Remington 783 223 keyholing

S

Shane Derocher

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Meadow Lake, SK
So I picked up a new rifle in 223 for Christmas. I took it to the range with a few boxes of 62 grain Federal Fusion I assumed with the advertised 1:9 twist that it would have no issue stabilizing these rounds. At 25 yards all ten rounds I fired were keyholing bad. Crown on the rifle is immaculate. I’m going to try some different ammo next weekend I am just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience with this rifle?
 
Stranger things have happened........some SPS were shipped with crooked chambers,stamped with wrong caliber designations and sans rifling.I had a late Savage99A with aluminum rotary mag that for all accounts and purposes should have been rifled 1-10 turns out to be 1-14
 
Underthegun said:
Are you saying it might have been majorly fouled from the factory?
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Reading too many threads lol missed this one was bought new, thought it was used.
I think it might just be the bullets, Fusion I think is a Speer Deepcurl but with a boat tail. These are basically heavy plated lead bullets.
Try the cheapest 55gr you can find and see how they perform.
 
Shane Derocher said:
So if the twist is slower, in theory it should still stabilize lighter bullets? If it doesn’t keyhole lighter pills I probably won’t bother with warranty
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When talking about bullet stability, we seem to frequently refer to bullet weight which has no effect on stability, but bullet length is critical. I have a 1:12 .223 full stock rifle that shoot 50 gr Speer TNTs like a match rifle, but switching to 55 gr Barnes MPG, and the bullets print keyholes, so weight isn't the issue. A lead core, flat base, round nose bullet is the shortest, commonly available bullet for a given caliber, and their bearing surface is almost the entire length of the bullet. By contrast, mono-metal bullets are longer, even if weight and profile are the same, typical spitzer hunting and varmint bullets are longer due to the pointed nose, which increases length, and VLD or ULD bullets are much longer, and only a fraction of their overall length is the bearing surface.
 
I had saw on Facebook just the other day and I'm trying to look for the post as I type this, a guy with exact same problem,sent it in and it had a 1:14 twist on it instead of the 1:9.
 
Has anyone noticed, he said they keyholed at 25 yards, me think that is hardly any powder!
 
220 said:
Has anyone noticed, he said they keyholed at 25 yards, me think that is hardly any powder!
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You might be surprised to see that keyholes can appear almost as soon as a bullet exits the muzzle. Its called precession, and precession typically occurs twice in the bullet's flight, first upon leaving the muzzle and again upon impacting a denser than air medium. The cure for precession that negatively affects ballistic and/or terminal performance, is to choose either shorter bullets, or a barrel with a faster twist.
 
I had a 22/250 years ago about 1977 (Alpine) great rifle but with a slow twist .
shot lighter bullets great, 69's were a waste of time at 25 yards.
It shot 55 TNT's super however so I was happy.
Cat
 
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