222 Barrel Burner

W

William Suter

Well-known member
LOL, a guy at our gun club meeting and I were talking. He said a friend called him asking about a rifle in 222. He told him to stay away as that caliber was a barrel burner. He told him that people load them really hot and it torchs the barrels. I just said OK and let him talk. Funny, my 788 is pretty old and still shoots 1/2 inch groups with about anything I feed it. He said the 223 was just as bad. Not saying its not possible just doubtful. But there are exceptions to everything.
 
The next time you run into that fellow tell him that the 222 was capable of winning the Unlimited NBRSA Nationals with a barrel that had 8000+ rounds on it. I grew up about 3 miles from Walt Berger and shot with him back in the 70’s. Walt got his final Hall of Fame points with a Hart barreled .222 with north of 8k rounds on it. He’s full of $hit.
 
I'm pretty sure you'll clean a 222 barrel to death before you can shoot it out. I can see shooting out a 223 barrel, I've done it with many thousands of 5.56 ball ammo out of my Rem 600 but it took 30 years and it would still shoot near MOA with hand loads but didn't have the incredible accuracy of its youth. It is now a 6x45.

Sounds like he might have gotten the 222 and 220 mixed up.
 
Unless you clarify 10K rounds as being a barrel burner, then maybe hahaha. It can be hilarious listening to the average Joe's at the gun counter or shooting range talking about things they know absolutely nothing about, or quite annoying.
 
The .222 is basically a toned down .223/5.56mm. In the 1950s the army requested a centerfire .22 cartridge that remained supersonic at 500 yards, something the .222 couldn’t quite pull off. Hence, the .223 was born. The .223 is a virtual ballistic twin of the (obsolete) .222 magnum.

I mention all this because the .223 offers excellent barrel life, so it’s inconceivable that the .222 would not. My guess is the fellow you were talking to confused it with the .220 Swift or maybe .22-250.
 
Klebanoff said:
The .222 is basically a toned down .223/5.56mm. In the 1950s the army requested a centerfire .22 cartridge that remained supersonic at 500 yards, something the .222 couldn’t quite pull off. Hence, the .223 was born. The .223 is a virtual ballistic twin of the (obsolete) .222 magnum.

I mention all this because the .223 offers excellent barrel life, so it’s inconceivable that the .222 would not. My guess is the fellow you were talking to confused it with the .220 Swift or maybe .22-250.
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What would the .222 be loaded with that it wouldn't remain supersonic at 500 yards? Assuming, of course, that it's not loaded with a reduced load.
 
BangPop said:
What would the .222 be loaded with that it wouldn't remain supersonic at 500 yards? Assuming, of course, that it's not loaded with a reduced load.
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You are correct. If memory serves, I got that claim from Barnes’s Cartridges of the World. Having looked it up again, I see that I was mistaken. So I stand corrected.

That said, the legitimacy of my comparison I think still stands.
 
DiYi said:
Very few people burn out ANY barrel.Lotsa people claim that though.
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True, this. Many more have had barrels that lost accuracy due to copper fouling than have actually shot them out, IMO.
I have shot out three 30-06 barrels on one pre 64 Mod. 70 Win. target rifle; average life was 7500 rounds. Rifle has the 4th barrel in it now with something like 4000 rounds through it, unfortunately I wore out before the barrel and had to hang the old girl up. The fact that the action is completely original is a testimony to that old rifle; we won't even guestimate the number of "rounds" dry fired over the years, and yes, never even broke a firing pin. Also shot out an M1 Garand barrel but it started out w/some minor pitting when I got it.
I did wear out one other barrel but that was a .308 Norma Mag. and didn't take so long as the 30-06's.:)
 
I've only wore out 3 barrels, 2 were 25/06s at around 3500 each, and a 300 RUM at 1500. Back in the good old days when I shot a lot more, had less responsibilities, and no wife haha.

Now I just shoot a lot more 22LR and 222/223 to save on the bigger rifles barrels and components.
 
Foxpro.223 said:
Meh... He probably had a brain fart and really meant something else.
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In my own defense, allow me to quote the text: "The .223 Remington first appeared in 1957 as experimental military cartridge for the Armalite AR-15 assault rifle. . . . One of the requirements for the cartridge was that the projectile have a retained velocity in excess of the speed of sound (about 1080 fps at sea level) at 500 yards, something that could not be achieved with the .222 Remington. [emphasis added]." Frank C. Barnes, Cartridges of the World, 15th Ed. (Iola, Wisconsin: Krause Publications, 2016), p. 72.

So, yeah, I was wrong, but I was going off a (supposedly) authoritative reference work.
 
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Mr. Barnes should have done some homework before offering himself up as an authority on the Cartridges of the World. It doesn't take much of a cartridge to stay supersonic at 500 yards. The .22 Hornet is capable of meeting that standard with most 35 grain bullets, and it's considerably less capable than the .222.
 
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Klebanoff said:
In my own defense, allow me to quote the text: "The .223 Remington first appeared in 1957 as experimental military cartridge for the Armalite AR-15 assault rifle. . . . One of the requirements for the cartridge was that the projectile have a retained velocity in excess of the speed of sound (about 1080 fps at sea level) at 500 yards, something that could not be achieved with the .222 Remington. [emphasis added]." Frank C. Barnes, Cartridges of the World, 15th Ed. (Iola Wisconsin: Krause Publications, 2016), p. 72.

So, yeah, I was wrong, but I was going off a (supposedly) authoritative reference work.
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I meant the guy who said .222 Rem was a barrel burner.

My Grandpa who was a rancher bought a Remington 722 in .222 Rem around 1954 after years of hunting predators and varmints with a .218 Bee and a .22 Hornet. The 722 was basically his truck gun at the time, it went everywhere with him. He liked the .222 because he saw it as a more efficient and flater shooting round. He shot a bunch of coyotes, bobcats, fox, deer, dogs running wild, and probably a semi-load or two of prairie dogs with his .222 over the course of about 30 years give or take a couple years. After all that, my cousin cabbaged on to it and shot it a bunch more for a long time before trading it for a new Sako in .223 Rem in the early 1990s. Their 722 .222 Rem had to of had thousands of rounds on the original factory barrel and it wasn't shot out when he traded for the Sako. I do remember cousin talking about how he wanted something new and more accurate at the time however.
 
One of the requirements for the cartridge was that the projectile have a retained velocity in excess of the speed of sound (about 1080 fps at sea level) at 500 yards, something that could not be achieved with the .222 Remington. [emphasis added]." Frank C. Barnes, Cartridges of the World, 15th Ed. (Iola, Wisconsin: Krause Publications, 2016), p. 72.

I had read the military wanted a cartridge that could penetrate a helmet at 300 meters. The 222Rem could not, the 222RemMag could, but Stoner/Armalite thought the 222Remmag was just a bit long to function reliably in the AR platform, and so the 223/5.56 was created.

In any event, we have 3 great cartridges to shoot!
 
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