Rate Top 3 brands of 223 brass

[Bowfishrp]

I have a pile of various brands of 223 brass and want to hold out a few hundred of the best brands for accuracy loads. The rest will be loaded with the progressive for practice and general use. Please rate your top 3 brands that you would suggest I use first.

BHA - Blackhills
LC - Lake City
RP - Remington
WCC - Winchester 556
WIN - Winchester 223
Fiocchi
FC - Federal
PMP
S&B
PMC
Frontier
FNM

Thanks for the info!
Robert

 

[RyanM]

You're not going to have much, if any, difference between any of those brands.

If you absolutely have to have the best brass possible, get some Norma cases. They're about $75 for 100. If that's too rich for your blood, Lapua is about $50 per 100.

 

[R.W.Dale]

http://www.6mmbr.com/223Rem.html

these guys have gone in depth in this subject. Scroll down about a 1/4 way to see a handy chart.

but Basically rem and win are the worst 223 brass out there

 

[Otto]

but Basically rem and win are the worst 223 brass out there

The chart you referenced does not rate brass from best to worse, it simply shows the brands that were most consistent in weight. That too is almost meaningless because of the small sampling tested and lot-to-lot variations.

 

[cracked butt]

I pretty much only use winchester- if there's anything wrong with it, I haven't seen it yet. As long as you prep the brass, and aren't using it for benchrest competition, your rifle willnever know the difference.

With LC brass, you'lllikely need a primer pocket swager- something you only need to do once per piece of brass, not too big of a deal. I avoid it simply because a lot of the 'once-fired' stuff was fired through a machine gun with a lot looser chamber tolerances than my AR Service rifle.

Some of the older FC brass have thin case webs- they will start spitting primers after 1-3 reloadings. The newer FC brass doesn't have that problem.

 

[NuJudge]

I like Winchester best, followed closely by Lake City (LC) and Remington.

Clearly at the bottom is Federal. The problem may be fixed now, but for a long time primer pockets losened so much on firing that after the second firing they would not hold a primer.

 

[Walkalong]

You can always sort your brass by not only head stamp, but then by weight to help accuracy. Consistency is where it is at. A well prepped batch of cases weighing close to the same will shoot well until they fail. Of course, after we put all the effort into prepping a batch of cases, we want them to last a while, and this is where most folks will start picking favorites. Can't blame them.

When I loaded up some Hornady V-Max bullets for my nephew for his .223 AR, I used some once fired Federal cases all sorted by weight and prepped them. Uniformed the primer pockets, deburred the flash hole. Trimmed the same length. No neck turning as it is a standard chamber. They shoot very well. Would some other brand shoot better. Who cares. I was not going to shoot 500 rounds to see. These shot very well, and that is what we were after. He is tickled, so I am happy.

Will the primer pockets hold up. Dunno. The loads are near max, but not screamers. I think it will hold up for a while. At the rate he shoots them, they'll probably last years before the brass get scrapped.

 

[kelbro]

The top 5 on your list are what I would rank as the best of your lot. Not necessarily in the order that you have them listed.

My experience is that the LC, sorted by date is great stuff.

Remington, very good, consistent and good capacity. Good primer pockets.

Winchester, (WIN) good, some consistency, same capacity as Lapua so I use it (sorted and weighed) for developing loads. The WCC was all over the place weight-wise and was heavier than most so I'm assuming less capacity. Load cautiously.

The Black Hills (BHA) puts their name on some good stuff. I forget who makes it for them but it's pretty good.

The S&B is very consistent with good capacity but the primer pockets get loose after a couple of loads.

Federal (FC), sell it for scrap or use it for throwaways. Not worth the trouble to perform case prep. My experience shows the primer pockets fail after one normal (not hot) reloading. The FNM is OK.

 

[evan price]

NATO marked brass: PMC, WCC, FC, RORG, LC: All mil-spec
BHA
PMC
PMP
S&B
NNY

 

[Bowfishrp]

Thanks for the responses! That is about what I thought but wanted to see what other's experiences might be.
Unfortunately I dont have much BHA, but have lots of LC and RP so that should work out well.
Weighing them and grouping them accordingly was what I had in mind for the accurate stuff. I had also heard good things about S&B and Fiocchi but wanted to check.
Thanks again.