line between smaller-caliber weapons, commonly called "guns", from larger-caliber "cannons" (e.g. machine gun vs. autocannon), is conventionally taken to be the 20 m ...

References

* C.I.P. 700 H&H. Nitro Exp. (online-PDF 33,7 KB)
/ref>

External links