Processing new .223 brass

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dradave

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I'm thinking about buying a 1000 cases of new .223 brass for reloading. I have the dies but I don't have the other equipment to process rifle cases and I really don't want to buy any right now. Can I reload these cases as is without trimming, deburring and cleaning the primer pockets? I guess what I'm asking is are they good to go right out of the box.

Thanks...
 
How beat up do they look?

If they are new, you should not have to worry about trimming & cleaning primer pockets: measure a few of the cases to make sure length is in spec. Even with new cases I like to chamfer the inside of the case mouth so that bullets seat with less scraping by the case mouth. The cases may have been roughly handled so may have some dings, and you might want to full length or neck size them.
 
I'm thinking about buying a 1000 cases of new .223 brass for reloading. I have the dies but I don't have the other equipment to process rifle cases and I really don't want to buy any right now. Can I reload these cases as is without trimming, deburring and cleaning the primer pockets? I guess what I'm asking is are they good to go right out of the box.

Thanks...
I don't do anything to new cases except maybe chamfer the case mouths if I'm going to seat flat based bullets. You may find several cases with mouths too out of round or bodies dented that would need to be resized in order to be usable; in my experience the number of those is usually in the range of 1 to 3 per 100 or less.
 
new?

If it is brand new brass, it should be good to go right out of the box, except for the occasional dented case mouth as already noted.
I have a factory case (well....part of one at this point) of Winchester primed brass .223. They pretty obviously did not intend that those cases be sized or fussed with much before being loaded.
Pete
 
ALWAYS chamfer the inside of a new case, or one that's been trimmed. But to do it right means you have to have round case mouths to start with. I can guarantee that most of the mouths are out-of-round from being dumped in large boxes after the final polishing. I don't care what type of bullet you're loading, the case mouth will scrape some of the copper jacket off the outside of a bullet IF it's NOT chamfered.

Just back the FL die out a full turn from it's full down position, run the cases into it and back out over the expander ball. That'll round out the neck, and you won't need to lube them.

The only other thing I would do is de-burr the flash hole. It depends on what purpose the shells are being loaded for. General plinking, I would just chamfer and load. If for serious target work, then flash hole work and primer pocket uniforming would be next.
 
Mr Snuffy's suggestion (above) about "ironing out" and rounding dinged case necks is basically workable for quick and dirty prep of a few cases, but for a large number of cases you'll be much better off using a dedicated neck expanding mandrel of correct size. They are available from Sinclair and K&M, and relatively inexpensive.
 
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