• Hey All! Lately there has been more and more scammers on the forum board. They register and replies to members requests for guns and/or parts or other things. The reply contains a gmail or hotmail address or similar ”anonymous” email addresses which they want you to reply to. DO NOT ANSWER ANY STRANGE MESSAGES! They often state something like this: ”Hello! Saw your post about purchasing a stock for a Safari. KnuckleheadBob has one. Email him at: [email protected]” If you receive any strange messages: Check the status of whoever message you. If they have no posts and signed up the same day or very recently, stay away. Same goes for other members they might refer to. Check them too and if they are long standing members, PM them and ask if the message is legit. Most likely it’s not. Then use the report function in each message or post so I can kick them out! Beware of anything that might seem fishy! And again, for all of you who registered your personal name as username, please contact me so I can change it to a more anonymous username. You’d be surprised of how much one can find out about a person from just a username on a forum such ad our! All the best! And be safe! Jim

Trust No One (in the words ofFox Mulder)

Sako Collectors Club Discussion Forum

icebear

Sako-addicted
This is so stupid, it's almost funny. I've bought lots of ammo for my .222 Sakos at gun shows. Most of it has been Remington and most of it has been NOS factory ammo in shelf-worn boxes. Well, today I grabbed a box of what appeared to be NOS Remington ammo to sight in a couple of Sakos that I had recently mounted scopes on. Got on the firing line, loaded five rounds in an L461 .222, and the first round wouldn't chamber. Say what? Ejected it, chambered and fired the second round. Then I worked the bolt again and the third round wouldn't chamber. At this point I figured something had to be wrong and took a close look at the ammo. To my surprise and annoyance, half the ammo in the box was .222 (mostly Federal) and half was .223/5.56. There were two rounds of PMC commercial .223 and eight rounds of assorted military 5.56, some of which appear to be reloads and one has a light primer hit. The one .222 round that wasn't Federal was a reload that hadn't been properly resized. See photo below.

The charitable (and most likely) explanation is that somebody who knew nothing about guns was cleaning up an estate, found the ammo loose in a drawer or box along with the Remington box, and put it all in the Remington box, not realizing that it wasn't all the same caliber. He/she then sold a large batch of stuff to a gun show dealer, who didn't check the contents of every apparently original box of ammo. The uncharitable explanation is that somebody pulled this stunt intentionally to get rid of some assorted loose ammo.

The half box of .222 worked well enough that I was able to use it to zero the scopes on my two rifles. The rest of it may be usable as well, except for the three obvious reloads. I'm not out a lot of money, but it shows that you can't take anything for granted when it comes to ammo. I have to say this is the first time anything like this has happened to me in a long time. The last such incident I remember was about 25 years ago when I bought a bag of .308 bullets at a show. When I went to load them in .30-30 cases, they wouldn't go in and crushed the case mouth. At that point I miked them and discovered they were 8mm/.323. I was able to relabel and resell them as 8mm, but I shudder to think what might have happened if they had been boattail bullets instead of flat base. I might well have been able to load them into .30 caliber cases, which would have made a real mess when I went to shoot them! The moral of the story is, check everything.

Gun show 222 box 2.JPG
 
Hi Ice

As I recall a while back we had a new member that was discussing ammo. I can't remember whether it was .222 or something else but I do recall that the new guy really didn't understand the importance of using ammo that is specific to the chambering of the rifle.

My take away from the discussion was that there must be a lot of folks out there that could be taking their life in their hands because they just don't realize this. While it is true that manufacturers ammo is interchangeable when it is specific to a particular chambering. It just isn't true that different caliber rounds can be fired in a rifle chambered for a specific cartridge. Hence the confusion over .222, .223, .222 Magnum and others.

From personal experience I recall an incident on a hunting trip where our guide had a Marlin lever action and he was complaining that the rifle was the most inaccurate rifle he had ever owned. He showed me the gun and I asked him to let me see the ammo that he had purchased for it. Well, believe t or not, the guide produced five boxes of 30-30 ammo. All of the ammo in the boxes was correct. The problem was that the Marlin was chambered for the .32 Winchester Special. In this example, the 30-30 rounds would chamber with no issues. Accuracy suffered because the 30-30 bullets just flew down the barrel without contacting the rifling. When I pointed this out to him he went into town and brought back five boxes of .32 of WS ammo and the little Marlin shot dead nuts on. Fortunately for the guide the two different calibers of ammo were identical except for the diameter of the bullet. Both chambered and fired but since the 30-30 ammo was for a different chambering the rounds simply didn't perform.

Now while this is an example of a situation where only accuracy suffered because the wrong ammo was being used in the rifle what if the Marlin was chambered for 30-30 and the guide tried to use .32 WS ammo in it? In this case assuming that the rounds would have chambered, when the rifle was fired a serious overpressure condition could have occurred that may have wrecked the rifle and seriously injured the shooter.

The takeaway from all of this is only use ammo that is specifically manufactured for a specific chambering.

rick
 
What blows me away is that the guy with the lever gun was a hunting guide. You'd think he would know better.

I do remember a discussion online, maybe in this forum, where a guy was asking if .222 Remington and .222 Remington Magnum were interchangeable. Fortunately, somebody set him straight.
 
Hi Ice

As they say, you can't fix stupid.

I remember the .222 discussion also. I think I was the first one to provide correct information. That said, the guy just wouldn't accept the fact that .222 and .222 Mag cartridges were not interchangeable. As I recall it took a lot of convincing. At this point, I'm not really sure that he took our advice.

rick
 
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