Jonson Arms
History of Jonson Arms
The Jonson Factor, which is applied to all cartridges designed by Jonson Labs, was the end result of years of interest, study, and finally design. It all began when the inventor visited with a group of bench rest shooters in Caracas, Venezuela in the 1970s. The subject of discussion was the revolutionary 6mm PPC. Since the PPCs did not include a .30, which was the most popular caliber for long range shooting, the perfect wildcat project was born.
Unfortunately, theoretical ballistics for the proposed round were not favorable. In the face of this challenge and because ballistics calculations can be tedious, a unique approach was needed and computer algorithms to automate the design process were developed. The objective was to emulate PPC performance and accuracy in a larger caliber, therefore precise calculation was critical. Technology coupled with years of perseverance proved enough to crack the problem and the principles of parallactic precision were born in 1983. Although the round was finally named the 7.62 Jonson, its experimental name was the 7.8232 Jonson, which is simply the proper conversion of .308 inches to metric. Case forming experiments were completed and experimental cartridges tested to ascertain the practical viability of Jonson rounds.
In the early 1990s, a discussion of the design was begun through email and various news groups. Basic engineering ideas and characteristics were passed along to interested parties in general, while withholding a few key design attributes, of course. Simultaneously, proprietary documents were shared with Redding, Clymer, CH4D and others to build a big PPC round. Since then, custom forming and reloading dies have been available from these mainstream vendors for advanced handloaders to make Jonson cartridges.
It is anticipated that commercial versions of the Jonson cartridges will be available to the public as early as 2009.
Laboratories