What would be the best/easiest bolt rifle to rebarrel to this caliber? I am thinking the CZ 527 would be the easiest. The rim diameter of the Russian is about .395. Would it fit the extractor of the .223 CZ 527 ok or is it likely to require extractor work?

I think the regular .224 barrels would work ok but may need the faster twist or slightly slower to get the marginal stability of the long bullet which is supposedly one of the round's hallmarks.

At any rate what are your constructive thoughts about such a conversion?-Other than being crazy, expensive, ridiculous and all of course. Plateau Hunter

The 527 is available with the right boltface and extractor as the 7.62x39 Carbine. All the conversion would take would be rebarreling.

I dunno why you would want to do it, but it's easily done.

Not really.

5.6 x 39 was based on a 7.62 x 39 necked down to 5.56.

5.45 x 39 has a case similar to 5.56 x 45 or 222 Rem.

two different head sizes.

The CZ bolt for 222 or 223 Rem is ok, slight modification on bolt head only.

the 5.45 is also a bit smaller than 22. not a bad round however. not much difference between it and a 22ppc. the military round uses a 63 gr bullet that is quite long and pointed. comes out of an ak74 at about 2900fps

the 53 grain ball round will really put it to a groundhog inside of 100 yards. Ammo is cheap. Think it would be a great bolt gun, I wish i would have bought one of those east german border guard rifles back in the day when samco or whoever was importing them.

22 ppc brass would last a lot of handloads!

You can resize .224" bullets to .221" using a custom built sizing die, a good O frame press and lube.