Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats .223 A.I. (Seriously)

So I've never had a heavy(ish) barreled target/varmint rig. Always wanted one. I live pretty close to Bugholes/Southern Precision and been back and forth with Greg a bit and thought I'd get a few qualified opinions here. It'd be mostly a giggle gun. Just joined a new range that includes a 1,000 yard rifle range (humbling with an AR). There's starting to be a bit more competitive shooting in my region, and that's a game I've always wanted to try. Probably a deer or yote or two just because.

I get that it'll be heavy and long, but I've got a half dozen "packable" deer rifles. The two most accurate and easy to shoot rifles I've every fooled with have been .223 varmint rigs (one Tikka and one Remington), so I like the concept of the A.I. with heavies. Not to mention zero recoil and very little noise (I'll have my 9" SAS suppressor on the end of it).

Build details would be a Bighorn Origin, Tacticool knob, .223 bolt face, 24" 1:7 Muller Works barrel, Rem Varmint (or something close) contour. Trigger Tech Special trigger w/flat blade (have a flat blade Geisselle on my AR and love it). Drop the works in a KRG Bravo Chassis.

Have a Burris 5-25 XTR II mil/mil with a set of Burris Sig rings waiting in the safe to put on top of it. Grabbed it on a deal a year or so a go.

Probably try Starline Brass, if I don't like it for whatever reason, I can put it back for the AR and roll Lapua, probably fireform with 75 HPBT's and go to 88 ELD's with formed cases. Have plenty of 400's and 205M's on hand. Have Lever, RL-15, and TAC on hand. Thinking Redding dies.

If I ever feel "undergunned", the Bighorn has switchaloo bolt heads. Shouldered/nutted switchaloo barrels would be easy to come by. 700 compatibility would likely lead to an extra stock or two for different applications. Rail makes it easy to swap scopes.

No real specific questions. Just looking for any input from those who have fooled with such a rig.

Thanks!!!

Sounds like a solid plan to me. The .224’s are too much danged fun!

Sounds good. The "Remage" barrel nut could be a good option. I typically leave a rifle set up once I have it shooting, but others really utilize the switch barrel option so good to have that option. You could do a series of barrels in X 47 or go to the Creedmoor case for the larger bores.

You give any thought to chambering a .22-250 with the 7" twist?

That would be my huckle berry. Cheers NC

Might consider a 6BR while you're at it......

Seriously thought about the .22 Creed (friggin awesome round from what I’ve read), .22 BR, and 6 Br, but kept on coming back to the .223ai (remember, this is for a FIRST barrel) due to what should be extremely mild manners and very long barrel life (here’s to hoping I get to wear it out).

You could always go with the standard 223 and get essentially the same performance but without the benefit of getting to buy special dies, of course. GD

...and without the benefit of getting to trim your brass all the time

Absolutely nothing wrong with that build Potsy. Use good brass and the FF'ing for the AI is a mute argument as a couple hundred pcs should last you the life of that barrel if you take care of it. The gain in performance and decrease in trimming as Jordan eluded to far outweighs the other.

Make sure you let Bighorn know it’s gonna be a .223AI as they’ve had feed issues and will give you a push feed bolt face that fixes the issue.

25 fps, reduced frequency of trimming, and crappy feeding are what you gain with the 223 Ackley.
A regular 223 will feed better, a WFT takes care of the trimming, and an extra inch of barrel length will make up for the velocity.

This^^^^^

I didn't really have much to add so I wasn't going to but it seems like there's a bit of negativity over the AI idea. To be complete, I'll say I haven't done .223 AI specifically, but I've owned a .22-250AI, a 6mm Rem AI, and a .280AI, plus a 6mmX.284 which is even fatter than an AI. I don't think you have anything to worry about. For me, the velocity gain appeared to be 75-100 fps .. since I didn't first chamber the std cartridge, then have the same barrel rechambered, it is not possible to make a specific claim and back it up with anything but talk. Likewise, unless a person has done that, they can't claim it failed with anything but talk.

One of the issues may be magazine length limiting COL if you're going with a fast twist for heavy bullets. You can get around it with a single shot follower or possibly with an aftermarket magazine setup depending on the action you've chosen.

Juggling all the limiting factors can be a substantial portion of the fun of designing such a project. Sounds like you know that, though.

Best of luck!!

Tom

Nah, the 4 to 1 rule makes it easy to figure out the increase in velocity or lack thereof.

I sure am glad this isn't one of those awful threads with pictures of.....never mind.

6BR is a tough one to beat for what the OP is describing.

I appreciate the replies. I also appreciate the fact that we've made it through nearly a page without the thread descending into pics of scantily clad women of questionable moral fiber (not that I have anything against that, I'm just hoping we can make it through a couple pages first, as a matter of fact, the more questionable the fiber, the better!)

I've been pouring over cartridge selection for this one for years. There is a lot of good componentry and case designs out there, and I do not believe there is a single "wrong" idea on this page. Fact is, I've considered all of them plus several others.

I seriously considered both the 6br, the .22br, and the Dasher versions of both. I considered the .224 Valkyrie, .224 Grendel, .220 Thunderbolt, the .22 Creed, the 6 and 6.5 Creed.

At the end of the day, the .223a.i. works in the performance window I want to be in. The br case would add 200 fps to any given bullet weight, which wouldn't suck, but it would make a difference at the butt plate, granted, adding 200fps to an 8lb. .30-06 is gonna be way more noticeable than adding 200fps to a 15lb .223a.i., but it's still gonna be there. Same story for all the larger cases. The .22 Creed seems incredible, but an 88 at 3200 is gonna recoil a whole lot more like a .243 than a .223. For some reason, I just like the idea of an 88 at 2,750fps, and the rifle not even moving when I pull the trigger. I will admit that if I were limited to one barrel (and barrels ain't cheap, don't get me wrong), I'd likely roll something with a bit more oomph.

The Valkyrie doesn't offer anything over the .223 in a longer-than-AR-mag. The Grendel, and Thunderbolt cases would work well, if it weren't for sketchy A.I. pattern mag feeding and availability for bolt actions.

It's also the cheapest to shoot in terms of brass, bullets, and powder. Which of course means absolute dick nothing when your talking about a rifle that will cost more than my truck by the time I'm done, but it still played into my thought process.

I'd believe that longer mags and deeper throats allowing more case capacity along with loading to higher pressures in longer barrels contributes way more to the magic of the .223 Ackley Improved than the slight capacity gain of fireformed brass, but I still don't see the downside. I'm gonna roll an Ackley if for no other friggin' reason than the cases look really cool with long bullets sticking out of them! There, I said it. But I've also noticed that anyone who's ACTUALLY OWNED a .223a.i. was in love with it, and that speaks volumes.

Higbean, I appreciate the heads up on the push feed bolt head. Greg told me about that today. Apparently, the controlled feed head didn't play very well with .223 cases, Ackleyfied or not.

I've owned four 223 Ackleys.
I'll not own another.

That is the route I would go.