Remington 700 16.5" .223 Suppressed

Big_Country44

Private
Minuteman
Jan 3, 2011
31
2
30
Bremen, Georgia
I am thinking about picking up one of the new production Remington 700's in .223 with the 16.5" barrel for the sole purpose of shooting suppressed in the back yard. Would I have any issues with running subsonics through a 1 in 8 twist barrel that short?
 
77gr SMK @ 1000fps through a 1:8 barrel has a stability factor of 1.18 at sea level, standard baro, 32F...still stable but less than I would prefer through a can.


65gr Gameking is 1.65, 75gr Speer Gold Dot is 1.46.
 
I run subs through my 16” 1:7 twist Remington 700 occasionally. 73gr. ELD-M give me the best groups, 77gr. TMP and Berger give me decent groups, but my ES is high enough that I load for 1000 fps. 80 SMK’s give me the worst group with sub’s, but some of the best groups with supers. No keyholes or signs of instability with any of them.

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Curious, why not use a nice 22 rig? Quieter, simpler, likely easier to make good consistency etc. A 300blk would be very easy and do a better subsonic job as well.

Anyways, all that said, I love my shorty 223, so I'll not be talking you out of snagging one lol.

Lighter, often shorter oal bullet means less powder and less noise. It can be a good thing for close range plinking.

Some nice flat base bullets, rounder nose, easy to stabilize bullets would be my first pick. That shape has done well for me in many mouse fart loads in many cartridges.

A nicely coated cast bullet tends to fill this niche well if you are familiar with them, again usually a stumpy style bullet. Otherwise, may be more trouble than it's worth to you.

The pointy sexy bullets like the smk or eld can work too of course, but often the more "normal" ones will be much more cost effective. lots of testing is in order to see what your rifle likes, and you might be surprised what works best subsonic vs supersonic.

900 or 1000 fps tends to do well and be very quiet. Should be pretty easy to get decent enough consistency inside 50 yards. Longer range tends to become exponentially more difficult if you're after sub 2moa consistently.

Some reduced capacity cases could be interesting and help with the ES... but that is likely not worth the trouble.

Trail boss or tin star would likely be easiest powder to work with. Other fluffy pistol powders may work well too if you are experienced in that realm.
 
The limiting factor for me is that I only have a dedicated 5.56 can. I would love to go the 300 Blackout route but unfortunately when I bought my can I didn't have the patience to save up a couple hundred more bucks and get the .30 Cal version. I have multiple .22's but a full size .223 bolt gun seems a little bit more fun and versatile