223 -vs- 5.56: FACTS and MYTHS

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oh my word do we really need another two to three versus five five six story Gavin gear here from ultimate realtor calm I say yes I just got a whole huge load of brass in from capital cartridge and have been researching and preparing for a whole bunch of two two three and five five six related stories stories around the air fifteen loading and shooting all of this and I found a ton of misinformation and I found some big gaps in the information that you need to fully understand this problem domain so in this video we're going to give a brief history of the development of this cartridge and the corresponding ar-15 and m16 rifle platform we're gonna talk about differences in chambers differences in ammunition safe interoperability guidelines reloading let's get to it in the 1950s through an organization called conarc the US Army outlined the requirements for their next generation modern rifle platform these requirements included a 22 caliber projectile supersonic bullet velocity at five hundred yards a net rifle weight of six pounds or less a magazine capacity of 20 rounds select fire for both semi-automatic and fully automatic use penetration of a u.s. steel helmet on one side at 500 yards penetration of a hundred and thirty-five thousandth of an inch steel plate that's about ten gauge at 500 yards accuracy and ballistics equal to m2 ball ammunition that's the thirty out six ammunition used in the m1 garand and wounding ability equal to the m1 carbine this wasn't just about the rifle this was about the rifle and ammunition that would be used in it and that's what led to the joint development of the two to three Remington ammunition and the ar-15 rifle platform that would be adopted by the US Army as the m16 while Remington Arms took a lead on the ammunition side Eugene stoner and Armalite rifle took a lead on the rifle platform side but this was a truly joint industry effort the industry working together to help satisfy the requirements that the army had outlined in the 50s for the next-generation rifle platform so in 1963 Remington introduced their civilian version of the ammunition outcome from this effort two to three Remington a year later the army adopted the army version of the ar-15 rifle platform called it the m16 with full auto and semi auto firing capabilities but they didn't specify two to three Remington ammunition that would be too simple they specified a new specification for ammunition called 5.56 nato and this people is where the trouble started because 5.56 nato and two-to-three remington are almost the same but they are not let's take a look at the differences if you pick up a two to three cartridge and a 5.56 cartridge on the outside they are identical nearly identical for all intents and purposes exterior dimensions are the same the differences will be seen when you look at the case rim first off on the 5.56 cartridge you'll see a date code potentially a symbol those kinds of things you'll also see a stamped ring around the primer itself that's the Crypt primer pocket and it's a way that the US military ensures that the primer won't back out during warfare full-auto fire of that kind of thing on the 2 to 3 cartridge you won't see that crimped primer pocket and you'll see a 2 to 3 R M or 2 to 3 plus a part of the manufacturer's name Star Line puts the little line on there of course that kind of thing but what about the case itself if you look online you'll see that 2 to 3 has a working pressure rating of about 55,000 psi while 5.56 has a working pressure specification of about 63,000 psi so the 5 5 6 brass must be thicker and stronger right wrong it has more to do with how pressure testing is done than it does with the actual working limits of pressure between these two cartridges the sami methodology which is what 2 to 3 Remington abides by uses what's called a conforming line on the case a hole is drilled right where that conforming line is and pressure is measured to report via a piezoelectric transducer this gives a very accurate reading of pressure over time as the bullet starts to move and as it goes down the bore that kind of thing with the 5 5 6 cartridge the military uses a couple different methodologies for testing the first is EP V 80 now this type of testing involves a pressure port a hole drilled forward of the case mouth and that makes it very easy and quick to take measurements and to do that type of testing because you don't have to drill through the case itself you don't have to make sure everything's lined up that kind of thing but peak pressures are higher the readings are higher even with the same equivalent cartridge and the actual noise level in the pressure measurement the fluctuation that's just due to the dynamics of the measurement is also a factor and that has to be filtered out as well along comes the second methodology SC ATP this is more similar to the civilian Sammy method for measuring pressure a holes drilled through the case it's in about the same location and guess what the SC ATP specification for 5.56 ammo is about 55,000 psi so at the end of the day these cases are very similar and and almost being equal they're virtually identical and interoperable the cases themselves I've weighed a whole bunch of these cases and I've found two to three that weigh more of found in 5.56 that weigh more but their differences have more to do with how they're certified and tested than what the actual cases themselves where there is a big difference is the chambers 5.56 chambers and 2 to 3 Remington chambers are different let's take a look at how that looks on paper so after doing a whole bunch of research and consulting with multiple industry partners I came up with this summary of the differences in chamber dimensions between 2 to 3 Remington and 5.56 nato just know that every rumor manufacturer is going to grind their Reimers to this vacations they feel best represent these guidelines and every rifle manufacturer is going to tweak things just a little bit and then there's all of the hybrid chambers let's walk through the numbers that I came up with you can draw what conclusions you will so this diagram represents a cross-sectional cutaway of your rifles barrel and focuses on the chamber dimensions specifically the differences between 2 2 3 & 5 5 6 starting at the back the base diameter 4 5 5 6 is about two thousandths of an inch larger the shoulder diameter is about seven tenths of one thousandth of an inch larger from the base to the shoulder plus four thousands of an inch four five five six from the base to the front of where the case mouth would be about three thousandths of an inch longer on five five six but where the real interesting differences come in are with the free board the free bore is that smooth section of bore ahead of where the cartridge sits but before the rifling or the bullet jumps just a little bit before it's guided into the rifling by the throat the throat is the angled section kind of like a forcing cone on a revolver four five five six the freeboard diameter is about two and a half thousands larger but the key difference really is the free bore length itself for two to three it's 25 thousandths of an inch four five five six it's double that this makes a big difference with the kind of pressure characteristics that different bullet profiles are going to have for ammunition chambered in these two different rifles so what about shooting two to three Remington and shooting 5.56 nato ammunition two different cartridges a bunch of different variant chamberings what's the interoperability story the safest rule to abide by is if you've got 5.56 nato ammunition you need to shoot it in a 5.56 nato chamber if you have two to three remington ammunition you can shoot it in any of the variants chamberings including two to three remington two to three wild the Novus key chambering and 5.56 why is this it actually has to do with bullet profiles the military uses a bunch of different specifications for 5.56 one such case is the 63 grain tracer load and this 63 grain bullet is less dense because of the phosphorous inside that means it requires more volume and one of the ways to get more volume is to move the ogive of the bullet forward on the bullet profile the ogive is the curve of the bullet that first contacts the rifling when they move that ogive forward that means there's more of a likelihood of peak pressures as the pressures building inside the case and as that bullet is starting to move in the free boar towards the throat and this is where 5.56 with twice the free boar has less peak pressure under those circumstances compared with 2 to 3 Remington so there are a lot of interesting cases in the Middle where interoperability may be possible between 556 NATO ammunition and 2 to 3 or other chambers I would really urge you to do your research and be very careful you are responsible for your own safety there may be things you can figure out that are safe to do but do your research first and always look for pressure signs it's not worth risking your life so that pretty much covers interoperability what about reloading that's a whole other interoperability story now reloading 2 to 3 Remington reloading 5.56 nato pretty much follow all of the basic guidelines for equipment and process that you'd find when with any other bottleneck cartridge the one difference being that you really have to be careful with case prep on 5.56 nato to remove that crimped primer pocket you got a swage it you gotta remit you got to do something to get rid of it so you have smooth prem beyond that the key consideration is load data we talked about the cases and how the cases may or may not be different well it turns out that the load data is different the cases might not be different but they might be certified differently the ammunition the pressure ratings all of that so the safest thing to do is to use 5.56 nato load data when you're loading 5.56 nato cases and use 2 to 3 Remington low data when you're loading two to three Remington cases if you look in some of the load manuals like the Hornady load manual they actually have separate data that is very similar maybe slightly different again you'd better to be safe than sorry better to be careful than careless when it comes to your own life and the longevity of your firearm the safety of those around you that kind of thing so I've got a whole bunch of videos on loading two to three Remington and 5.56 nato and other bottleneck cartridges that you can check out but make sure that you're using the right data for the right loan I hope that you found this video useful I absolutely love to shoot in low two to three Remington and 5.56 nato I've got all this brass from capital cartridge then I'm excited to process and use it got more stories coming up on that so if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up and if you don't want to miss any of the action here on Gavin tube subscribe to my channel until next time happy shooting and happy reloading [Music]

