Recoil can be described mathematically by the physical law of the Conservation of Momentum. The law states: "lf a force and it's reaction act between two bodies, and no other forces are present, equal and opposite changes in the momentum will be given to the two bodies." Simply stated, this says that for every action there is an equal and opposite (in direction) action. The momentum, therefore, of a free recoiling firearm is equal and opposite in direction to the momentum of the bullet (or shot charge and wad column) and the propellant gases. Because the propellant gases are extremely difficult to weigh, for purposes of this application, the propellant gas weight will be equated to the powder charge weigh".

    So I looked at the formula and gave it a little thought. My conclusion was the data obtained was pretty much useless. However, somewhat fascinating stuff. I suggest you read the SAAMI paper. That said if I load a load a cartridge like for example a 308 Winchester with a given load I can get a Free Energy Recoil number. Now if I take that round out and shoot it in one of my bolt guns I should be able to associate the number I get to my own felt recoil. Also, the formula does not take into consideration the difference in recoil between for example a bolt action rifle and a gas operated semi-automatic rifle.

    Anyway, purely for amusement I wrote a little program to do the math functions. The software also calculates the muzzle energy and the form is pictured below additionally the form will take the data and place it in a text file using Notepad:

 

    Now for the programmer types reading this I am not a programmer, I never was a programmer type and never had a desire to be a programmer type.
During my career if I needed programming skills to eat I would have starved to death.

Download the program here.

When you click the above link you will see the following:



Choose to Save File it will download as a zip folder. Download the file to the location of your choice on your computer when prompted.
The "Desktop" is a good handy temporary location. Once downloaded which goes real quick as the file is only a few MB the zip folder
will look like the below:



Right click on the folder and choose Extract All as shown above. Windows will extract the zip folder content to the location of your choice.
Above I used the same location as the zip folder. Pictured below is the downloaded zip folder along with the new extracted folder.



Right click on the new folder and choose Open. The contents will look like the below image.



Just double click the Setup .exe icon to install the program.

The program is tiny and when you are done playing with it simply un-install using whatever method for your Windows operating system.
Just follow the prompts to install the program.



Click OK on the above.



Click the small computer icon as in the above image. Then follow any further prompts. Takes 5 min if that and really simple.


Any questions or problems just email me here.