trimmer woes, are these too short now?

[FlyinBryan]

i just realized that my lee trimmer has trimmed all my 223 cases down to about 1.740.

the manual say to trim 223 cases down to 1.760.

i will mbe shooting them out of a bushmaster chambered for 223/5.56.

is this safe?

 

[Jacka L Ope]

With your slightly less than normal length case, after a full length re-sizing, all you really have as an issue is bit less surface area in the neck for which to provide a tight grip on the bullet. Personally, I would, and have, load them to the normal cartridge OAL and go shooting. They will stretch with additional firings.

Have fun!

 

[FlyinBryan]

wow, fast answer!!!!!

i was hoping they would be ok, and really thought they would be, but i wanted the opinion of an experienced loader as i am fairly new.

thx mr ope.

lol

 

[Bullet]

1.740 is the SAAMI minimum case length for Rem 223. So you should be fine.
The Max SAMMI case length is 1.760.
Your manual should list the trim length around 1.750/1.752.

 

[Slamfire]

I have trimmed some 30-06 cases more than a ten thousandths below miniumum. Happened when I was setting up the trimmer.

Kept them, loaded them, nothing funny happened. I believe as long as you have neck enough to hold the bullet, the round will go bang, the bullet will go downrange.

I trim all my .223 brass to 1.750" But this is an average. I use Gracey trimmer, trim length is measured off the shoulder, so I expect I have cases that are closer to 1.740". It all shoots very well.

 

[rcmodel]

The worst that can happen with way too short case necks is that bore erosion will be able to start in the neck of the chamber eventually, instead of the leade of the rifling.

The proper case neck length protects the chamber from erosion, so to speak.
Carried to extreme, the end of the chamber would get too big & reverse funnel shaped, and the fired case would be hard to extract.

You can use Lock-Tight on the Lee trimmer stop rod and adjust to the proper 1.750" "trim too" length by un-screwing it slightly.

Once the Lock-Tight cures, it won't change again.

rcmodel