223 Load Data vs 556

[Aguila Blanca]

An early post in this discussion mentioned the Wylde chamber. I thought the whole point of the Wylde chamber was that it was sort of a hybrid between .223 Remington and 5.56x45, and could/would safely fire either cartridge.

If some 5.56x45 NATO won't chamber in a Wylde chamber, then what's the Wylde chamber and why would anyone use it?

[MarkCO]

Originally Posted by Aguila Blanca

An early post in this discussion mentioned the Wylde chamber. I thought the whole point of the Wylde chamber was that it was sort of a hybrid between .223 Remington and 5.56x45, and could/would safely fire either cartridge.

If some 5.56x45 NATO won't chamber in a Wylde chamber, then what's the Wylde chamber and why would anyone use it?

That is the point of the Wylde chamber, plus better accuracy.

If a 5.56x45 Nato cartridge won't chamber, something is very wrong.

[44 AMP]

I thought the whole point of the Wylde chamber was that it was sort of a hybrid between .223 Remington and 5.56x45, and could/would safely fire either cartridge.

Either chamber can SAFELY FIRE BOTH cartridges.

what's the Wylde chamber and why would anyone use it?

It is marketed as a "hybrid" chamber, safe to shoot both .223 REM and 5.56x45mm NATO in.

since people are buying them, it is making money for the owner(s) of the design, so, yay, capitalism at work, a good thing, just like pet rocks and several other things over the years.

Many people bought into the hype that turned a difference in reported pressures into an UNSAFE thing, and that since it was unsafe, it was dangerous, and that scared people who knew no better, and so they bought the "solution" to a "problem" created by the firearms equivalent of Chicken Little.

Both rounds have been in use for going on, or slightly over 60 years. IF firing one in a chamber marked for the other were actually dangerous, there should be volumes of recorded, verified instances of damaged guns and injured shooters. Such information does not seem to exist.

are you willing to believe there is/was some conspiracy to hide that information, and only fairly recent "reporting" on UTube or other internet sources is telling us the "truth"????

Different? yes, the numbers are. Outside of someone's working pressure standards??? Apparently, some are, slightly. Dangerous? I don't see it.

What ever happened to the common sense approach that says "if a particular load isn't suitable in your particular gun, simply don't use it"????

[MarkCO]

Originally Posted by 44 AMP

Either chamber can SAFELY FIRE BOTH cartridges.



It is marketed as a "hybrid" chamber, safe to shoot both .223 REM and 5.56x45mm NATO in.

since people are buying them, it is making money for the owner(s) of the design, so, yay, capitalism at work, a good thing, just like pet rocks and several other things over the years.

Many people bought into the hype that turned a difference in reported pressures into an UNSAFE thing, and that since it was unsafe, it was dangerous, and that scared people who knew no better, and so they bought the "solution" to a "problem" created by the firearms equivalent of Chicken Little.

Both rounds have been in use for going on, or slightly over 60 years. IF firing one in a chamber marked for the other were actually dangerous, there should be volumes of recorded, verified instances of damaged guns and injured shooters. Such information does not seem to exist.

are you willing to believe there is/was some conspiracy to hide that information, and only fairly recent "reporting" on UTube or other internet sources is telling us the "truth"????

Different? yes, the numbers are. Outside of someone's working pressure standards??? Apparently, some are, slightly. Dangerous? I don't see it.

What ever happened to the common sense approach that says "if a particular load isn't suitable in your particular gun, simply don't use it"????

So much error, but lets at least dismiss your "anti-capitalism" theory.

NO-ONE is making any more or less money off of Wylde Chambers. The reamers cost the same as the .223Rem and the 5.56 Nato Reamers. There is no royalty either.

But, since you seem to know so much about how, and why barrel makers do what they do, you should let them all know how wrong they are, as well as SAAMI.

[Unclenick]

I've done a bit more digging.

