Favorite 223 Cases to reload-

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gifbohane

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I have been buying Federal bulk 223 to shoot and then reload. I now think that I should buy a few hundred decent cases and reload them and supplement them with range pickup.

Lately I have been finding a lot of (with and without mil crimp) LC empties at the range. Kind of surprised me that they would get dumped since I think they are good.

Anyway what pickups do you find to be reliable and/or give you the most reloads in 223? FC, GFL, PPU, other?

Or which ones do you hate and why? ie. bad pockets.
 
Had trouble recently with aguila 223, bad primer pockets and soft brass. This is all range pickup though, so no idea about lot # and not enough of it to know if it is all bad. But I have had some issues with it...
 
For loads where I care about accuracy in a real way: LC, preferably never-fired that has no crimp. FC with dots is second choice. Most of the rest is used for mere blasting ammo and is usually left on the ground after 2-3 firings.
 
Of my pickups:
- Unadulterated LC has the best case uniformity and neck/pocket durability.
- Commercially reloaded LC pocket durability is a crapshoot. Some is ok, some is reamed to ruin.
- PPU (and PSD) has outstanding durability, but case weight variation is kinda high.

The rest of the commercial brands I've picked up seem to die for loose pockets within 5 reloads, so it's not worth investing much effort in a batch.
 
I use LC, and have always gotten very good results with it. Also, there is a ton of it available free locally.

LC has just a little more case capacity than most other types. Since the same company that owns Federal also runs the Lake City plant, you'll probably find LC and Fed to be similar.

I give my LC a little countersink on the primer pocket. I also have 1000 new LC cases with no crimp. I haven't had any reason to use that, with so much free brass available.
 
My favorite range brass is LC. I also have quite a bit of new LC that I bought back in 2006-2007 that is not crimped. Older Winchester works ok. I've about got to where I scrap any crimped brass thats not LC.
 
Lapua but expensive.

PMC is preferable and gets separated from other commercial for range pick ups. Otherwise, LC if not commercial.
 
I use a lot of Winchester, does fine but there's a fair amount of prep work involved. I picked up 500 pieces of '95 LC brass to see what all the fuss was about...meh, it's 223 brass. I really didn't see any difference vs prepped Winchester.
 
A find and use a lot of Wolf Gold .223. It is often discarded in the mistaken belief that it is made in Russia...it is manufactured in Taiwan
 
I had good results using loads I worked up with PMC brass. If I were going to buy factory ammo knowing I would be saving the brass to reload, it would probably be PMC. But for range pickup, I prefer LC. I know if I have to remove the crimp, it has only been fired once. I've had great results with LC brass that I neck turned.
 
FC then LC. Working on the 4th reload on LC, got 8 out of FC before I lost enough cases and decided to stop reloading em
 
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Favorite 223 Cases to reload-

Given the common price difference, I am happy to load FC headstamp cases.

Yeah, I know all the concerns about the brass being thinner and the primer pockets getting loose sooner than other headstamps. But none of that matters since I only recover about 65% of my brass and that means - statistically - all of the cases from any particular batch are "lost to the weeds" long before the case fails.
 
FC then LC. Working on the 4th reload on LC, got 8 out of FC before I lost enough cases and decided to stop reloading em
With minimal shoulder setback, and annealing every 2x firings, I've had to retire my last batch of 5.56LC after 16+1 loading cycles. Pockets were finally loosening, and I saw a couple incipient head seps.
 
Interestingly I'm just auditioning a batch of LC06 brass with remarkably off-center holes, worse than I've ever seen.
That is interesting. I can't recall using any LC06 yet. I'll take a closer look if I have any. Hope that is an isolated incedent.
 
Just the other day, I picked up over 200 pc. of 223/556 range brass. Several had Win USA & 556 mm, crimped primer with no NATO symbol. I'll be curious how those do.
 
How do you guys feel about GFL (Fiocchi) 223? I picked up about 300 of these.
 
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