.223 in a .30/30 chamber

[beagle]

I thought I'd seen all kind of caliber mismatches possible until last week. I picked up a 5.56MM GI round that had been fired in a .30/30 and was among some .30/30 brass.

Now I would have thought this was impossible but measurements of the blown out portion of the .223 matches the .30/30 neck and shoulder.

The primer on the .223 looks normal with no bulging and was hit pretty close to the center.

The thing that I can't figure out is how was the primer held stationary for the firing pin to hit the primer and set it off in the first place. Why didn't the .223 slump down in the .30/30 chamber and cause the firing pin to hit off center? Why didn't the primer at least bulge?

It's an interesting case and one that I have a lot of questions in my mind on./beagle

[StarMetal]

The distance to the neck junction on a 30-30 is 1.55. On the 223 the distance is 1.557. The diameter of a 223 case up around the shoulder is about .350 some. I surmise the 223 was chambered briskly and it kind of stuck in that shoulder case area in the 30-30 chamber, leaving the 223 pretty well centered. I'd say the firing pin would have to have had a bit of reach tho. I'm wondering was it put in the chamber on purpose or not. Can't see how it would cycle through the action.

Joe

[David R]

:) a new wildcat? :)

[beagle]

Joe, no way that I can see that it could have gotten in the chamber by mistake. It had to be on purpose.

I don't see how it fired and I'm surprised that it formed as full as it did.

I'll bet that .22 FMJ ricochetted down the barrel./beagle


The distance to the neck junction on a 30-30 is 1.55. On the 223 the distance is 1.557. The diameter of a 223 case up around the shoulder is about .350 some. I surmise the 223 was chambered briskly and it kind of stuck in that shoulder case area in the 30-30 chamber, leaving the 223 pretty well centered. I'd say the firing pin would have to have had a bit of reach tho. I'm wondering was it put in the chamber on purpose or not. Can't see how it would cycle through the action.

Joe

[StarMetal]

Well sounds like someone shoved it in there then and thats how it centered. I'm surprised it expanded as much as it did because that 30 bore is a big hole compared to that 22 cal round.

Joe

[crazy mark]

How about it being fired in a 30 Herrett chamber. That would be a lot closer to OAL. Mark

[NVcurmudgeon]

Mismatched ammo usually has one cause, carlessness. Once I had my rebarreled Ruger 77 in .35 Whelen sitting in the rack at a range. Another shooter had parked his Ruger 77 in .270 in the same rack. He picked up my rifle, fired one factory load over his chronograph, and observed a 900 fps readout! To do this, when he thought he picked up his rifle with light 22" barrel, big variable scope, and duplex reticle, he actually had my rifle with medium-heavy 24" barrel, straight 4 X scope, and tapered crosshairs. No harm done, and he had a perfectly formed .35 Whelen case for his collection.

[GMJ]

Seen a .223 blank fired in a 1911 .45acp in Germany in the late 70's. Friend of mine had put on in playing around kept cocking and firing it. It eventually went off and left one heck of a powder burn in the palm of his hand as he had his hand on the end of the barrel. Very stupid thing to do.

[Uncle Grinch]

I have a .223 case that was fired in a 7.62x39 by accident. The rifle was a Colt AR-15 and was fired by one of our gun club members during a range session.

Do you think this may be the case (no pun intended) with the 30-30 thread?

[beagle]

Don't think this was the case as it was with the .30/30 stuff. To be sure you could tell the difference between a .30/30 and .223 by feel. At least I can

About a month ago, one of the guys shot a .30/30 cast load in his .308. Can't see how that could happen either../beagle



I have a .223 case that was fired in a 7.62x39 by accident. The rifle was a Colt AR-15 and was fired by one of our gun club members during a range session.

Do you think this may be the case (no pun intended) with the 30-30 thread?

