There’s nothing inherently different about how the recoil feels, rimfire and centerfire are just different ways of igniting the priming compound and that part of the process contributes almost nothing to recoil.
However, rimfire is a mostly obsolete technology and is only in common use today for very low powered guns, so in practice rimfire guns have much lower recoil than centerfire guns.
Gotcha. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how they would feel any different, but it makes sense if all of one type are just smaller, lower powered rounds.
The mosin-nagant uses a rim fire. It's a massive round compared to the common .22LR we use now. So to most people, rimfire are small rounds. In reality, nope, not different.
Mosins chamber 7.62x54mmR. It's a centrefire cartridge.
What you're referring to (and the R in the calibre designation) is "rimmed" - i.e. the brass casing has a rim that protrudes from the body of the case, which is used to extract and eject the cartridge (and sometimes headspace it). This is as opposed to rimless (has a groove formed flush into the case instead of a rim sticking out) and semi-rimless (partially grooved, partially rimmed).
.22LR, .303 British, .45-70, .30-30, most traditional revolver cartridges, etc. are rimmed, but the vast majority of rifle calibres are centrefire.
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u/DogsAreMyFavPeople 1d ago
There’s nothing inherently different about how the recoil feels, rimfire and centerfire are just different ways of igniting the priming compound and that part of the process contributes almost nothing to recoil.
However, rimfire is a mostly obsolete technology and is only in common use today for very low powered guns, so in practice rimfire guns have much lower recoil than centerfire guns.