.223 Bolt Action Rifle

[Fedaykin]

Ten years ago the answer would have been Remington 700 as already mentioned, now with their continuing internal woes leading to not only a drop in quality but also patchy availability due to constant problems with the importer.

The Howa 1500 has pretty much stepped into the gap as the go to affordable jack of all trades platform for those who want to build up a rifle, it is interesting in recent years that the UK cottage industry that specialised in Remington 700 builds have switched to working on the Howa 1500 and the rifle has plenty of upgrade options now unlike a few years ago.

It should also be noted that there are a number of very good off the shelf options from companies like Savage and Ruger that only need a scope fitted to be ready to go as a full target rifle.

One side note in respect of the bullet and twist, as someone who runs a .223 with a 14" barrel a fast twist of 1:7 and a heavy bullet like 77gr is desirable.

[knewmans]

Another vote for the CZ 527 varmint laminate. With the 1:9 barrel I shoot 73gr bullets

[DaveB]

... if anyone tells you they have heard of fast .223Rem bullets being disintegrated by spinning too fast then I wouldn't believe that or ask for proof.

As an Ammunition Technical Officer in the early days of the transition from the 5.56mm M193 (55 grain) to the SS109 (62 grain) projectile, I saw a number of instances where poorly constructed projectiles were indeed over-spun to the point where the jackets failed.

The Canadians had to scrap a couple of million rounds of early-production C77 ammunition for that very reason. Wholesaled it to a US firm for them to break it down and recover the components. Instead they sold it on the open market in the US. The powers-that-be were not happy, and it probably effectively stopped any more sales of ex-DND ammunition on the open market in Canada.

Similarly in NZ as late as 2006 we had a bunch of M193 ammunition from a well-known European company that fairly consistently came apart in the air between the firing point and the target when fired out of a 1-in-7 twist rate barrel. Their argument was that we had bought M193 so they assumed it was going to be fired out of slower twist-rate barrels - effectively saying "If we have known you were going to fire it out of 1-in-7 barrels, we would have used different projectiles". We also sold it in bulk and I very much suspect it wound up in gun shops up and down the country.

So while it is no longer common, it certainly has happened, even fairly recently.

[andrew375]

I have a Savage flvss, 1 in 9". I've set it up in a McMillan Anschutz prone stock and fitted it with aperture sights to use as well as a 'scope. It shot just over half moa out of the box, in its original factory plastic stock.

For jacketed bullets I use mainly the 75 gr. A-max, but stability is a bit margial. Once shooting at a thousand yards on a humid day I got a report that my bullets were going in sideways, but still on target. I've had excellent results at a thousand with 69 gr. SMKs too. The long barrel means I can push a 75gr. bullet out at a bit over 2900 fps and 69gr. bullets at 3100.

For cast bullets I use the NEI .224-71gr. Which shoot's well under an inch at 100 yards at 2100 fps.

[Ovenpaa]

I have watched bullets explode from two rifles, normally indicated by a p**f of smoke around 100-200 yards out. One was the 22 Christel which is a 22-6,5x47. Normally due to temperature, anything over 30C and the 80 grain SMK's were going to explode. The other was a .30-338LM TRG42 with 208 grain Hornady A Max (From memory) It was not quite as temperature dependant, in that virtually every case had to be ejected with a cleaning rod. I used to try and keep at least one person between myself and the shooter at the firing point.

[Mattnall]

... if anyone tells you they have heard of fast .223Rem bullets being disintegrated by spinning too fast then I wouldn't believe that or ask for proof.

As an Ammunition Technical Officer in the early days of the transition from the 5.56mm M193 (55 grain) to the SS109 (62 grain) projectile, I saw a number of instances where poorly constructed projectiles were indeed over-spun to the point where the jackets failed.

Interesting. What were the results as it came apart? Did it still hit the target at 100yds?
So this was more from poorly constructed bullets rather than as a consequence of too fast a spin.
As an ATO you'd be privy to some 'out of the envelope' testing, I was thinking from a general range user point of view with commercial bullets and I still haven't seen proof it happens.

Can you post links to the M193 stuff failing in NZ or the Canadian faulty ammo? I cannot find any info online on it and my NZ contact hasn't heard of it. I'm genuinely interested in this stuff, I remember the IMI over pressured ammo popping primers (made by IMI for Winchester and/or Federal IIRC - over 3300fps) but that was made for the US market.