[beagle]

I guess you've pulled the old M-16 trick of launching fired cases with a 5.56mm blank in the M-16 as I have by sticking a fired case in the flash hider. The old style 3 prong VN era flash hiders worked better than the new ones./beagle


Seen a .223 blank fired in a 1911 .45acp in Germany in the late 70's. Friend of mine had put on in playing around kept cocking and firing it. It eventually went off and left one heck of a powder burn in the palm of his hand as he had his hand on the end of the barrel. Very stupid thing to do.

[bisley45]

I was at the range one day and the guy next to me was having all kinds of trouble with his rifle it was a sporter mauser when he would try to eject a case it would stick bad so bad he had to use a piece of wood to hit the bolt rearwards so the case would come out after about 5-6 round he was mad he couldnt even git it to hit paper he took one of the cases and slamed it to the ground and it landed at my feet I picked it up and looked at it very strange that was the shortest 45-70 round I ever seen when I looked at the headstamp it said 308 I ask him what the gun was chamberd in and he said 30cal I said what 30cal and he said that the gunsmith told him it would shoot any 30 cal round ??????
I would guess he the gunsmith was talking abot the 30-06

[Larry Gibson]

I have a .223 case that was fired in a 7.62x39 by accident. The rifle was a Colt AR-15 and was fired by one of our gun club members during a range session.

Do you think this may be the case (no pun intended) with the 30-30 thread?

I'd say blslryr is closer to the truth here. Note the difference in distance from the shoulder of the 30-30 case to what would habe been the bolt face and the much shorter difference on the reformed .223 case. Also note the slight taper to the .223s new neck. I'd bet this was a classic case of some idiot believing his old DIs BS about the commies could use our ammo but we couldn't use theirs. I have seen such .223 fire formed cases that were fired in AKs and SKSs by idiots (they were called "Rangers" at the time). The front part (shoulder) of a .223 (5.56 actually in those cases) will fit up into the sloppier AK/SKS chambers neck and the case will be held back against the bolt face when those heavy bolts are allowed to slam home. The primer remaims centered and they will fire. Of course they won't function the actions nor will they be accurate. I imagine velocity is pretty low but probably still harmful at close range. Not something to be recommended.

Larry Gibson

[KCSO]

My worst case was a doofus who shot a 308 in his Remington 270 pump. His comment was I thought it closed pretty hard. Cost him a new gun.

[Uncle Grinch]

In a previous post, I mentioned I had a .223 round that had been fired in a 7.62x39 rifle. I can't remember if it was a Mini-30 or an AR-15. Well, I was doing some cleaning up today in my reloading room and came across this round. The case in the rear is a 7.62x39 and the .223 is in front.

[Bret4207]

That case is obviously the newly design 3308 Fluglemeyer. It's the new French military round that has all the NATO and UN types talking. It was designed by the great Belgian ballistician Bernard Brossois Begrule Schwartz, FMCS, DDRT, PP, Order of the Ingrown Hair. I'm sure you're all familiar with his breakthrough work in semi-automatic chicken de-beakers and his equally famous work with pubic lice. Of course this humble hero does give credit to his late assistant Francois Fluglemeyer for whom the round was named. Francois tragic death in that nuclear powered grain combine has haunted Dr. Schwartz for years, and I'm sure Francois would appreciate this remembrance. Dr Schwartz reports his new design expells a 37.5 gram condensed wheat projectile at nearly 100 mph. Unfortunately extraction problems have delayed release of the new French battle rifle. However, the latest word from the French armory at St Raul Le' Fart indicate the rifle designed for the new round is a near unanimous success and that almost 40% of the rifles would fire nearly half the time. The rifle was designed by Sir Hugh Blakesmore-Spikelee, the Congolese ex-patriate well known for his radical treatment of hemmoroids.

[Larry Gibson]

Tpr. Bret

Now that was articulate!!!

