Pros and cons of 223 Wylde

[cjacobs]

Just curious, what are the pros and cons of a 223 Wylde barrel vs a regular 5.56 or 223.

 

[Saw]

I don't own one, but there isn't any advertised downside to the Wylde chamber. Supposedly accurate with .223 and able to handle 5.56 case pressures. I've never heard of a downside to that chamber.

 

[cjacobs]

I don't own one, but there isn't any advertised downside to the Wylde chamber. Supposedly accurate with .223 and able to handle 5.56 case pressures. I've never heard of a downside to that chamber.

That's the barrel I'm thinking about going with for my AR15 build.

 

[Blue Diamond]

I've heard that if u reload it is not a good choice because of overstretching of the cases. Proceed with caution.

 

[cjacobs]

I've heard that if u reload it is not a good choice because of overstretching of the cases. Proceed with caution.

I don't reload. Had a bad experience with reloading and won't bother with it anymore.

 

[Golden Dragon]

223 Wylde on my AR's

 

[cjacobs]

223 Wylde on my AR's

What made you choose 223 Wylde?

 

[stag0608]

^^^^^^ +1

 

[MONK]

You get the best of both worlds. Prolly biggest name in dedicated competition AR's uses Wylde.

 

[cjacobs]

Thanks guys...i think I'm going Wylde with a 1/8 twist.

 

[stag0608]

Check out ballistic advantage barrels. Especially the Hanson profile barrel. They are 1moa or better guaranteed.

 

[Primary_Machine]

On paper .223 Wylde is a superior chamber to .223/5.56. In the real world - the gains in accuracy with the Wylde chamber are marginal over a quality .223 chamber. Standard .223 and .223 Wylde will both shoot sub MOA no problem with the right loads.

 

[Akajun]

I've heard that if u reload it is not a good choice because of overstretching of the cases. Proceed with caution.

whomever gave you that advice is doesn't understand what a wylde chamber is nor proper case sizing procedures. It is basically a nato chamber with a shortened throat, thats it. If you pull prints of commercial .223 chamber, nato, and wylde, you will see other minor differences but the throat is the big difference. I get 10-15 firings per piece of brass with my service rifles, all with a wylde chamber, I never loose brass to case separations, usually either the neck splits or the primers pockets are too loose to hold a new primer.

On paper .223 Wylde is a superior chamber to .223/5.56. In the real world - the gains in accuracy with the Wylde chamber are marginal over a quality .223 chamber. Standard .223 and .223 Wylde will both shoot sub MOA no problem with the right loads.

The advantage of the wylde chamber is simply that the throat is shorter than a Nato, and longer than a commercial. It allows you to shoot nato ammo, specifically the long 62 gr stuff with no popped primers without having the long throat of the Nato to contend with. All three chambers are accurate, you just have to use the right ammo/ load. My first service rifle ar was a colt hbar with a nato chamber, that gun shot just as good as my woa wylde chambered guns.

 

[cjacobs]

The advantage of the wylde chamber is simply that the throat is shorter than a Nato, and longer than a commercial. It allows you to shoot nato ammo, specifically the long 62 gr stuff with no popped primers without having the long throat of the Nato to contend with.

But I can still shoot any factory 5.56 and 223 ammo right?

 

[kz45]

Yes

 

[Golden Dragon]

223 Wylde on my AR's

http://www.jprifles.com/1.4.1_barrel.php

Chambering

For peak accuracy and reliability with the widest variety of ammo at safe pressures, our barrels are chambered to .223 Wylde as we believe it represents the best compromise between the SAAMI commercial spec chamber and the NATO-type chamber.

There is a strong conviction that a NATO chamber is essential in a duty-style rifle for reliability reasons, but this is a severe oversimplification. Superior reliability—or as we prefer to call it, the expanded "operational window" of the weapon—is a result of many other factors often ignored by most manufacturers. It is not dependent on some subtle, esoteric difference between the .223 Wylde and the 5.56 NATO chamber designations.



Barrel Twist

For our .223 barrels, we have had great results with a wide range of projectiles from 40 to 77 grains in the 1:8 twist, and we feel it's the best overall compromise for the type of loads you are most likely to shoot. Most shooters on the tactical competition circuit prefer to use the higher BC projectiles such as the 75 to 77 grain bullets, and the 1:8 twist rate is ideally suited for this use. However, don't pay attention to any of the old wives' tales that fast twist barrels do not shoot light bullets. Some of our best test groups have been shot with 50 to 55 grain polymer-tipped bullets. Our .308 barrels, by contrast, favor a 1:10 twist rate that will stabilize anything from 110 to 175 grains.