If you look at the dimensional differences in the reamer brands, they jump out, but they are all a little different and all with mods specified by one designer or another. And THIS IS KEY: those are all reamers for chambering in actual shooter's rifles, NOT VELOCITY AND PRESSURE TEST BARRELS. But the pressure production ammunition is made to IS DETERMINED IN VELOCITY AND PRESSURE TEST BARRELS, and not in production nor even custom shooter's rifles. So to know how the ammunition will behave, we actually have to compare a 223 Remington V&P barrel chamber. How different are they?

I don't know what the difference between the V&P barrels for 5.56 NATO as used by Lake City and those as used in Europe may or may not be. The one thing in the Lucky Gunner article that JohnKSa linked to that really gets your attention is the 10% pressure difference reported at the end for two test barrels. It is significantly greater than the 2,000 psi difference that the throat lengths account for and that the U.S. military reported in the mid-1960s (sorry, I cannot find a reference for that), but I did dig up a NATO document with the pressure and test barrel drawing. I have attached it and added conversions of the metric to inches in red, though SAAMI has millimeters in parentheses in their drawings, so they are easy to compare either way. Here is a surprise: Unlike the rifle chamber reamer drawing, the SAAMI V&P barrel chamber in the SAAMI standard (page 264/276 as numbered by SAAMI and counted by Acrobat, respectively; not the rifle chamber dimensions on page 68/80) and the NATO V&P barrel chamber don't have any differences in diameters or lengths until you get a little over halfway up the shoulder, at which point, the NATO V&P test chamber's shoulder switches to half the shoulder angle rather than using the shoulder/neck corner radius that SAAMI uses. After that, at the case mouth and neck, there is, again, no difference in diameters. My CAD software puts the difference in expanded case capacity during firing at 0.06 grains of water. It's enough to drop pressure by about 260 psi, according to the interior ballistics programs.

So, what were the chambers like in the test barrels reported by lucky gunner? I don't know. But based on the NATO test barrel chamber drawing, I would expect no more than about a 2000 psi difference in the same rounds fired in test guns. I will see if I can contact the author of the LG article and find out anything more.

[HiBC]

My understanding might be wrong.

Generally, a pure 223 chamber /barrel will have a slower twist to shoot varmint weight bullets at higher velocity. Lighter bullets ogive contact rifling with a shorter throat. Folks get anal about the jump to rifling being the holy grail of accuracy.

Chambers leaning toward diametrically "tight" tolerance wise are typically regarded as more accurate.

The 5,56 battle rifle chamber has a priority toward function.It can give up 1/2 MOA accuracy to run full auto with a bit of rice paddy or calcium carbonate in the chamber. Resuppy ammo booted from aircraft might get bent. A looser chamber is more forgiving.
The military has penetration as a priority. That leads to longer,heavier bullets.

Most of us know jamming the ogive into the rifling boosts pressure. So not only do we need a loose military chamber,we need a long throat.

Its some real hard to grasp rocket science, I know..

But here is a ringer that messes with "either" and "or" thinking!! Options often come in odd numbers!!

Those competition guys are always looking for a way to cheat! Somewhere over a barley pop a couple of them discussed a tight,223 grade "match" chamber reamer with a longer throat for heavier bullets.....HMMMM!

And they did not forget. Then they talked to a tool and cutter grinder guy about making a reamer!! Well,the reamer grinder guy says "Thats a wild idea!! It might work! "

So he wrote on the sketch "That Wylde Reamer" because spelling was not his strong suit.


That may not be right, but I figure if I'm making a windy country longer range prairie dog gun and figure on shooting 75 gr bullets I'll order a Wylde chamber and load something just over 23 gr of RE-15. If I push the pressure just a little too far....DARN IT !! I have to by new brass because my primer pockets got loose!! I hate that!! Don't push too far.

Ain't any rice paddies near the prairie dogs and I don't use filthy powder and I'm semi-auto only.

I just don't think its all that hard to understand.

