sorting .223 brass - headstamp and other questions

[mek42]

I recently came into a bunch of .223 brass (looks to be about 2 gallons of brass for those that like hard numbers). I've started to sort the brass. The vast majority of it seems to be LC75, though other numbers are present in addition to the 75 (for example, LC77 and LC79 - the LC79 is also stamped differently than the others, being stamped as an LC and a 79 across from each other, whereas the LC75 is stamped as L C 7 5 with each digit quartering the headstamp area). How critical is it to sort by number?

Is this really 5.56mm NATO brass, and if so, what should I be keeping in mind for reloading purposes?

I'll be shooting these through T/C Contender barrels (pre-G2), both rifle and pistol (14"), which are both 1 / 12" twist. This means that I shouldn't use heavier than 52 - 55 grain bullets, right? How likely is it that both the rifle and pistol barrels will "like" the same load?

I hope these aren't ridiculously obvious questions - I'm still pretty new to shooting and reloading.

Thanks!

 

[Walkalong]

Lake City military brass. (5.56 Nato) Good stuff. Is the crimp already removed? If not you will have to do so. That is the only thing different you need to worry about. I do like to sort my LC brass by dates myself.

 

[Mr White]

Like Walkalong said, LC is good brass. The crimp he's talking about is the primer crimp. You can get a primer pocket swaging die but they're about $25 and you only have to swage each case once.

I found that with .223 LC, if I just use a case neck chamfering tool and chamfer the inside rim of the primer pocket, I can seat primers just fine. Make sure you clean out the primer pockets and remove any tumbler media before seating primers.

 

[P0832177]

Do yourself a favor, get a small base sizer die to prep the brass for ther first reload. Because, if the brass was fired in a sloppy chambered M249 this will avoid any frustration in using the brass. If you know the heritage of the brass that might change the approach to sizing the brass. Probably going to have to deal with the primer pocket crimp, too!

 

[Walkalong]

if I just use a case neck chamfering tool and chamfer the inside rim of the primer pocket, I can seat primers just fine

Ditto.

 

[BruceB]

Not long back I bought a bolt-action .223 rifle. I'd been squirrelling .223 brass away for quite a few years in anticipation of the rifle that would come "someday".

Anyway.... I check-weighed a whole bunch of different-headstamped .223/5.56mm brass. Five or six commercial makes were in the bunch, of varying vintages, and also LC military brass from as far back as the '70s and up to 2006. The result of check-weighing all these different-parentage cases eased my mind considerably. ALL of them, repeat ALL, fell within an extreme spread of less than two grains. Note that the miltary stuff was right in the same weight area as the commercial brass, NOT heavier as much military 7.62 NATO is when compared to commercial cases.

Effectively, this means that I needn't be concerned about varying results by mixing .223 brass of different makes, due to differences in internal volume.

In reality, though, I find that I'm still so anal-retentive on the subject that I do keep the commercial brass sorted by headstamp. I do NOT worry about mixing different years of manufacture in the military cases.

 

[mek42]

Thank you for the replies. This is helpful. I think I may end up anal enough to separate by year of manufacture.

Regarding the chamfer, are case mouth chamfer tools based on the standard 45 degree chamfer? If so, would it be ok to use a cordless drill with a chamfer bit to quickly clean up the primer pockets or would this hog off way too much brass even with a quick pull of the drill trigger?

Included in the brass bucket were several "RP 223 REM" (I'm assuming Remington Peters) cases that I'll be starting with so I can start shooting now while still learning how to prepare the military cases. I'm sure that the military case prep will be trivial once I've done it, but I haven't yet.

 

[Clark]

I have processed ~8,000 rounds of .223 brass.

I can get all the engineering hours I want, so this is not a cost effective use of my time. Get a TV or radio going in the same room and enjoy yourself. Try to make ammo better than store bought. Try to make brass better than store bought. Lapua brass is the best. Get some and make your prepped brass better than the Lapua.

What I used that works:


A Tumbler from Berry's Bullets

A de burring tool:

a Lee universal Decapping die, this is indestructible, unlike the fancy brands


Dillon primer pocket swaging tool 600

Forster priming tool

Imperial sizing wax

Forster .223 FL sizing die with the neck honed out to .245" [A $10 charge at the Forster factory]. Don't waste money, time, and brass with a floating bushing sizer die unless you have a tight [like .250"] neck chamber and the brass is already fire formed. Get the honed die.

Blue Dot powder gives moderate velocites without barrel heating, fouling, or throat destruction of slower powders.

Hornady Vmax bullets with moly coating in a cleaned and then moly bore cream burnished bore makes for many more accurate shots between cleaning up to 3600 fps

Get a .223 seater die with a sliding sleeve. Now that the Forster patent has expired, Redding, RCBS, and Hornady now offer them.

100 round ammo boxes from Berry's bullets

Concentricity gauge

The tricks:
1) Get some hand eye co ordination going with the de burr tool. You do not want to cookie cutter the mouth and you do not want to have burrs that scratch the bullet. The inside of the mouth cuts faster than the outside. Give the inside one co axial [not cocked to one side] half twist. Give the outside two half twists. Look at the results under a microscope and see that you are doing it right.

2) Do the de burr first, and then the decapping and de swaging and priming to shake off the brass chips before the sticky wax is added.

