Messing with .223 range brass, a waste of time

Why break them down? Just shoot them.

Why not just shoot them? They cuold still be fun even one at a time I'd think.

Humm, Great minds....?

Fiochi shot pretty well in my rifles.

Hooda Thunkit said:

Some of you have read my thread about (finally) starting to load for the .223Rem.

https://thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/there-will-never-be-another-one-of-these-for-me.865104/

Since I'm loading this cartridge, I need some brass. Presently all I have is 50 rounds of Aguila I purchased to try out the rifle, then reload some trial loads. Actually, 49 pieces. I boogered one of them .

Over the years, I've casually picked up brass at the club. I've never paid that much attention to it, I mean, I don't even shoot it, so.....

This morning I deprimed and tumbled this several hundred range brass. I sorted it by headstamp.

What a waste of time. Except for LC brass, which I still need to sort by year, I don't have even 50 of anything. I've got probably 20 different headstamps. Chances are good the LC is going to sort into small year-piles too.

Click to expand...

Trim to length, then sort by weight will give you good results. Headstamps themselves aren't quite as important as volume and wall thickness which weight does a very good job selecting. Keep within a few grains of each other after the initial trim.

Jeepers... if that's all you needed, I would have sent you 300 matching cases for the price of postage. I can probably peel away 300 cases from the roughly 8000 I have setting in the reloading room...

Hooda Thunkit said:

I'm not spending time working up a load for mixed headstamp brass.

Click to expand...

Shot lots of cleans out to 300 yards with mixed headstamp brass. But, I was shooting irons with a sling. Maybe you will see something using a concrete bench, sand bags and a scope, but, maybe not.

I am with the others that suggest shooting them, and then reloading the fired cases. Also should warn you that Fiocchi (and their Perfecta cousin) brass is known for having a lot of off center flash holes, some of them way off center. And, since an NEF single shot isn't known as a bench rest gun, I would just go ahead and load your mixed range brass. You could shoot your groups by headstamp, and see which brand offers best potential. I sure wouldn't bother pulling bullets, resizing, depriming, trimming and repriming for that particular rifle. And the Hornady 55 gr BTSP isn't what I consider a precision bullet, either. If you want to go to the effort of match prepping cases, you might as well invest in a match quality bullet, be it Sierra, Nosler, Ballistic Tips, V-Max, or match HP bullets.
Although for the accuracy potential of your rifle, the bulk Hornady SP bullets are probably fine. Expect a little under 2 MOA, if you are lucky. Most cheap AR's will do a little better from a good rest with a scope and comparable loads.

Texas10mm said:

Why break them down? Just shoot them.

Click to expand...

Agree 100%.

Also I reload and shoot mixed LC brass all of the time. In fact I stopped sorting it. The only issue with the LC brass is that you have to remove the military primer crimp the first time you reload them.

Would you be disappointed/frustrated if there was no difference in your groups using Matching Brass vs. mixed Range brass?

You mentioned having 50 Aguila cases. You also mentioned some additional Range Brass.

Before you drop any coin, try loading both and see if it you can notice a consistent, day-in / day-out difference.

If so, cool!!! If not, don't feel bad. Some things here on THR can be better suited to long-term experienced Shooters trying to squeeze out a fraction of an inch at distance, where absolute consistency in everything is a MUST.

Not everyone is that proficient and/or using comparable equipment / components, myself included.

(But, I am having fun trying to 'get there'!)

First off, you are loading for an NEF, not a Camp Perry 'Space gun'. In my experience loading for it and another top end gun, a Savage Axis, you don't need to go to far down the rabbit hole for your NEF. Mine shot decent enough with my do-it-all load, 25.8 gr. of BL-C(2) under most any 55 gr. bullet. I've topped it with Armscor 55 FMJ pulls, Hornady 55 FMJ BT, V-Max and Nosler BT Varmint. I've shot deer and coyotes with this load, have a target up in my shop with a center to center (3 shot group) of .14" (Shot at 25 yards while zeroing) and it's dropped deer at 225 yards with my son shooting the Axis.
I use LC 08 and 14 for my hunting loads, but the rest is range brass like yours, and I honestly have not noticed any measurable difference in accuracy between the various makes of brass.

I don’t wish to burst your bubble, but like @2ndtimer said, if the brass is newer than 2016 it is likely not that great.
I have six hundred Perfecta cases (that I painfully removed the primer crimp from) that are in fact perfect. But upon prepping the thirteenth box of my used brass I came upon the tooling change...

The horrors! Thick on one side brass, off center flash hole that broke a decapping pin, improper annealing.
What happened?!
I don’t know, but my best kept secret for cheap “good” ammunition got sunk.

I don’t like to shoot FMJ anyway, but I would leave the primers in. Unless you go crazy with lube, it will save you a step to take the decapping rod’s pin out.

Some people's glass is 1/2 empty, other's 1/2 full.

You actually have a pretty good test bed going on with an extremely forgiving caliber.

The watered down version:
Several years ago I decided to start swaging my own jacketed bullets for the 223rem. Figured cheap bullets (free) why not use cheap/free components and see what kind of accuracy is out there. Bought a savage axis to use as a test bed, $299 + tax/$318 total minus the $50 rebate and sold the scope for $50. So I have $218 in the nib test rifle that I punched out the bbl with a couple patches, put my own scope on it and set the torques. Didn't touch the adjustable trigger just used it as it came out of the box, never tweaked the stock, nada, simply used it as it came from the factory.

