.223/5.56 question

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I just cannot imagine any 223 made in the last 30 years not being capable of shooting 5.56 rounds. In terms of liability, you'd be a fool not to cover your butt. As a manufacturer, you have to be idiot proof and there are a lot of idiots out there who say 223/556 is the same thing.
 
My two bits on this.....for what it is worth.

Is there a difference, yup. With TODAYS guns do you really need to worry about it, nope.

Here is my thinking....

Everyone that makes a gun knows that people are flat stupid....really stupid....hold my beer and watch this stupid. And the guns (off the shelf guns) are so over designed that a kaboom, with a gun with no defects, as well as ammo that is not stupid....nothing is going to happen.

In our suit happy world we live in today if there was a chance for a company to be sued into nothing it would have happened.....I would bet there are people out there that would gladly blow off a hand to put a company out of buisness, show the world that guns are not safe....bla bla bla.

I look at it as about the same as a low number springfiled.....after 100 years it is no more likely to blow up then any other 100 year old gun.

Now all that said, it is you, and only you can say what you are willing to do.
 
In 1968 my nice .222 Sako was re-chambered for .223. Since then that rifle has been re-barreled 3-4 times. It has fired tens of thousands of US military 5.56mm ball ammo with no signs of high pressure.

Military rifles with 5.56mm chambers are full auto weapons. The chambers are somewhat more generous.

While working in MA in 1995 i met workers from the Harrington Richardson factory. We sometimes met for breakfast. Some H&R .223 barrels have huge sloppy chambers, others have tighter chambers. That's because the reamers were re-ground.

Ever wonder how a US company can make money selling a rifle for $300-350? It's because of cheap labor. Honor graduates from the Trinidad, Co gunsmith school don't chamber the rifles. That is done by day labor. Chamber sizes are all over the place.

Here is a good read on the subject:

https://www.luckygunner.com/labs/5-56-vs-223/
 
Folks always end up talking past each other in these threads.

The truths are pretty simple:

1) Shooting over length 5.56 rounds in a short 223 Remington chamber will generate higher pressure than designed.

2) Modern rifle designs - which is really to say any firearm ever built for either the 5.56 or 223 Remington, since neither are particularly “old school” - are designed and proofed at pressures FAR exceeding their design standard operating pressure.

3) Pressure = stress, stress = fatigue, fatigue = failure. More pressure = more stress, more stress = faster fatigue, faster fatigue = faster failure.

No, shooting a single 5.56 round in a 223 chamber won’t cause catastrophic failure. Nor will shooting 22LR in 22WMR chambers, nor will shooting 40s&w out of a 10mm, hell, nor will shooting 7-08 rounds out of a .30-06, for that matter... but the fact remains - the specific combination of shooting over-length 5.56 NATO spec ammo, meant for an EPVAT compliant chamber in a SAAMI spec 223 Remington shorter leade chamber will increase the maximum pressure in the rifle when fired, and doing so decreases the life of the rifle. Is it substantially decreased to the point a guy needs to be concerned? Eh, probably not. Is there a substantial risk of rupturing the barrel? Eh, probably not. Is it different than running a grain or so above maximum published data? Nope. Is it a purely safe activity with no increased risk which should be recommended to be pursued blindly? Nope.

Statistically, any barrel could go at any time, with any load. Nobody expects it to happen, because such a fluke has exceedingly low odds. Shooting 5.56 in a 223 chamber increases those odds.
 
For a bolt gun with maximum accuracy potential, a .223 Remington chamber with good quality factory ammo or reloads loaded to SAAMI .223 spec is the way to go. And for speaking just for myself, I don't shoot 5.56 milspec out of a rifle unless I know the manufacturer dimensioned the chamber to be compatible for it.

However, I recall the word inexpensive was originally used here. For a _cheap_ BA rifle intended mainly for shooting _cheap_ milsurp/spec 5.56 ammo, I think get the question was more along the lines of: which of the lower-cost bolt actions features a known milspec-compatible chamber? Here's a suggestion which addresses that question a little differently: buy the cheapest factory rifle you can find and run a milspec reamer, or better yet, a reamer designed just to recut the leade, into the chamber. Any local gunsmith who works on ARs should have a 5.56 finish reamer and the job shouldn't exceed the minimum shop fee. This was Patrick Sweeney's recommendation, and I haven't seen a more sensible one:

https://gundigest.com/gear-ammo/reloading/ar-15-basics-223-vs-5-56x45-nato
 
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FL-NC said:
Roger- the OP mentioned he was looking for a 223 bolt rifle, I threw out the MVP as an option.
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That would be a good one. I think if someone were shooting factory ammo that's the way to go. Lots of 55 and 62 grain 5.56 stuff out there will shoot well in a 5.56 chamber and it's cheap.

I have a couple of bolt rifles, both .223. I bought them specifically for the .223 chamber because I load everything I shoot. The .223 chamber limits bullet weight but has better accuracy potential with lighter bullets, which is what I load.

Any of the bolt 5.56's out there will work. Just don't buy a sporter/light contour barrel if you want to shoot a lot. They heat up pretty fast.:D
 
I personally wouldn’t buy a specific rifle brand or model just based on the ability to run surplus 5.56. Either weigh the consequences and likelihood of issues running 5.56 surplus in your .223 Rem chamber, or pay a smith $50 to extend the throat and leade to a Wylde or 5.56 spec (ridiculously simple job).