Ovenpaa, I have seen bullets come apart and I even had a load in 44Mag that used cheap copper plated bullets, the Marlin microgroove barrel would cause the jacket to split and flair out so the target hole looked like a neatly misshapen cog, but I'm talking about non experimental .223Rem rounds, such as putting a 45gn-55gn bullet in a 7.5" twist barrel or similar. Admittedly I haven't put a 40gn bullet through my 7.5" twist but I have regularly but 45-52gn and they don't have any issues.

[DaveB]

No, as I recall of the projectiles that failed in-flight, not much hit the target, we recovered bits of jacket and core down-range.

The company (no names but they are known by two initials starting with F) were adamant that the projectiles on the ammunition they sold us were perfectly serviceable, just not at the spin-rate from a 1-in-7 twist barrel. That could of course be some serious behind-covering and the projectiles may indeed have been faulty, but no way were they going to admit that. I am not surprised your NZ contact was not aware of this. Unless he was a member of the unit (and on the range that day) that reported the fault which triggered the technical investigation, or one of the very few members of the Ammunition Technician trade involved in the investigation, there is no way he could have known it. It is not the sort of thing we tended to make public at that time. There will be some records of that, but even if I could find them (we were not electronic at that time so you are talking paper records buried in some archive), I would not be allowed to share them.

I retired from the Canadian Army in 1996, so I do not have access to the records of the C77 ammunition. In defence of the company involved, that was very early in the development process of domestically-produced 5.56mm ammunition. We (the Cdn Forces) went straight from the C1A1 (LAR) rifle in 7.62mm to the C7 rifle (M16A1E2) in 5.56mm with a 1-in-7 twist rate, without the intermediate step of the M193 ammunition. So the manufacturer at the time (SNC) had no experience making 5.56mm at all, and in the early lots the jackets simply were not up to the task. That was solved quickly and C77 ammunition is now very high quality for service-grade ammunition.

And yes, I have seen some pretty-much on the edge stuff over the years, but these were not instances of testing experimental ammunition, they were normal in-service failures. You would be amazed at the things I have seen come from main-stream manufacturers: primers in sideways or backwards, no primers at all, no flash-holes in cartridge case, projectiles not crimped in place, projectiles in backwards, etc. When you are dealing with millions of rounds, there is bound to be the occasional fault.

[Mattnall]

So these were not commercial or generally available rounds and was developmental or experimental ammunition.

It is interesting stuff and I'd love to know more about it but still not from commercial 223 ammo or components.

There is much talk on-line or firing points of light bullets spinning apart in fast twist barrels (usually info from a friend of a friend who heard it from...) and so some tend to state as fact that you mustn't use this light bullet in that fast twist.
So to those I say ask for proof, I still haven't seen it or know anyone who has directly seen it. The general shooter isn't privy to experimental or developmental components or ammunition, I feel it's becoming an urban myth so to speak and would like to see repeatable loads/ammo that this happens to to change my mind.

[DaveB]

The projectiles from FN were not experimental in any way - they had been making 5.56mm ammunition to NATO standards for decades. Their point was that they loaded the two lot/batches we received with projectiles suitable for 1-in-12 twist rate, and that we used them in 1-in-7 twist barrels was the cause of the failure. Now that could just have been a bad batch (well two bad batches in fact) but that is what their response was. Believe it or not, your choice.

Yes the early lots of C77 Ball could be considered experimental (though the company did not think so when they released them for issue).

I know what you are saying, and I actually agree with you - in commercial ammunition I have never seen this occur, only with military ammunition. It is certainly not something with which the average shooter should concern themselves.

Jacket failure at high rpm it does occur, just quite rarely. In almost 40 years of involvement with ammunition I have seen exactly two cases of it - although those two cases did affect some 4 million rounds of ammunition and as I said earlier, you see enough ammunition go downrange, you'll eventually see pretty much everything occur.

[andrew375]

I've witnessed bullets coming apart in flight. They were from a Tikka .22-250 with a standard 12 inch twist barrel. It only happened to about 1 in 5 rounds. Bullets were either standard Sierra or Hornady 55 gr. and the load was just a standard load from the manual. The bullets didn't just fall apart but disintegrated about 12 feet from the muzzle. All that was seen was the momentary appearance of a grey, fog like, disk about 4 feet in diameter. We did look for remnants but it appears that there was nothing left big enough to find. Bullets that didn't disintegrate made it to the target shooting below minute of angle all the way to 500 yards.