Used my home swaged jacketed bullets and free brass I picked up & 9/10 year old primers I had laying around. I fl sized the brass, trimmed them to length and sorted them into 2 plies, commercial and nato. Decided to use BL-C2 for powder, +/- 25.5gr and any 55gr to 62 gr bullets normally does pretty good or at least gives me a place to start.

So I loaded up 15/20 rounds to zero the scope & set the torques on the action screws and did 5-round loads for doing a ladder test.

I wanted to see if I could take a cheap rifle, free bullets/free brass and see if I could produce moa ammo. So I took the cheap rifle/cheap ammo to the range and this is what I got with the 1st outing with that axis. No bbl break-in, no nothing, thought it would take several try's/range trips to get everything sorted out/dialed in to get moa out of range scrap. This is what I got in less than 100 rounds.


A close-up of the 25.5gr load.


That's .865" outside to outside for junk that I've repeated numerous times, that home swaged bullet/bl-c2 combo is my blammo ammo for that rifle.

I use the same bullet with 25.0gr of H335 with the free commercial brass I pick-up at the range for blammo ammo for the M-4 ar's. Most of them cheap 16" mid-length uppers are good for +/- 2" moa @ 100yds. Mine are no different and that what I get from the free brass.

Anyway, hang onto the brass and do some testing.

I shoot thousands of rounds of mixed head stamp brass with no accuracy issues. If your going for 1000 yard bench rest accuracy it might make a difference but otherwise just load and shoot the mixed brass.

Does the Fiocchi have crimped primers? If so, you will have a hard time reusing them after punching them out.

You're breaking my heart!

Hooda Thunkit said:

, a friend of mine has 2 cases of Fiocchi .223 FMJ he bought way back when. I can grab 300 rounds, for 28¢ each. Sweeeet.

I'm going to break them down, pull the primers, and prep the brass from the start.

Click to expand...

Hooda Thunkit said:

What a waste of time. Except for LC brass, which I still need to sort by year, I don't have even 50 of anything. Chances are good the LC is going to sort into small year-piles too.

Click to expand...

This from someone who's spent a LOT of time sorting and prepping LC 5.56 brass: I suggest you sort out a batch of SCAMP machine brass (the modern stuff with dot IDs), and get to loading. In my experience, mixed-year modern LC brass has less dispersion than of ANY of the non-premium headstamps.

When you're approaching 0.5 MOA, then you should look at sorting closer.

Slamfire said:

Shot lots of cleans out to 300 yards with mixed headstamp brass

Click to expand...

I have a couple of batches of mixed headstamp LC brass loaded with Hornady 68 HPBT that I've been shooting at 200 yds. I can't say that I am disappointed in the accuracy and its not much different than when I sorted my LC by year.

i use military brass for most .223/5.56mm reloads. Much of that brass comes from my own stock of military ammo . The cases are trimmed to length, de-primed, crimp removed and case necks chamfered. Additionally, the cases for my accuracy reloads are sorted by year of manufacture, have the primer pockets uniformed and flash holes deburred. Cases are usually reloaded 3-5 times and scrapped.

The best military cases i have found are head stamped TW67. That is also the most accurate 5.56mm ammo i have ever fired, my Sako loves the stuff.

Laphroaig said:

I have a couple of batches of mixed headstamp LC brass loaded with Hornady 68 HPBT that I've been shooting at 200 yds. I can't say that I am disappointed in the accuracy and its not much different than when I sorted my LC by year.

Click to expand...

Lake City has been the best brass I have used in my AR's. However, be aware some of it sat around a long time before the ammunition was demilled and then the cases sold to the pubic. This LC 5.56 case is an example. The case head ruptured on a fellow shooter during the 300 yard rapid fire phase of the match.












The magazine was blown out but no other damage occurred to the AR15. I believe the most likely cause to be brass deterioration/corrosion caused by deteriorating gun powder. The case had been reloaded with new powder, bullet and primer, so the damage occurred prior to reloading. Such as what is shown in these pictures.






When gunpowder reaches 20 years of age it really starts to deteriorate and fail. It is best to shoot up all ammunition before it gets 10 years old, as that is the best by for commercial ammunition. Stuff over 20 years old is very long in the tooth.

The best crimp remover I ever tried is a countersink drill bit and my cordless drill. So fast and easy. Load the brass you have, you might be surprised. I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets full of 223 range brass I’ve picked up over the years.

It seems like the OP has his mind made up, but IMHO, it is a real waste of time to break down and re-assemble bulk ammo just to seat a more consistent bullet. A single shot rifle doesn't need to be loaded in volume. It's not a mag fed semi auto. Not having 50 of the same headstamp simply means that the collected pile of range brass wasn't big enough. I think that is the bottleneck for which all these other avenues are trying to compensate.

Fifty reloaded cartridges would suffice for testing, even if a few of them were of a different headstamp. A reloader simply uses the minority headstamp brass for the starting loads or lower end of the data, while keeping the majority headstamp brass for the combination range that is thought to produce the best results.

I would just start with the headstamp I had the most of, add a few as needed to make 50, prep the brass, and load with the primers and powder from stock. Fiocchi brass isn't highly regarded or that desirable and the bulk powder that lies within the factory loaded cases is just that - cheap bulk ball powder. If anything, the 55gr HPBT bullets would be wasted in the re-assembled ammo since a reloader can't recreate the load once the donor cartridges are used up.
The reloader would then have to start over and work up the load again with a different primer and powder combination. So why not just start on a load workup now that is reproducible instead of kicking the can down the road for 300 rounds?