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Channel: gavintoobe

Views: 1,569,177

Rating: 4.8434315 out of 5

Keywords: Reloading, Ultimate Reloader, Reloading Blog, Reloading Videos, Reloading Press, 45 ACP, 9mm Parabellum, m1911, AR-15, AR-10, .223 Remington, 5.56 NATO, 6.5 Creedmoor, 224 Valkyrie, Glock, 223 vs 5.56, 5.56x45mm, AK47 vs AR-15, ak 47 vs ar 15 accuracy, ar15 vs ak47, ak 47 or ar 15 which is better, AK74, Reloading 223, Reloading 5.56, reloading 5.56 military brass, 5.56x45mm ballistics, 223 vs 5.56 difference, ak74 vs ar15

Id: VCS4fXFmCyA

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Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018

Reddit Comments

Definitely going to watch... key learning for me when i was shopping for first rifle purchase was to figure out if I could safely fire .223 from a 5.56N rifle or vice versa. All the reading I did showed that .223 was super safe to fire from 5.56N, and 5.56N would be ok through .223, but best to be avoided.

When it came to 7.62N vs .308, all the reading indicates we can fire 7.62N through a .308 chamber, but NEVER should we try to fire .308 from a 7.62N chamber.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/InactiveJumper 📅︎︎ Nov 21 2018 🗫︎ replies