[mehavey]

"That's a wild idea!! It might work! " So he wrote on the sketch
"That Wylde Reamer" because spelling was not his strong suit.

<Groan >

[JohnKSa]

I just don't think its all that hard to understand.

Nope. It's very easy to understand. We have ammo companies who know all about measuring pressure telling us flat out that they load 5.56 to higher pressures than .223. We have SAAMI who literally writes the book on pressure measurement telling us that it's not recommended. The effects of chamber differences on pressure are straightforward. You can find anecdotal evidence of people who have run into exactly the kind of issues that the mismatch is expected to cause when they ignore the warnings--especially in the presence of other contributors. Not always, of course, since it's not a massive pressure difference and there are variations in how ammo is loaded and chambers are cut.

But if one prefers not to accept any of that and needs some rationale for rejecting it, then it gets hard to understand.

[MarkCO]

Originally Posted by JohnKSa

Nope. It's very easy to understand. We have ammo companies who know all about measuring pressure telling us flat out that they load 5.56 to higher pressures than .223. We have SAAMI who literally writes the book on pressure measurement telling us that it's not recommended. The effects of chamber differences on pressure are straightforward. You can find anecdotal evidence of people who have run into exactly the kind of issues that the mismatch is expected to cause when they ignore the warnings--especially in the presence of other contributors. Not always, of course, since it's not a massive pressure difference and there are variations in how ammo is loaded and chambers are cut.

But if one prefers not to accept any of that and needs some rationale for rejecting it, then it gets hard to understand.

100%

But we still have folks that don't get it and refuse to understand it...then give advice based on their lack of understanding.

[Metal god]

But we still have folks that don't get it and refuse to understand it...then give advice based on their lack of understanding

Wait….what ? Are you saying people on the internet don’t always know what they are saying ? Im shocked, SHOCKED I tell you ! :-)

[HiBC]

If I get 5 loads out of a piece of 5.56 brass and still have tight primer pockets,
I'm not losing any sleep.

If I have to scrap 500 rounds of precious 5.56 prepped brass,it hurts me.
Loose primer pockets tell me "Too much powder".
"If it hurts when you do that,don't do that!"

Other than trying to understand conflicting data, I don't get my head snarled up in the international military industrial complex politics. Its an Eisenhower thing.

If I'm loading Hornady bullets, I'll look in my Hornady manual. I accept they have the testing expertise I do not have. They know something more about things than I do. I strive to be humble enough to do that.

I go to the AR-15 Match load page. I'm shooting an AR-15.

I don't exceed recommended max load. Thats a good start.

But I load small batches checking to see how my primer pockets hold up.

If the load manual says 25.3 gr of powder "X" is max and I get loose pockets with that load,, to save my brass I have to back off. Thats Life.

It works for me.

2700 or 2800 or ?? A click or two of elevation more or less, doesn't matter.

I'm happy.

[44 AMP]

“Load data for 223 Remington and 5.56 NATO is not the same! Use the appropriate load data for the case you are loading.”

If the cases are within 1% dimensionally and you use the same bullet profile. why would the load data not be interchangeable?

This is the question from the OP.

My answer is, I think it would be, with the general caveat that ALL loading data is guidelines.

There are decades worth of loading manuals where there is only one set of data for both rounds.

There have been lots of changes to what is loaded for .223 and 5.56mm ammo in recent decades, Changes due to military reasons, changes due to demand for increased long range performance, etc.

We've come a long way from the days when the only .223 was a 55gr SP and the only GI ammo was M193 ball. Because of that, we now have lots of data specific for certain rifles, and specs that didn't exist in the early decades.

Fact is, with what is available these days, every load is not suitable for every gun. One of the reasons we have so much discussion is that some people seem to think they are, or should be, and others seem to focus on the "issues" possible.

Personally, I think the best solution is, that if there is a question about a given load creating "issues" in your gun, simply don't use it in that gun.
But, that's just me...

[radom]

and that is the key to the T