Larry Gibson

[RayinNH]

Tpr. Bret, now that was beautifully told :-D ...Ray

[Lee]

Never thought the French fired 'em. Only thought they dropped 'em...............Lee:)

[Frank46]

Some years back a new shooter was fooling around with a custom 284 winchester rifle. The ammo he was using came with the gun. He was getting hard feeding and extraction. When the cease fire was called he had a round stuck in the chamber. When he finally got the bolt open the bullet was jammed in the throat. I told him rack the rifle and I'd get a rod to knock out the bullet. When the cease fire was over there he was trying his darndest to chamber another round. I told him to remove the round and the bullet in this case was pushed well down into the case. The rod knocked out the bullet stuck in the bbl. Don't know what the pressures would have been if he had fired that round but I told hime he probably would have wrecked the rifle at the very least or seriously hurt himself at the very worst. I looked at the ammo he had and all the cases appeared to have been fired a bunch of times and the stuck cases showed marks all along the case body. I'd guess that they had not been full length resized in quite some time.
Frank

[Bret4207]

Lee, you may be confusing the Fluglemeyer round and it's rifle with the Soose Machine gun, currently in use by French Forces. The Soose is activated by dropping it to the ground and running in the opposite direction as the enemy, whereupon the weapon discharges and sprays the enemy positions with a deadly hail of bullets. The Soose was of course invented by Colonel-General Maximillion Michele Soose, or as he prefers to be called, Dr. Soose, whose breakthrough experimentation with pork and poultry products have earned him international fame among pre-schoolers.

[Linstrum]

:hijack:
Hey, there, Tpr. Bret, beeyootyful, thanks! Dr. Soose was of course most renowned for his highly colored meat and poultry-based breakfast food, green was the most common as I recall.

For awhile the Commies REALLY could fire our ammo and we couldn’t fire theirs! For the brief period when we used M14 rifles and the Commies still used Mosin-Nagants they could fire our ammo very effectively.

Back when the nastiness over in Bosnia Herzegovina was going on, a news reporter found some spent cartridges in a secluded area that had been used as a vantage point by a sniper a few days before. He picked up the spent cartridge cases and brought them back because they looked real funny to him. We had a mutual friend and I got to see the “peculiar” cartridges that the reporter had found. When I explained to the guy what they were he ended up giving me three of them. What made them look so peculiar was that they had several wraps of aluminum foil around the cases starting at the head and going about half way to the shoulder, effectively shimming them to make the bodies larger in diameter by a few thousandths of an inch. The heads had a turn of soft solder wire in the extractor groove so that they could be used in a rifle designed for a rimmed cartridge. The actual cartridge cases were Berdan primed 7.62 NATO with a Spain head stamp. It was no mystery to me that the sniper had used them in a Mosin-Nagant since the 7.62x54R Russian and the 7.62 NATO are so close in size that the NATO round, WHEN PROPERLY SHIMMED like these were, will fit and fire quite effectively and safely in a Mosin-Nagant! I tried making up some rounds of my own and fired them in one of my Mosin-Nagants for form and function and found the accuracy to be completely acceptable. I also found that the solder wire was not necessary to extract them, at least in my Finn-rebuild 91/30 M-N.

[Bret4207]

Linstrum- When I first saw your photo I thought it was a 304 Fullbright cartridge case, but after closer scrutinty I see it's a 309 Halfbright. Quite a rare find often seen in Herzogonovian films by the famed Director Spljknof Bjsstrdumnski Zwqoijkph formerly of the Nation State of Pkytnmbcg. Of course we're all just a little bored with hearing about Pkytnmbcg these days, aren't we?

[26Charlie]

Trooper Bret will win the first prize for postings on this web sight - a week in Philadelphia. Any candidates for second prize? Second prize will be two weeks in Philadelphia.

( courtesy W. C. Fields)

[Bret4207]

I WON!!??!!??! I'd like to thank the Academy, (snif, sniff), my agent, my mom.....

