A Look at SilencerCo’s Saker 556 Suppressor

The SilencerCo Saker 556 with included wrenches for assembly / disassembly.

For a little baby bullet in a little baby cartridge, the .223 Remington / 5.56mm sure makes a lot of noise.

Unsuppressed, you can figure the noise level at about 165 decibels, varying, of course with rifle type, barrel length, etc. That’s louder than a 12 gauge shotgun, a jet taking off or a jackhammer. It’s way louder than the noise level you would experience sitting inside of a speaker box at a Def Leppard concert. Really, I checked.

When you mount a SilencerCo Saker 556 to an AR rifle, you can expect the noise level to decrease to somewhere around 132 decibels. That doesn’t sound like a lot of progress from 165 decibels, so you have to remember that decibels operate on a logarithmic scale. Without getting too geeky here, you can think of that 33 decibel increase (unsuppressed vs. suppressed) in terms of being over eight times as loud as the human ear perceives volume. Bottom line? Using a silencer on an AR rifle is a big deal. Safety for the ears is a primary concern as a single shot at 140 dB, or more, will permanently damage your hearing. Repeated exposure to lower decibel noises will also cause hearing damage, so wear protection always – even when using a suppressor like this one.

Use of a suppressor makes all the difference with an AR-type rifle.

The SilencerCo Saker 556 is the original family member. Now there is a Saker 762 and Saker K model, also for 5.56mm, which offers a smaller and lighter package with slightly less sound reduction capability. This model is not designed to be taken completely apart, nor will you need to do that. Baffles are made from something called Stellite, whatever that is, which is apparently 30% stronger than Inconel, whatever that is. The net net of the fancy metal names is that you don’t have to worry about cleaning the baffles. The end cap on the front and the mount body do come off for cleaning and accessorizing, but we’ll talk about that later.

Read the rest at GunsAmerica!