
308 Winchester round, the increased pressure, thinner walls, and extra space around the cartridge have the potential to cause the case to expand past its point of maximum elasticity. This means that when you pull the trigger, 7.62×51 brass expands less outwardly but farther toward the chamber. Doing the opposite is a bit more complicated.ħ.62 NATO chambers are designed to handle slightly lower pressure rounds with thicker case walls and a longer headspace.

That said, we wouldn’t make a habit of it. 308 Winchester can safely sling 7.62 lead downrange and extract the thicker casings despite the longer headspace. The vast majority of rifles, carbines, and pistols chambered in. 308-chambered firearm? Is the reverse possible? The short answers to these questions are “yes” and “maybe”. So, the natural question is this: can you shoot 7.62 ammo through a. 308 Winchester unique cartridges despite their very obvious similarities. Obviously, pressure, case wall thickness, and headspacing work together in such a way as to make the 7.62×51 NATO and the. So can you shoot 7.62×51 in the same rifles as. This could have some potentially expensive consequences. 308 brass will stretch beyond its intended elastic range. This results in a 7.62 case that is ever so slightly longer than its commercial brother. 308 Winchester, extending between 0.006 and 0.010 inches beyond the. The 7.62×51 NATO chamber is imperceptibly longer than the. The 7.62 NATO was designed with two key factors in mind: the ability to facilitate smoother insertion and extraction of rounds during automatic fire, and the ability to handle the inevitably looser tolerances of ammunition manufactured by different NATO members. 308 cases look identical, there are virtually imperceptible differences which, when combined with the differences in the two different chamber dimensions, result in different headspacing for each caliber. While the external dimensions of both 7.62×51 and.
