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$40/brick? Damn. I remember buying it not too long ago at $20/brick.
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IT WAS THE F$%#ING POLICE CHIEF WHO CALLED .22 A TACTICAL CALIBER AND A PASSERBY WHO SAID EVERY COP ON THE SCENE (THE FLA "TERRORIST" COLLEGE ATTACK) HAD AN AK-47. WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS LEO SPOUTING? /rant off.
I was browsing through the latest CTD catalogue (they mail me one every month) and noticed that they didn't list any prices for ammo or gun parts. This is the first time I've seen that. They normally list their prices. I guess the prices for ammo and parts are too volatile to commit a price for a month.
Russian ammo you can get for $0.30 or so and up. LOTS of it around.
gunbot.net has lots of Russian suppliers of Wolf and Bear crap at low prices. Availability of better stuff (Fiocchi, Korean PMC, American 7.62 * 39, etc. is not good, all "quality" ammo is a buck or more per round).
And I have some Russian (steel bullets, the LGS guy told me, are "armor-piercing", go right through cinder blocks he told me, but I declined to ask for the exact details of what "going right through a cinder block" exactly meant...)
I wouldn't touch that Russian stuff - steel case, glue, dirty burn, for my own gun. Might be useful for barter at some point, but that's it.
At a recent machine gun shoot at our club, the only gun that consistently jammed or failed to fire was an otherwise very good and reliable tommy gun in .45 acp. This guy just couldn't get it to consistently work right, and it's one reliable design, very popular for example in WWII and prohibition before that.
Another expert walks over to the guy, looks at his Wolf ammo, declares that's his problem, gives him a few boxes of cheap/generic but American stuff - and no further problems. Nuff said.
Most military ammo has a copper gilded steel jacket. Some also contain a carbide armor piercing piece (like the green tip .223 milsurp). This is obvious with a magnet.
Both types are hell on barrels - they wear about 3x as fast with that as with civvie projectiles and I only use them when I want fast wear to "shoot in" a new barrel, since 60 or so shots of that is about the same smoothing of the tool marks as a couple hundred rounds of "good stuff". The military has no reason to care, the gun you wear out fast isn't the expensive part, and probably fails for some other reason first. Believe me, if you wear out your gun and live to tell the tale, they're real happy to give you a new one - you are the expensive part...
Just about any centerfire rifle round will easily go through the two webs of a cinderblock. They are so brittle it doesn't really matter what the projectile is - could be a light plastic tipped varmint bullet and it'll still shatter the thing. Doesn't prove much. A real round, like say a .308, will explode a block at 400 yds - tried it. But those are getting legitimately expensive to shoot - there just more of everything in a round. And for a lightweight like me, the recoil, even in a heavy gun, is a bit much to fire all day from a bench - in that case you are sort of leaning into the gun and it hits back pretty hard, compared to standing offhand.
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My "next gun" will likely be a .308. I am still trying to sort out whether the .308 is the same as the NATO round or what. ...
Re: Is the 7.62x51 ammo the same as 308 ammo?
No, they're not the same.
First, 7.62x51 Nato rounds are longer than 308 rounds.
Second, 308 rounds are "hotter" than 7.62x51 rounds.
Thus, you can shoot 7.62x51 out of a 308 caliber rifle, but you can experience big problems if you try to shoot a 308 cartridge out of a rifle chambered for 7.62x51.
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Further comments welcome!
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My "next gun" will likely be a .308. I am still trying to sort out whether the .308 is the same as the NATO round or what. ...
Yes, this is why SKS are not so accurate (an AK is by-definition full auto and there's a lot of pure bullshit that goes around that one). The chambers are loose, some countries do a better job than others - Czech and so on seem best quality build.
I've had all sorts come here to my range. Some of that eastern stuff is true garbage, the europeans do a lot better build generally. But so far, not one has made me want it. Maybe it's just me, but a 100% reliable AR, as I have just beats it on every level for what I do or might have to do. I like a little more standoff distance than the 7.62x39 will give me a sure effective hit at. And it's rare around here to see one that doesn't jam frequently (often due to ignorant owners and bad ammo, granted, but this is just real life data taken on a range I own).
But the looseness goes away very fast with the propellant Wolf uses - and now it's tight. A sniper may not be an assault weapon expert, it's a very different job, and snipers clean their guns all the time (that whole one-shot, one-kill thing, they don't shoot much unless they suck at it), where you can totally foul an SKS in one clip with Wolf to the point of jamming - I've seen it on my firing range too many times.
The laquer seal helps the ammo be more reliable in the tropics, but it's reliably bad, since it gums up chambers, and gives uneven bullet release tension so the accuracy sucks.
My benchrest 308 is also very heavy, but no muzzle brake (annoys the hell out of the guy next to you to blow his glasses off). I filled the clip with lead, lined the forearm with lead after cutting out some wood to get free-float, and drilled two 1" diameter long holes in the stock, also filled with cast in lead, then made a 3/4" thick stock spacer out of lead to get the length of pull as I desired and make it even heavier.
