A Lil .223 reloading advice would be helpful

[jeeptim]

Love reloading that said.
My son and his buddy are in college and working BUSY my son fireman his buddy police anyway his buddy has an AR in .223 and I'm going to do some reloading for him I dont have his or any .223 on hand to check out my loads till they get a day off and dont want any bad loads. using TAC powder cci primers and 62gr fmj with a lee die set. My real question is.........
Case trim size my hornady book tells me trim lenght is 1.750 but alot of cases i have are shorter. When reloading i ALWAYS trim and crimp after seating.
Crimp is somthing i am a lil conserned with. Any info would be really helpful.
THANX

 

[rcmodel]

You can't measure them until after they have been resized. They will grow longer after sizing.

Crimp is probably best accomplished with a Lee .223 FCD collet crimp die.
It is not case length dependent like the seating die crimp.

While you are at it, I would also suggest a Wilson case guage be used to check sizing and later chamber fit after loading since you don't have the rifle available.

rc

 

[ReloaderEd]

Case Length 223 Remington

I take it you have a lee press and lee dies or the equivalent.
The short cases should be sorted separate using a case length gage after full lenth resizing. After all the bullets are seated in all the cases with the short cases kept separate again. Back off the bullet seater and crimp the cases that are ok on length. Then slowly turn the die down with the bullet stem still back or up out of the way until you can crimp the short cases. If you cant adjust the die down enough to crimp, then the cartridges are ok to shoot just watch that the bullets don't walk out in the clip. Over all length with bullet is important also, sort of hard to adjust without the actual firearm.
Oh yes, purchase a Lee Factory Crimp die which I have ordered recently from Midway. It does a nice crimp on rifle and pistol bullets NO MATTER WHAT THE CASE LENGTH. They cost about 8-14 dollars and are well worth the price. Be safe reloading.

 

[rtpzwms]

Do you do a lot of rifle reloading or just pistol? You might want to look into pickup one of these. Unless the cases are the same size the crimp will be a lot of work. The cases will stretch over use but you can't trim a short case...

 

[jeeptim]

Thanx

Thanx for all the info sounds like any other rifle bullet just a wee bit smaller.
I think a lee crimping tool may be on the wish list.

 

[Walkalong]

I'll bet when you size them all, very few, if any, will be shorter than 1.750. Trim them all and even a roll crimp is easy. For varying case lengths, a taper crimp die works pretty well, but the Lee Collet die is the best bet if you do not trim every time.

Many people do not even bother to crimp .223, even for AR's. I used to roll crimp blasting/plinking ammo, but it is too easy to buckle a shoulder ever so slightly, so now I taper crimp it. I trim almost every firing to keep the length consistent.