223 headstamp sorting

[hardheart]

Federal and Lake City seem to be the most common brass brands in my range pickups. But there's a variety in the headstamps of each. Do I need to further segregate by those differences? Like some federal has 223 Remington on the rim, some has the letters very close or others very spaced out, some have a 2 digit year. Some lake city has LC on the rim twice, and if course there's different years.

Also, how many stamps do you typically separate. I also sorted for WCC & Speer just because they seemed to come up often enough. But I really don't have that many compared to FC & LC, at least without further sorting by the details mentioned above. Plus the WCC also has about as much variety in the appearance of the stamp.

I separated the little PMC brass I have found so far since I've read a bit about those having much lower case capacity/much thicker brass.

 

[buba68]

What are you going to use your brass for? Just plinking or range brass or trying to go for more precision shooting? Just plinking range brass just throw all the LC in together and all the Federal in together no since in trying to sort it any further. If you are trying to get precision loads then sort it further. For precision loads if you want to go further you can weigh each case, deflash primer holes and make sure each one is trimmed to the same length. Just depends on what kind of loads you are looking for in the end.

 

[berettaprofessor]

What Buba said. Different headstands will make a difference in pressure and accuracy.

 

[edwardware]

Do I need to further segregate by those differences?

It depends entirely on what you're doing. For AR range fodder (2-4MOA), I wouldn't separate anything.
For precision, when your achieving 0.75MOA and reaching for 0.5MOA, I do sort.
And BTW, iso-year LC brass is the most consistent I've found outside of Norma or Lapua; PMC is the toughest.

 

[lordpaxman]

And BTW, iso-year LC brass is the most consistent I've found outside of Norma or Lapua; PMC is the toughest.

I know what ISO is, but what is iso-year LC brass? AdThanksVance.

 

[Charlie98]

Also... be aware that pretty much anything with the NATO stamp will have a crimped primer pocket. After decapping it, the primer pocket crimp will have to be swaged or cut out before you can seat a new primer. I've also seen some commercial headstamp (FC) brass with a crimp, even though it's not NATO.

 

[edwardware]

I know what ISO is, but what is iso-year LC brass?

Sorry: iso, Greek: equal. Same-year headstamps from the Lake City ammunition plant.

That said, multiple years of SCAMP-machine brass are undifferentiable, but I haven't weighed enough brass to be certain which years.

 

[bdb242]

Also... be aware that pretty much anything with the NATO stamp will have a crimped primer pocket. After decapping it, the primer pocket crimp will have to be swaged or cut out before you can seat a new primer. I've also seen some commercial headstamp (FC) brass with a crimp, even though it's not NATO.

Not sure what year they started but the American Eagle boxed FC .223 55gr FMJ has crimped primers. I have several hundreds of rounds from long ago that are not crimped, but all the stuff bought since 2016 is crimped.

 

[hardheart]

The ar pattern rifle I'm loading for does not have free float handguard, so I don't think I'd go to the nth in seeking accuracy. I do want to try for the best grouping with my 69+ gr weight bullets. Some 55 FMJs will surely load with mixed brass. Never gotten better than ~2.5 moa with them with 4 different powders, and the best groups are at pretty low velocities. I can get about 1 moa with some 55 SPs, and I think that's where I'm most curious about how far to scrutinize the brass.

 

[Dead Eye Duck]

I sort the LC brass from the others. Then load the other brands pretty much together.

 

[Charlie98]

American Eagle boxed FC .223 55gr FMJ has crimped primers.

That is very likely the same source I've gotten mine from. It is most likely made (was made) on the Lake City military ammo lines, which Federal ATK ran for some years. Winchester took over at the beginning of 2020, so that may change.

The ar pattern rifle I'm loading for does not have free float handguard, so I don't think I'd go to the nth in seeking accuracy. I do want to try for the best grouping with my 69+ gr weight bullets. Some 55 FMJs will surely load with mixed brass. Never gotten better than ~2.5 moa with them with 4 different powders, and the best groups are at pretty low velocities. I can get about 1 moa with some 55 SPs, and I think that's where I'm most curious about how far to scrutinize the brass.

Non-free float barrels are still capable of good accuracy... but much depends on how good the barrel is, and how you shoot it.

I had a DPMS Oracle with what I'm guessing was a government profile barrel. It shot well enough off the bench but I wanted to see how well I shot it slung up in my patented 'sit on an ammo can and shoot off my knees' position. I had that sling cranked in pretty good... so good that bullet impact shifted 6" low and left. The barrel deflected that much. My Colt H-Bar never did that. What I'm suggesting is... don't expect half-MOA accuracy, even with SMK's, if your rifle isn't capable of it.

 

[kelbro]

It really depends on how many pieces of brass that you are talking about.

Large quantities, I sort by headstamp and then roughly by weight. Multiple piles of 50 or 100.

Leftovers all go into a pile by weight and are used in blasting ammo.

 

[Jesse Heywood]

If you're concerned about case thickness
http://www.300blktalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=88599