Concerns with surplus 5.45 x 39

[Wallabing]

I bought a 2 spam cans of this surplus 5.45 x 39 for use in my century arms AK74.

It ricochets like crazy, I would say every 1 in three rounds.

I've heard that century arms drills/uses 223 bores in their AK-74's, and because of that, they keyhole...and because of that they are unstable when they hit objects like rocks, and I would assume ricochet.

Anyone else with the surplus 5.45 x 39 spam cans have ricochets like mine?

 

[B. Lahey]

The steel cores do tend to bounce around a bit, but that has nothing to do with keyholing. The same thing can happen with the smaller steel inserts in M855 5.56, or any other projectile under the right conditions. If you are getting tagged or your truck is acquiring mysterious little dents, move the target back and/or change up your backstop.

Keyholing refers to the projectile hitting paper at an off angle, and leaving a non-round hole. If your rifle doesn't make weird holes in paper, you probably got a good one. Otherwise, send it back.

 

[ndking1126]

Yep, what he said. Are you only shooting at rocks? In my experience, shooting rocks will give you a lot of ricochets, regardless of what type of bullet you are shooting. Tree trucks can cause ricochets pretty easily too.

Don't know anything about barrel size and keyholing in those specific weapons though.

 

[Dfariswheel]

The Century rifles that key holed were mistakenly built with 5.56mm bored barrels.
They fixed that problem.

The 5.45x39 is rather notorious for ricochets off rocks.
This is because the bullet was designed to tumble upon hitting a human, and similar dynamics happen when the bullet hits a rock.