i in 9" twist

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wahoowah

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I have an opportunity to buy a .223 bolt-action rifle with 1 in 9" twist and plan to have it rechambered to .221 Fireball for shots greater than the Hornet and less than the .222. I am planning to use mainly 50 grain bullets but also 45 and possibly 52 but nothing outside of these weights. Can I expect accuracy similar to the .223 or will the faster twist cause the accuracy to degrade somewhat? I am opting to rechamber this rifle as it has a 26" barrel.

Thanks.
 
i think you are looking for trouble.....
 
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all of my 1-9" .223's love 45-55grn bullets, so making an ussumption with the fireball being slightly slower i cannot see the 1-9" hurting you in the least bit. i would always choose a slightly faster twist than needed, than to choose one that is slightly to slow.
 
The .221 Fireball is a short range varmint cartridge - Point Blank Range walk around hunting, or watching ground hog holes within 200 yards. It's a nice .22 caliber fit between a Hornet and a .222 or .223. One want's to shoot a bullet "just" big enough to kill the intended game. It doesn't shoot far enough for wind to be more than a minor "hold" issue at any practical wind velocities for hunting varmints. Flat base bullets work just fine.

If I was going to build a .221 Fireball specifically for point blank range (PBR) varmint hunting, I'd go with a 1:14 twist and plan to shoot 34 to 40g bullets in it. There are a bunch of good bullets (Berger, Hornady, Nosler, Sierra, and Midway) in this weight range that work great on ground hogs and smaller animals, maximize the PBR, and are relatively easy to load for.

After some playing with QL and QT, the 34g Midway DogTown would leave a 24" barrel at around 3,500 fps and give a +/- 1" PBR (what I use on chuck rifles) of 16 to 190 yards. My experience with the 34g DT bullet in my Hornet has been very good - it has excellent terminal performance (ground hogs are DRT, drop in their shadow) and shoots better than the 35g V-Max in the same rifle. I've not tried the DT in any other rifle (I have good hunting loads for all my .22 varmint guns and would rather be hunting than wearing out barrels doing load development), but if I was building a .221 Fireball it would be one of the first bullets I'd try for PBR varmint hunting. If I couldn't get the 34g DT to shoot, I'd probably try 40g bullets from Berger, Sierra, Nosler, and Hornady, in that order.

Edited to add: After some further analysis, I think my first choice would be one of the 40g bullets, like the 40g NBT in a .221 Fireball. If my analysis is right, it will add about 11 yards to the PBR taking it to about 201 yards.

Fitch
 
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1:9

I agree with Lefty O. I prefer a 1:9 twist for polymer tipped .224 bullets and 36 gr Barnes Varmint Grenades. - nhk
 
IO don't understand why you want to chnge cases, The 223 is easy to load for. If you want less recoil its easy to down load
that caliber. . You will have the optiion of shooting higher welocitys if you want to later.
I would leave it alone and download the ammo.
 
If you have free gunsmithing available to you feel free to ignore this answer.
If you are paying to have a gunsmith rechamber a factory barrel it had better be one heck of a good barrel or you are wasting your money. The only way you know if it is a really good barrel is not to look at it (even with a bore scope), measure it, or worst of all believe the low round count the seller tells you it has, but to shoot it. And if it really shoots well right now it is foolish to rechamber it. For once I agree with Mike in CO. "You are looking for trouble" although I might phrase it "Prepare to be disappointed".

Dick
 
... and it will be a single shot as a .221... very difficult to get it to feed from a 223 magazine.
 
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