?Best Quality 223 brass for reloading?

[jval]

In your opinion and experience, what is the best 223 Rem brass for reloading (objective-target shooting with a semi-auto that takes .223 Rem or 5.56 mil)?

choices: Please indicate you "two" best recommendations

1. Winchester
2. Western Cartridge Company (WCC)
3. Federal
4. Remington
5. PMC
6. Lake City
7. Black Hills
8. other

 

[TC66]

Lake City

I use Lake City only. Best deal I have ever seen on it is $18 per 1000 from HQ Brass. That is shipping included. They are clean you need to deprime and remove military crimp or they will for an additional fee.

HQ Brass

TC

 

[Tacoma]

FWIW, my new bushmaster refused to function with ANY reload that didn't come from small based dies. I've heard that this is not that uncommon.

 

[swingset]

Two best, without question or doubt are...

1. Lapua
2. Norma

The rest can be called good in so much as case life, thickness of brass or best value, but Lapua is the best for accuracy, bar none and Norma is a close second.

 

[larryw]

Lapua and Norma is great brass, but a bit soft for a shell shucker.

For a semi, LC (remove the crimp) or Winchester. LC brass has a smaller case capacity (thicker brass), so loads do not translate directly between the two.

 

[Steve Smith]

Moving to Handloading.

LC all the way, and it is NOT thicker than commercial brass...only the .308 and .30-06 is thicker in it's LC iteration!

Back before they ran out (who knew?) RVOW was selling LC at $50 per 1000, sized trimmed and polished. I shoulda bought about 10K of them, instead of the 3.5k I burned though shooting HP.

 

[larryw]

Hmm, then they must be using heavier brass.

CASE MAN. HEAVY LIGHT MEAN E.S. Sd
LC 70 95.77 91.90 93.30 3.88 .86
LC 81 94.00 91.73 92.98 2.27 .56
Winchester 89.34 88.12 88.78 1.21 .39
from American Rifleman

 

[halvey]

You forgot S&B

 

[Steve Smith]

Larry, yes, heavier than WW, but not than Lapua or Norma typically. In addition, that is not on the same percentage of increase as we see with the "heavy case" LCs. The .223 (5.56) LC is inside of the spread of commercial cases and you can load them to the same pressures. I do it constantly.

I took volumetric measurements of many (roughly a hundred IIRC) Lc cases and compared that to WW, R-P, and a few Lapuas. The LC is right in there, and is certainly not worthy of a "beware the military case and it's higher pressure" warning.

 

[larryw]

That's fine, Steve. Heavier brass was said in jest.

I use LC and WW. Contrary to your measurements, I have found the water weighed case volume of (fired) LC to be less than (fired in same gun) WW, and, as stated, do not use the same load data for LC and WW.

Regardless, using safe reloading techniques and working up is the way to go.

 

[zeke]

Wondered about the costant warnings of differences between Military brass and commercial. Weighed some LC and Win commercial. The Win commercial was measurably heavier. Course there are always exceptions and different lots.

 

[redneck2]

I have a friend that shoots a LOT of High Power. Uses LC as do most others competitors from what I've heard. I've used WW and it seems OK

Remington is supposedly thin and soft. Heads pull off in competion. Steve would know better than I would.

 

[milanuk]

Well, kind of a combined response and further question here...

I've used commercial Winchester in the past; don't recall the weights. Worked well enough that I don't see Lapua/Norma being worth the extra $$$, personally. I did have one batch of Winchester, though, that started separating about halfways up the case body after four firings or so. No, it wasn't a problem w/ the loading procedures. Got some new Winchester brass, it went over 10 firings w/ no problems. Wrote it off to a bad batch and called it a day.

Got some LC/WCC from River Valley Ord a few years ago... pretty good stuff, primer crimp properly removed, sized, trimmed, etc., pretty much good enough to load and shoot if a person wanted to.

Last batch out of RVO was shortly before the owner passed away, and was definitely not up to snuff. Primer crimps mostly still there, big nasty scratches, dents, and gouges on the cases from grit getting in the process somewhere, uneven case lengths, and the cases were huge, like they'd been fired in a SAW or something. Got some Scharch... same story, different company. No scratches and gouges, but even bigger bodies if it was possible! F/L sizing these feels like sizing a .30-06 case instead of a .223!

I'm about 1/3, maybe a little bit more, of the way thru F/L sizing and swaging 3500 cases of this stuff. I fully processed about 500 cases which is what I'm shooting right now, though I've had a couple split and crack already, either along dents in the body that I thought would iron out OK, or at the necks.

I'm very seriously starting to consider just taking this stuff either down to the recycling center (someone said brass is up to $0.60/lb or so) or else 'donate' it down at the local gun store... put it next to the consignment table and put a sign 'Free for the taking' on it. Brassman Brass has some once-fired Winchester commercial stuff for $26/1000, and OK Weber has new for $12.75/100...

Whaddya think?

Monte

 

[g56]

I've got 2 ARs and reloaded quite a bit for them, I don't own a small base die and have never had any kind of problem with my reloads, the consensus on AR15.com is that small base dies aren't needed.