LC brass

[JollyWhiteGiant]

I am changing my brass from Remington to LC for my .223 loads. I weiged the case capacity with water and found no difference, do I still need to drop my charges by 5% as the manuals dictate?

 

[g56]

That is the safest thing to do, but personally I wouldn't if the case capacity is the same.

I did a little experiment a while back on 223 and 5.56mm brass, there was a post on another board about lowering the charges for military brass, so I checked an assortment of 223 and 5.56mm military brass, and most of the cases were extremely close, the only brass that was significantly different was PMP, South African brass, it was very heavy and had a smaller case capacity than any other brass checked.

 

[Jon Coppenbarger]

Alot of us have found on the .223 brass that winchester and lake city really are right at the same.

 

[Grump]

The internal capacity differences were an occasional factor for .30-06, a HUGE factor for .308/7.62x51, and a much smaller factor for the mousey-gun caliber. If the water capacity is the same for resized cases trimmed to the same OAL, then neck tension seems like the only variable left--minimal effect on pressure.

Oh, but if you have thick necks pinching the bullets, pressure spikes!!! Just check the diameter of your loaded rounds to eliminate that remote possiblity.

 

[JollyWhiteGiant]

I loaded 6 test rounds and comarded them to a few of my older batch. I used the same charge, but everything had different lot #'s. I had an average increase of 3 fps with the LC brass. So as long as you are not running them at max you should be able to interchange loads with these 2 brands.

 

[Len_in_Phoenix]

I've just started reloading for .223 and have been comparing the various lots of brass that I've accumulated. The only "heavy" cases I've run into are PMC and PMP. Federal seems to have the most variation in case weight, but the max weight is 10% less than the minimum weight I found for PMC. The LC brass that I have (mostly 01 and 02) is very consistent (approx 70% of the cases are within +- 1 grain of each other) so I've gone to LC02 brass for my "match" loads, domestic commercial brass for hunting loads, and mix-n-match military leftovers for blasting ammo. All of the PMC/PMP brass went in the trash because it was so far out of spec with the rest.

I wouldn't worry about the "oversized military brass" thing with LC .223 brass. Other calibers yes, but .223 no. I've weighed over 1000 cases so far and the LC brass is right in line with the domestic commercial brass.


Len in PHoenix