3) never pull an expander ball through a tight neck, but if you have a lapped die, it does not matter, as the neck is not small enough for the ball to get a grip and bend the neck.

4) The ammo should drop in the chamber with the bullet touching the lands and .001" of space for the firing pin to push the shoulder forward. The bullet ogive as well as the bullet at the case mouth should be concentric to the outside of the case. If you can do that, you do not need a .262" neck 6mmPPC chamber and turned neck brass to be super accurate. But keeping the ammo concentric is the trick.

 

[Sunray]

Milsurp brass tends to be a bit thicker. In addition to removing the primer crimp, you'll have to reduce the powder charge by 10%.

 

[mek42]

I sorted through about a half gallon of brass. I almost feel like a wuss, but I put on a pair of nitrile gloves while handling it - some of the brass was mildly corroded - I can't complain too much, the price was really low and I don't need more than one hand to figure out how much older I am than the brass.

So far, the vast majority appears to be LC 75. Included in the bucket 'o brass are a bunch of various LC live blank rounds (still mid - late '70's vintage). I'm assuming they are blank rounds - they have a crimped neck (similar to how round stovepipe is crimped on one end, but the brass is crimped completely closed) - they may be rifle grenade rounds for all I know. Whatever they are, are they going to be safe to fire to make brass? Will they be corrosive? If not safe, how should they be disposed of?

Also, to test to see if the LC 75 fired brass still had a crimped primer pocket, I put one of the used primers into my Lee handheld autoprime tool and pressed it in a freshly deprimed LC 75 case. The process seemed to take more initial force than usual and then kind of 'slammed' into the hole all of a sudden. I thought at first that perhaps I had disintegrated the old primer, but when I removed the shell from the prime tool, the old primer was properly seated. This probably means that there is a crimp in the primer pocket, right?

Lastly, since I have at least a half gallon of LC 75 brass (so far, out of ~2 gallons total, mostly LC 7x) would it work to chuck a chamfering bit into my drill press at, say 200 rpm or so, and gently chamfer away the primer pocket crimps in this fashion?

Again, thanks!

 

[Clark]

The crimped neck is for blanks.

The chamfering bit may be the wrong angle.

The Lyman primer pocket uniformer tool is like a reamer that is the size the pocket should be. That would be between .1730" and .1745" per the chart below.

http://www.lymanproducts.com/lymanproducts/index.htm

SAAMI specifications on primers and primer pockets per "Sinclair International's Precision Reloading & Shooting Handbook" 10th edition 1999

......................Depth min max diameter min max
small rifle primer pocket .117 .123 .1730 .1745
small pistol primer pocket .117 .123 .1730 .1745
Large rifle primer pocket .125 .132 .2085 .2100
Large pistol primer pocket .117 .123 .2085 .2100

.......................Height min max Diameter min max
Small rifle primers .115 .125 .1745 .1765
small pistol primers .115 .125 .1745 .1765
large rifle primers .123 .133 .2105 .2130
large pistol primers .115 .125 .2100 .2120"

 

[mek42]

Clark - thanks, the measurements were helpful. Calipers give 0.1590 - 0.1610" using a sample size of 2 deprimed cases. Not exhaustive but good enough for me. Looks like I will be purchasing a primer pocket reamer kit soon.

Thanks for all of the advice so far!

 

[Liberty4Ever]

Lake City is my favorite .223 brass. I don't sort by year.

You'll have better luck if you stick to one type of brass. Reloading is a small manufacturing operation, and the less variation in the process the better.

I bought the RCBS Primer Pocket Swager Combo and that's what I use to remove the primer pocket crimp. It works on the Lee Classic Cast press, but the case stripper doesn't work. No big deal. I rock the case a little and it comes right off. Most brass doesn't need swaging, so it serves as a GO / NO GO gage. If it's NO GO, I raise the press and swage the primer pocket.

I tried lots of different sizing lube, and I concur with the Imperial Sizing Wax. I was resistant at first because I didn't want some sticky and messy stuff on my fingers, but it's so concentrated that there is very little needed, so the mess is minimal, and it's faster and overall neater than the other methods.

I use the Lee Universal Decapping die, but I didn't quite find it to be indestructible. The collet on top allows the decapping pin to slide up if it encounters more force than needed to press out a spent primer, instead of breaking. But there was one brand of foreign military surplus brass with a flash hole that's slightly smaller than the .062" diameter decapping pin. The pin would push out the spent primer, but it'd seize in the flash hole when I tried to withdraw it, and that would pull out the tip of the decapping pin. It's only designed to push, not pull. Big pain. Best to recycle that brass, but I'm cheap, so I manually drilled out the flash holes. It's just plinking brass.

For trimming and deburring the case neck, I like the Lee Zip Trim. At first I thought it looked a bit light-weight, but I've processed almost 2,000 pieces of brass and it's held up very well. A hand pull lathe seems a bit low rent, but I think it's a very appropriate technology. It's faster and less fatiguing than trying to hold a heavy cordless drill, but the big advantage is the greater consistency. The drill would sometimes spin up too fast and the chamfer and deburr operation was more like a beveled case trimming. The Zip Trim allows a very controlled process based on the number of pulls on the handle, and it's easy to get into a rhythm. Finish with a ScotchBrite pad and it'll quickly put a high polish on the brass.

Here's a video I made of me using the Zip Trim on some .223 brass. Note the comments to the right of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0VCej_nz8