[StarMetal]

Aaah geez...troop...yall know you owe it to Michael Moore. :kidding:

Joe

[buck1]

That case is obviously the newly design 3308 Fluglemeyer. It's the new French military round that has all the NATO and UN types talking. It was designed by the great Belgian ballistician Bernard Brossois Begrule Schwartz, FMCS, DDRT, PP, Order of the Ingrown Hair. I'm sure you're all familiar with his breakthrough work in semi-automatic chicken de-beakers and his equally famous work with pubic lice. Of course this humble hero does give credit to his late assistant Francois Fluglemeyer for whom the round was named. Francois tragic death in that nuclear powered grain combine has haunted Dr. Schwartz for years, and I'm sure Francois would appreciate this remembrance. Dr Schwartz reports his new design expells a 37.5 gram condensed wheat projectile at nearly 100 mph. Unfortunately extraction problems have delayed release of the new French battle rifle. However, the latest word from the French armory at St Raul Le' Fart indicate the rifle designed for the new round is a near unanimous success and that almost 40% of the rifles would fire nearly half the time. The rifle was designed by Sir Hugh Blakesmore-Spikelee, the Congolese ex-patriate well known for his radical treatment of hemmoroids.

When I need a day off, I'll have you call my boss!!

[Bret4207]

It's a gift. Doesn't work worth beans with women though...

[versifier]

Neither does poetry. Good thing I'm Italian.

[stardate2010]

Hello,
While the looks of the 223 round do look oversized, there is a 30 cal 223 round out there. It is the 300 Whisper subsonic round. A 223 case is fireformed to the 30 cal level and loaded to the 1000 or so FPS. It is usually used with a supressor in covert operations. Check out SSK Industries and look at other Whisper rounds.

[Scrounger]

Hello,
While the looks of the 223 round do look oversized, there is a 30 cal 223 round out there. It is the 300 Whisper subsonic round. A 223 case is fireformed to the 30 cal level and loaded to the 1000 or so FPS. It is usually used with a supressor in covert operations. Check out SSK Industries and look at other Whisper rounds.

The .300 Whisper is made from a much shortened .223 case, the .221 Fireball, aka .221 Remington. Back 25 or 30 years ago when the 7 TCU (.223 case necked up to 7mm) first came out, there was also a wildcat (.30 TCU) made by necking the full length .223 case up to .30 caliber. It quickly fell out of favor because there is very little shoulder to headspace on.

[PatMarlin]

That's no big deal-

I shoot my 30-06 rounds in my .35 Remington all the time... :coffee:

Gotta cram it in there sometimes.. :mrgreen:

[versifier]

The .300 Whisper is made from a much shortened .223 case, the .221 Fireball, aka .221 Remington. Back 25 or 30 years ago when the 7 TCU (.223 case necked up to 7mm) first came out, there was also a wildcat (.30 TCU) made by necking the full length .223 case up to .30 caliber. It quickly fell out of favor because there is very little shoulder to headspace on.

The .30/.223 is still alive and well. It is in the same class with the .30-30 and 7.62x39. It ought to be the cat's ass for cast boolits. Users report excellent accuracy and long case life. One of these days I will get around to having a Contender carbine barrel made up for it....

[DLCTEX]

An old friend of mine once grabbed some ammo in a hurry to shoot a coyote near the hen house. He mistakenly loaded a 25 Rem. in a 243, Muaser action, case seperated and eyes full of powder, but no permanent damage!

[DLCTEX]

a teenager of my aquaintence was interested in getting started reloading, said he had a 300 Savage. I bought him some dies and brass on Ebay, and told him to bring the rifle over and we would get started. He brought over ARISAKA 7.7. He had been given the rifle by a relative, with five rounds of ammo. The relative later told me he had used the ammo in the gun for years, but it never did shoot worth a darn, though. ANYONE NEED 300 SAV. DIES AND BRASS?

[Ross]

I have always enjoyed my T99 .300 Savage. I believe a fair number had setback barrels chambered to .300 Savage.
Are you certain that it is still 7.7?
Cheers from Darkest California,
Ross