If a specific model fits your body, has all of the features you want, and meets a quality point you’re happy with, great. But the experience in shooting one rifle model versus another will be far more substantial than the difference in shooting 223 Rem bulk ammo vs. surplus 5.56 ammo. If you shoot it a lot so the ammo cost is meaningful (which will wear out your barrel fast and give you the option to pick your chamber in 5000rnds anyway), then you’ll be touching the rifle enough to really appreciate the nice things about the right rifle, or really come to hate the not-quite-right things about the wrong rifle. You’re also spending a lot, no matter what, so whining about a small incremental cost increase doesn’t make much sense. If you’re not shooting much so the rifle fit and features don’t matter as much, then the ammo cost is low either way, and a small difference in price wouldn’t matter much either. I certainly wouldn’t shoot a rifle I didn’t love just because I could save a nickel per round.

Pick the rifle you want, fix the chamber if you insist, and shoot it until it turns to dust.
 
Varminterror said:
I personally wouldn’t buy a specific rifle brand or model just based on the ability to run surplus 5.56. Either weigh the consequences and likelihood of issues running 5.56 surplus in your .223 Rem chamber, or pay a smith $50 to extend the throat and leade to a Wylde or 5.56 spec (ridiculously simple job).

If a specific model fits your body, has all of the features you want, and meets a quality point you’re happy with, great. But the experience in shooting one rifle model versus another will be far more substantial than the difference in shooting 223 Rem bulk ammo vs. surplus 5.56 ammo. If you shoot it a lot so the ammo cost is meaningful (which will wear out your barrel fast and give you the option to pick your chamber in 5000rnds anyway), then you’ll be touching the rifle enough to really appreciate the nice things about the right rifle, or really come to hate the not-quite-right things about the wrong rifle. You’re also spending a lot, no matter what, so whining about a small incremental cost increase doesn’t make much sense. If you’re not shooting much so the rifle fit and features don’t matter as much, then the ammo cost is low either way, and a small difference in price wouldn’t matter much either. I certainly wouldn’t shoot a rifle I didn’t love just because I could save a nickel per round.

Pick the rifle you want, fix the chamber if you insist, and shoot it until it turns to dust.
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Good advice!
 
Just contact the manufacturer. I contacted CZ years ago about the CZ527. They eventually updated their website to state that 5.56 was okay to use.

I am glad I got the CZ. I am sure the Ruger will be fine.
The big question is the twist rate. 1:12 or 1:9 or 1:7. That is where my cousin didn't do his homework. Got a 1:12 and tried 62 grain ammo in it and the stuff was key holing. I look for at least 1:9.
 
I was mulling over the variety of comments in this discussion thread while driving home today and a comparison occurred to me: politically, my brother-in-law 'R' is a self-described bleeding-heart liberal progressive; he is also a highly experimental amateur vegetarian chef, one of those guys who can talk for hours about spices. I myself am both deeply conservative and a handloader (and, FWIW, an omnivore). Perhaps in both our cases, our respective interests and viewpoints are related at a fundamental level.

I started handloading with a basic Lee Loader for 7.92x57 Mauser in 1983, when I was 23, and since then I've successfully handloaded tens of thousands of cartridges in more than two dozen different chamberings. To date the worst ammo-related accident I've experienced was a single squib a few months ago. My approach to handloading safety is fanatical, involving multiple checks that I never deviate from.

'R' has a jazz musician's approach to cookery recipes and never seems to make the same dish twice in the same way. While I'll grant that experimentallism can be commendable in art (when it actually works), it is suicidally reckless to approach endeavors with zero fault tolerance such as civil engineering in the same way. I feel that lawmaking should be practiced like engineering rather than art: you don't consider changes unless you've first studied the possible outcomes as thoroughly as a Mennonite considers adopting a new piece of technology, determined the change represents a real net improvement, and then thought about it some more because engineers can make mistakes.

Regardless of my personal practices or opinions, when giving another person handloading or ammunition selection advice, I prefer to adopt a conservative viewpoint. Think it over.
 
The Savage muzzleloader pictured at the link is a smokeless powder rifle. Against recommendations by Savage, people used powder not approved for that rifle. Some guys loaded that Savage rifle with duplex and even triplex charges of smokeless powder. Some forgot the rifle was loaded and consequently loaded another round. Others failed to seat the sabot/bullet on the powder.

Not surprisingly some of those Savage guns blew up.
 
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I’ve been reading the .223/5.56 argument for years. I’d rather be safe than sorry even though I know the odds are extremely low I’d have a catastrophic failure shooting 5.56 through a .223. So I’m not going to do it.
 
Macchina said:
Um.. that's a Savage muzzleloader. Ironically it's not even a cartridge firearm. Try again.
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Um...sorry. All apologies for my not so clever ruse. It is clear to all who spotted the blatant red herring that the idea of loading a rifle with something not designed for it could be dangerous.

Next I’ll be showing pictures of people in a Toyota killed by Takata airbags while warning you about your Chevy airbags. Carry on.
 
Skylerbone said:
. . . It is clear to all who spotted the blatant red herring that the idea of loading a rifle with something not designed for it could be dangerous.
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If you can't distinguish Order of Magnitude between 5.56 in a .223 chamber, and a smokeless load in a BP muzzleloader, you shouldn't be talking about either. The first is a 0-10% pressure difference that lots of folks shoot every week; the second is a reliable way to grenade a gun.

To compare the two as if they are similar is disingenuous on your part.
 
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