.223 neck

[crankycalico]

I have been bored as **** lately and cant make my mind up if I want a handgun or a new rifle, so was thinking about playing with a .223 wildcat.

When people wildcat the .223 Remington, they always have to chop it down first, then do their expanding.

What im confused on, is that if the .357 AR requires the entire case to be blown out to take a .357 bullet, then why not simply blow out the neck/shoulder to where it hits the body and have a .358 diameter neck on the 223 case body?

extraction would be great, forming would be great.. Even have a tad bit of class from having it look like some cartridges used in the late 1800s for bolt action military rifles.

[Old colt]

Look inside of an ar magazine. Its ribbed to hold the neck and bullet straight. You could cut them out and be ok running a straight wall cartridge long. Just more work and the mags wouldn't interchangeable

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

[crankycalico]

no issue on that, remember seeing some company used to make single stack magazines so people could load LONG bullets in a magazine.

But that's actually a good way to make it feed with an AR magazine, but not many bolt guns can use an ar magazine.

But what if anything would be wrong with that idea of just blowing out the neck and shoulder to .358 on the outside

[country gent]

The old wildcatters sometimes a fixture made up that used a short length of barrel chambered with the same reamer as the rifle. Usually pointed straight up, with a firing mechanism. this was used to fire form some of the more intense wildcats. not so much for pressure reasons but the main one was to save wear on the actual barrel, another was the fire form barrel was larger dia thus stiffer and heavier. Some built a rifle on a cheap action and a second barrel for this.
The idea of fireforming a case up is good in that it forms the case well. The TCU wildcats were able to be fire formed up by simply firing .223 in the chamber. On you 35 cal wild cat with little shoulder a means to hold headspace would be needed. The actual cartridge can be set up to headspace on the mouth, but the standard or parent case wont do that and the shallow shoulder holding the case positioned will be iffy. That is the reason for the neck up and trim. If the shoulder is in a different spot then again it has to be formed correctly first. Also if the parent case is longer pre trimming saves a lot of sizing force and problems forming the long neck down and trimming after.
Even well formed brass need one firing to be at its best in matching the chamber and true form.

[Moleman-]

Originally it was a fun winter project to use up a few cheap 357 barrel blanks I had and was meant for an ar15. This was several years before MI started allowing straight walled pistol cases in their limited zone. For the AR15 the 1.6" case works well especially when using 180-200gr bullets. Pointy bullets generally feed better than blunt and the longer the COL the worse they'll feed from an AR15 magazine since they are long and don't have any case taper. For example, 158gr xtp's at 1.950" col feed great, but the same profile 180gr xtp at 2.080" col don't always feed as smooth and just get worse the longer they get. Dropping the COL on the 180gr XTP lets them feed just as smoothly as the 158grxtp at the shorter 1.950" col. 200gr RN speers at 2.210" are long and bluntish but feed great. 208gr WFN-GC RCBS/Lee 200gr feed well out to 2.140" which is about as long as they can go and still make the transition from magazine to chamber. A more pointy NOE 228gr FN will feed at 2.150". For the ar15 at least a longer case will just cover up more of the bullet and not effect COL or case capacity unless you modify thin SS mags to center feed and do away with the bolt stop. So that's the rational behind the 1.6" case length along with being able to use standard dies and slightly modified mags.

I know of a guy that use a 1.8" long case with the bullets seated out further in a bolt action where there aren't the same COL restrictions and he is getting substantially higher velocities. Take a look at the Starline 223 basic cases as they don't require near as much work as 223/5.56 cases. If there is any flaw on the neck on a 223/5.56 the case will split when it is expanded. I get noticeably fewer splits with 223/5.56 cases if the neck area is trimmed and deburred before expanding.