It's still a bit much to fire 80 times in a row off a bench...and I've replaced it for long distance competition with a homebrew 6.5mm fast twist based off a mauser action I blue printed here at the machine shop, a new jewel trigger, custom stock. It actually has a better BC and accuracy than the .308 "way out there" at half a klick or a klick where we compete, and far less kick even without any lead ballast. It's just a better tradeoff for what I do. You could argue that the .308 is slightly more effective at that range, but you'd get an argument - the 6.5 actually retains velocity better for one thing, and it bucks the wind a *lot* better - what you miss doesn't count as effective. The 6.5mm bullets I shoot are 142 gr and almost 2" long - little rocket ships. I use a 1::7 twist to stabilize those suckers, and a good bit more powder than a .308 normally uses. You could call it a 30-06 necked down, but actually the swede round came first by quite a few years, so it's really that a 30-06 is more like a 6.5 necked up in actuality - and was a response to the german 8mm mauser, since the 30-03 couldn't even come close to keeping up with the 8mm (which is BTW, no fun whatever to shoot in the original gun. Light gun, steel buttplate for your shooting comfort).
Guys, it's not like the ammo makers don't know how - they do. The issue is they have to stick to the lower end of all the SAAMI spec sizes so their stuff fits in anything. The gun makers stick to the other end of the tolerance band for the same reason. Rattle-fit ammo is never accurate, period. This is why I handload - I can make things fit perfectly, and that's worth more than 4::1 accuracy in moa in many guns, all by itself.
If you actually need a gun, sniper style, the worst thing you can do is miss. Ask John Plaster - now everyone for a mile knows about you, have a guess which direction you're in, and are now looking for you. Your next shot is going to raise your insurance premiums quite a bit...because it will nail your position for return fire.
Less is sometimes more. Just depends on the situation.
Close to reality Jay.:clap: But actually my two heaviest guns are a Grizzly in .50 bmg (5+ foot barrel), and my unlimited class benchrest homebrew which shoots 6 ppc out of a bull barrel - which is 1.5" in diameter at the muzzle end - there are cars with less steel in the engine block. Now that one is sort of a two man carry if you have to go more than 20 feet with it. Not exactly a "tactical assault" gun. Real good though if you want to put one inside .05" at 100 yds, though - it's good enough to replace a cheap drill press at that range. I shoot the 6ppc free recoil and it only moves back on the bags about half an inch on a shot. It's a set trigger with a 10 gram release...all you have to do is "think blam" and it's off.
No one in their right mind shoots that .50 off the shoulder. It's not a Barret-class muzzle brake and I've seen it lift 300 lb guys off their feet shooting it off a bipod from a table. It's mostly for show (it's the sign for my gunsmith shop), as is my carbon-15 pistol (pelosi's worst nightmare with a 30 rd clip) that is just not possible to make accurate. It's my version of an SKS, but it's reliable. It's my second noisiest gun, as you might expect from shooting .223 out of an effectively 3.5" long barrel - it's all noise and fire, not much else, but if you miss you at least set their hair on fire with the blast.
Edit:
You can usually, if not always, shoot NATO out of a ".308", the specs are the same. However, all these specs have a tolerance band. In general, the military looks for feed reliability more than anything, so their ammo will in general fit loose, even though the paper tolerance band for NATO is wider. There have been a few cases of nato 5.62 not fitting in a commercial .223 gun that had a tight chamber. Assuming DoChen is getting a bolt action - the easy rule is if it's hard to shove in there, don't - it will be harder to get back out. My Ruger (not necessarily recommended) .308 has never had an issue with nato ammo, particularly that with the + (sniper) headstamp, which tends to be on the large side for tight fit, but honestly, I don't shoot milsurp out of a good barrel, especially not that one I had to spend almost 20 hours lapping because they made it so shitty (toolmarks everywhere, including a grinchy trigger I had to lap too). When I bought that gun, a beer can at 100 yds was safe from you with a box of ammo. Now a fly isn't safe on a single shot at the same range - there IS something to being a gunsmith, the profession has a reason to exist.
They must have made it just when they heard Bill was about to die - a Monday morning hungover build, I'm sure most Ruger stuff is better and I got unlucky with that one.
In general you should note that there is a reason for a lot of milsurp being surplus, and it often includes a batch that didn't pass inspection for the military - that's the real problem - they dumped it because it DOES NOT meet spec - it's more that than a spec problem.
I should further mention that most of the semi's that come to me for unreliable feeding have issues with the mag feed lips. Most but not all the time, that's the issue if things are otherwise OK (not crap reject ammo or stupid user who doesn't know how to clean).
And yes, gun choice has a lot to do with predicted usage. For close quarters I'll stick with my CZ-97b in .45 and my carbon 15 if there's not a shotgun in reach. The carbon is the new SKS in a lot of ways, but lighter, faster to deploy and so on.
Honestly though, if you think you need 30+ rounds in close quarters, I'd be buying some real good body armor and a "chicken plate" because at those odds, you're going to lose otherwise - unless you are the god of tactics and guns and the opponents are complete idiots - and maybe even then, they might get lucky.
This whole SKS vs AK nomenclature thing gives me heartburn. All, 100% of actual AK's are full auto, end of story - the parts won't even fit. It got confused by morons wanting to brag their gun was the famous AK when it's really a different design that looks the same on the outside so you can't make an SKS full auto. Urban myth stuff.
Not a big deal otherwise - a semi is much more effective in hits vs ammo usage - it's an old saw in the marines - go to semi - still have a problem? Usually the answer is no. Full auto is just for spray fire to keep their heads down whilst you run away.
cases and cases of NATO and russian stuff here, nothing else. Don't know why. Gun show next weekend, so guess I'll go take a look (at the same 30-30 I've been looking at for two years). Might find some ammo there, but we've quit shooting.
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