Cryogenic Treatment

The cryogenic treatment that our Supermatch™ barrels undergo is a day-long process using liquid nitrogen to slowly lower the barrel's temperature to -300° F, after which it is then heated to approx. +300° F. This treatment yields three major benefits, namely: cold bore shot predictability, minimum thermal drift and vastly superior barrel life. No other major manufacturer invests this expense and added effort into every barrel, but years of experience have shown it to be worthwhile. It is not uncommon for us to hear feedback about our .223 barrels going tens of thousands of rounds and still retaining MOA or better accuracy.

One of our favorite examples is the Charles Darwin Foundation based in the Galapagos Islands. Some years back, this outfit purchased twenty-two of our JP-15™ series rifles for use in non-indigenous species eradication programs. Their hunting operations consist of their retired SF operators shooting feral goats from helicopters so rapidly that each shooter carries a pair of rifles so they always have one to shoot while the other is cooling. When we took the order, we understood that the round count would be very high on these rifles and that their accuracy requirement was MOA or better with the ammo they had specified.

After several years, we hadn't heard anything from the director of the program, so we emailed him asking for a status on the rifles. According to him, they now had over 40,000 rounds through each one, and they still passed the one MOA requirement. That kind of longevity is simply unheard of and can really only be attributed to the benefits of cryogenic treatment.

Check out this link to a BBC documentary where you can see JP rifles being used for this application.

 

[cjacobs]

http://www.jprifles.com/1.4.1_barrel.php

Chambering

For peak accuracy and reliability with the widest variety of ammo at safe pressures, our barrels are chambered to .223 Wylde as we believe it represents the best compromise between the SAAMI commercial spec chamber and the NATO-type chamber.

There is a strong conviction that a NATO chamber is essential in a duty-style rifle for reliability reasons, but this is a severe oversimplification. Superior reliability—or as we prefer to call it, the expanded "operational window" of the weapon—is a result of many other factors often ignored by most manufacturers. It is not dependent on some subtle, esoteric difference between the .223 Wylde and the 5.56 NATO chamber designations.



Barrel Twist

For our .223 barrels, we have had great results with a wide range of projectiles from 40 to 77 grains in the 1:8 twist, and we feel it's the best overall compromise for the type of loads you are most likely to shoot. Most shooters on the tactical competition circuit prefer to use the higher BC projectiles such as the 75 to 77 grain bullets, and the 1:8 twist rate is ideally suited for this use. However, don't pay attention to any of the old wives' tales that fast twist barrels do not shoot light bullets. Some of our best test groups have been shot with 50 to 55 grain polymer-tipped bullets. Our .308 barrels, by contrast, favor a 1:10 twist rate that will stabilize anything from 110 to 175 grains.



Cryogenic Treatment

The cryogenic treatment that our Supermatch barrels undergo is a day-long process using liquid nitrogen to slowly lower the barrel's temperature to -300° F, after which it is then heated to approx. +300° F. This treatment yields three major benefits, namely: cold bore shot predictability, minimum thermal drift and vastly superior barrel life. No other major manufacturer invests this expense and added effort into every barrel, but years of experience have shown it to be worthwhile. It is not uncommon for us to hear feedback about our .223 barrels going tens of thousands of rounds and still retaining MOA or better accuracy.

One of our favorite examples is the Charles Darwin Foundation based in the Galapagos Islands. Some years back, this outfit purchased twenty-two of our JP-15 series rifles for use in non-indigenous species eradication programs. Their hunting operations consist of their retired SF operators shooting feral goats from helicopters so rapidly that each shooter carries a pair of rifles so they always have one to shoot while the other is cooling. When we took the order, we understood that the round count would be very high on these rifles and that their accuracy requirement was MOA or better with the ammo they had specified.

After several years, we hadn't heard anything from the director of the program, so we emailed him asking for a status on the rifles. According to him, they now had over 40,000 rounds through each one, and they still passed the one MOA requirement. That kind of longevity is simply unheard of and can really only be attributed to the benefits of cryogenic treatment.

Check out this link to a BBC documentary where you can see JP rifles being used for this application.

Good info! Thanks

 

[Akajun]

But I can still shoot any factory 5.56 and 223 ammo right?

yes