K31 can chamber 7.62x51....

Leviathan024

Leviathan024

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Fellas... be careful when you have various ammunition mixed loose in a case. I was out shooting with a group today and one guy brought along his awesome k31. After a few mags the k31 was having extraction issues and required a cleaning rod to tap out a case. Turns out some IVI 7.62 x51 (.308) was loaded in the mag and was mixed in the ammo case. Not sure if some of it actually fired or not but it will chamber and sometimes extract. Always check the head stamps as this could have turned out much worse. Happy holidays !
 
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They are very close calibers. I had just tumbled some .308 brass and came across a slightly different head stamp. Thought it was a military 7.62x51 case but noticed it was slightly larger. Took a few seconds then I realized it was a piece of gp11 brass. Would have sucked try and run that through the .308 sizer.
 
Any case that is shorter and slightly smaller in diameter will fit into the chamber. With only twenty thou difference in diameter, there is a very good chance the 308 cartridges fired as long as the extractor held them in place well enough for the firing pin to strike deep and hard enough. About the only issue there would be is the cartridge case may have fireformed to the chamber cracked. If it was unfired brass, likely it just fireformed. This isn't nearly as dangerous as it sounds, especially as the cases are so close dimensionally.

I saw a 308 case after it had been fired in a 30-06 chamber. Blown right out, no damage to the rifle at all.

I know a fellow that is long departed that bought a crate of surplus 8x57 ammo and shot it through a P17 Enfield until it was all gone over about 20 years. He used to shoot the White Tails out of his hayshed every fall for his family and his brother's family. Those .323 diameter FMJs with the tips ground off swaged down beautifully and took a lot of deer. He could hit a minute of ice cream pail at 100 yards. That was all he needed though. I don't think he ever shot a deer more than 50 yards off.

As for the 358, I don't believe the bullet would fit into the neck of the chamber far enough for the bolt to close on it.

I used to have a Mexican Border Patrol Winchester Model 92 that started life as a 44-40. The Mexicans in their wisdom rechambered it to 45acp. It shot the bullets out the other end just fine. Mind you, the barrel had a bulge about 2/3 of the way down, the bore looked more like a black iron sewer pipe and it would group into a foot at 20 meters. I guess when your target is a running wet back that's good enough. This thing was all matte black and had a huge front sight in a heavy circle. It was modified for close and dirty work.

Please don't take this as if I am advocating using the wrong case in a chamber, just because it fits. I emphatically am not. I am saying it happens a lot more than most people care to think about and is very seldom catastrophic.
 
I was at a match at CFB Shilo a few years ago, their annual Battle of the Bulge shoot, which wasd fired as close to the anniversary date as possible.

Fellow had a Garand with one of those silly Navy inserts in it so he could shoot issue 7.62 rounds.

Rifle ejected the insert along with an empty and nobody noticed.

Rifle kept on chugging just fine through the entire match, came off with half-decent scores.

THEN the RO picked up a funny-looking casing, blown out straight. There followed half an hour searching through the snowdrifts, looking for an empty with a chamber-insert attached. Don't know if they ever located the thing.

Fact is, the above post is quite correct: as long as the case is supported by the bolt..... and not just by thin air..... you can get away with it. I have straightened out MANY 308 cases in a Brazilian M954 and it is none the worse for the experience.
 
Where it gets ugly are rifles with smaller diameter bore size than the cartridge projectile being chambers by accident.

Decades ago I had the "pleasure" of firing a .308 Win cartridge in a Spanish Mauser bolt gun chambered for .270 Win.

Friend's supplied rifle and ammunition at a range session. He was insufficiently careful about keeping
different ammunition types segregated when using multiple rifles. I was relatively new to the shooting
sports so that I didn't know to watch that detail like a hawk.

On firing, a *very* loud report. I got a faceful of gas, brass particles plated on my glasses.
Trapdoor magazine blown out, parts lost. Stock cracked at it's wrist, bolt "frozen shut".

Interestingly, the very swaged projectile actually hit the target. (.308 diameter squished down to .270 diameter)

I was fortunate to have been wearing eye protection and double hearing protection.

Probably over 100,000 PSI peak pressure, way over proof.

A cautionary tale about ammunition matching.

A better action design would have managed the gas more safely from the cartridge case failure.
 
30-40 & 303 br will interchange IIRC. 30-40 into 303 I think, lots of that sort of thing.
I'd imagine 308 will insert into my 7.65 x 53 as well.
9mm Largo into 9 x 23...the list goes on.
Nature of the beasts that we play with IMO
 
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Every once in a while, when the .SMLE and Lee-Enfields were cheaper and more prevalent, we would find blown out .303 Savage brass on the ranges. After all, a .303 is a .303, right? I have even come across people who believed the .303 Savage was the same as the .303 British ----they were shooting it in a Savage made Number 4 rifle so it had to be right. But then again, their accuracy was not the best, and they wondered why the cases came out "funny" after being fired.

Some cartridges will go into a chamber of a different calibre and can be fired. However, there are some that have a relationship to a bomb and will blow up with disasterous results. One particularly explosive combination is mixing up 12 and 20 guage shotgun shells, where a 20 is dropped into the chamber and the rim wedges into the forcing cone of the barrel. A 12 guage shell will enter the chamber and if fired, the 20 acts like a barrel obstruction.
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Kinda spooky but I've a 'enlarged' MKII Ross rifle that might get some fire formed 30-40 brass. Read a chuck hawk article about it being a way to get good usage out of a rifle with a grossly milled out chamber.
In yesteryear it seems that letting the shallow end of the gene pool sort itself out was OK.
Must have been; when you think of the plethora of military Mauser's, most unmarked as to caliber. Often with rds that would fit other than intended rifles.

Edit; the 30-40 idea is from 'Pet Loads'...just remembered that.
 
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Was brass hunting at my local range one day and thought i seen some 45/70 brass on the ground but after picking it up i seen it was .308 brass that was fired through what look to be 30/06 rifle !! Fire formed to a 30/06 chamber and the brass had no cracks ,bulges or signs of overpressure lol but still some people are not too smart.
 
....and people live in fear of headspace 3 thou over Field. This sport is really only dangerous for the most part to the anxious and their peace of mind.
 
In England rifles must be proof tested. If a rifle gets a new barrel installed, it gets sent off for proofing.

Gunsmith sends 20 rifles off to be tested. 19 are 308 target rifles with new barrels. 1 is a .25-06 sporter.

The sporter came back all blown to hell. Note attached said "Failed test."

Inside the gunsmith found the remains of a 308 proof round.....
 
Ganderite said:
In England rifles must be proof tested. If a rifle gets a new barrel installed, it gets sent off for proofing.

Gunsmith sends 20 rifles off to be tested. 19 are 308 target rifles with new barrels. 1 is a .25-06 sporter.

The sporter came back all blown to hell. Note attached said "Failed test."

Inside the gunsmith found the remains of a 308 proof round.....
Click to expand...

Tell me more, please.

tac
 
There are two - London and Birmingham. About three months ago the Birmingham Boys proofed an original 1894-made Winchester in 44-40, a carbine made of iron [the following year it was made of steel], that shot a BP cartridge, using a proof-load for a modern steel nitro version.

It passed proof, but was only capable of being fired a couple of times after that, and with Pyrodex RS loads. The bulge in the chamber all but prevented the fired case from being removed, and the gun, once worth around $2500, is now being rebarrelled into a $500 hack.

tac
 
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