Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles suggestions on Kaboom avoidance

while I have owned and currently own several duplicate rifles, this is the first time I have owned two in which the rounds for one would chamber in another.
the RAR Ranch .223 and 300blk.
8mloading and shooting green tip BT in .300 and red tip VMAX in the .223.
what advice, tricks, schemes, suggestions do you have to avoid a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly)?

Will the 300 chamber in the 223? I could see that being quite bad.....

I studied this specific question, in AR's as I have both.

The .300 frequently works better if you seat the bullets to AR Mag Length, or 2.24", instead of the 2.08" often recommended. At that length they won't go in a 223 chamber - unless the bullet is pushed back in seating. That's possible in an autoloader, but less likely in a bolt gun.

For autoloaders I keep magazines set aside, marked for .300.

On the reloading bench,
One powder, primer, bullet and case on the bench at a time. Post it notes for reminders when you are reloading more than one caliber per session.
On the shooting bench,
one rifle and one ammo box at the bench at a time. Clearly mark your ammo boxes.
All my AR's are 5.56 but with mixed loads, I will put a piece of masking tape on the mags with basic load data on them. 69, 60, 55 etc.
I will sometimes put rifles back in their case even if I am not finished shooting them.
I will sometimes take 4-5 milsurps out at a time that all have similar calibers and different loads.
It's a brain game of discipline and firm adherence to routine.

Don't take them to the range together!

If you can't tell the difference between a .224 and a .308 bullet you have no business shooting.

Definitely need to be careful with autoloaders. Just did a quick test with a dummy .300 BO round I had on the bench: no primer, no powder, 220gr SMK(?) seated at 2.230". Placed it in a magazine. pulled back and released the charging handle. BCG went forward into battery. Trigger went "click". Extracted round measured 2.150" COAL. BCG sliding forward seated the bullet the additional 0.080" necessary to for my DPMS Oracle 5.56 upper to go into battery.

I once managed to load up the mag of one of my .223s with some .222 ammo while shooting at the range. No major damage done, but I have been 1000% more deliberate about looking at the ammo I load into a rifle's magazine since then.

If you can avoid taking combinations of rifle and ammo out to shoot where this can happen, you should be in a pretty much fool-proof position...but to be very critical and honest about it all, you and I both should be on our toes to the extent that it wouldn't happen anyway. When it happened to me, I know I was allowing myself to be distracted---even though I knew better.

Rifles need to be different. My .223/5.56 is a 16" carbine, My .300 BO is an 8" Pistol, waiting on a stamp. Maybe you can change color or styles of furniture of one of them. As in make one all FDE and get FDE mags to match. Just an idea.

I'm not the guy to ask.




Clark

No kidding! They don't even look close.

Fingernail polish on the receiver ring at the ejetion port, that matches bullet tip color. There are a lot of crazy shades, you should be able to get a close match. A little acetone will clean it right off. No I do not have one you can borrow.

That's why I went 5.56/.458 SOCOM. The SOCOM round won't chamber in a 5.56, and a 5.56 round will just fly out of the end of the SOCOM barrel.

Yup.

Mistakes can happen, but this one is pretty darn obvious.

Methinks there could be an interesting or at least perversely entertaining story here...

Paint marker [300 Booh] on all your 300 BO mags.

Don't remember where, but in the last few months, I saw a thread about a guy who took a new shooter out, and there wasn't enough supervision loading the mags. Ended up getting one BO in the stack of .223s. So it's not just a theoretical problem.

smarquez's advice is really good. And with regard to the .223 and .300, yes they are different. But mistakes CAN happen, even to people who "have business shooting," and the steps and adherence to routine that smarquez suggested goes a long ways towards keeping a careless error from occurring. My friend and I both have similar rifles, down to the scope, one in .260 and the other in 7-08. We are very careful to remove the ammo from the bench when we switch shooters at the bench! We've also checked, with firing pin removed, to be sure the 7-08 ammo won't chamber in the .260. It won't, but we still follow our routine of not having both boxes of ammo at the bench. The other thing I'd say is to always clean ALL ammo out of pockets if you carry ammo loose.

This.

Pay attention to what you are doing.