Safe to shoot mil-surp in commercial bolt action?

[eschang1]

I apologize if this has been asked before, but is it safe to shoot military surplus 7.62x51 like Portugese military ammunition in a commercial bolt action rifle in .308 Win? I had heard that there are problems shooting 5.56x45 in .223 guns, so wondered if that same logic applied for .308.

 

[Morlock]

maybe, maybe not.....

haven't had any issues with mil surp 7.62x51 (portugese, radway green, guat, m118) but i did run into issues with german surplus had bought a few boxes, could lift the bolt, but had to force (hammer) the bolt back to open the action. YMMV

 

[Omaha-BeenGlockin]

Cavim ammo made it hard to open the bolt on my .308------I'm thinking its probably not a good idea to run mil-surp through your nice sporter bolt action---I know I'll never do it again.

Commercial ammo only for my little baby from now on.

 

[teppo-shu]

I asked this question a couple months ago when I was looking at a CZ 550 Varmit. They said there were NO issues w/ mil-surp. Not the most accurate, but fine to practice with.

Keep in mind, military snipers basically use commercial Remingtons as their tool of the trade.

There are no differences in the military and commercial headspace for .308 as there are in .223/5.56.

 

[P95Carry]

trouble is - IMO ...... mil surp can vary so much. I have found one type very badly behaved in my L1A1 and yet another is fine.

But - that's not bolt guns! Sorry!

In this respect I have to say .... from my experience .. potentially ''bad news'' ..... my Rem Gamemaster 760 did NOT like mil surp one bit ...... had great probs extracting. So now it's just good factory hunting loads or - even better, my carefully hand loaded stuff ....... no probs with that at all.

If the gun is good .... and matters .... then I'd stick to good stuff. I do put just about anything tho thru my old Ishapore!!

 

[dude]

for bolt guns

Portuguese milsurp - good
Cavim milsurp - bad

 

[Sir Galahad]

I shoot South African and Portuguese milsurp in my Ruger M77 International .308 and it works splendidly. Action stays smooth as ever to open. I shoot South African milsurp in my .223 CZ 527 and it works spendidly. Never had any problems and I have hundreds of rounds of milsurp through both.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Stay away from Cavim. Portugese is good, South African is good. Cavim is some of the worst stuff out there.

I bought a pack of south african stuff from ammoman once. It wasn't surplus, as it came in 20 round boxes marked ".308 winchester". It must've been commercial. My FAL loved all thousand rounds of it...it was priced like commerical stuff, too.

 

[Art Eatman]

Don't think I've seen a semi-auto military or para-military rifle where the receiver is stronger than a bolt-action. Milsurp pressures shouldn't be any problem in a bolt-gun. Case dimensions or varnish or whatever might cause some sort of problem, as touched on above.

teppo-shu, I don't believe it's a headspace problem with 55.6/.223 military/commercial; it has to do with the length of the throat for some bullets. I've shot a fair amount of US military stuff through a Mini-14 with zero problems. The cartridge-case dimensions are the same.

Art

 

[Dave R]

I have shot prolly 50 rounds of FNM surplus .308 through my Rem 700. No problems to date. Accuracy ranging from sub-MOA (a 1.5" group at 175 yards) to 2MOA, variation probably due to shooter. This was all shot in field conditions, not at the range.

 

[teppo-shu]

Art, thanks. I stand corrected.

Yes, the Armalite website explains this very well. Has to do with how the bullet engages with the rifling.

Either is shootable in either type of rifle. One will just not be quite as accurate. Can't remember which way it goes.:banghead:

 

[Ebbtide]

As others have stated, some surplus makes my bolt stick. I doubt this damages the gun in any way as it just takes a little extra force to open the action.

I could never figure out why.