223 / 5.56 Brass

Ganderite

Ganderite

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Farm south of North Bay
I load 223 match ammo for a club newbie shooting program.. We supply rifles and ammo.

The ammo works well and the newbies have fun.

The target is a playing card. They shoot prone at 300 yards.

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The cases I used were 4,000 Remington cases. They have been re-loaded 6 times. In the last session we had 4 head separations ot of 1000 rounds.

Time to retire the brass.

Anyone know where I can get 5,000 once fired 223 cases, all with same headstamp?
 
I was talking with Derek from Rocky Mountain Armory (Okotoks, AB) back in April - they are working on a computerized process for sorting by head stamp. Not sure of what the status may be at this point - phone number is 368.999.1610
 
6 straight reloads. No trim. No anneal.

I just bought 5000 mixed cases from Henry (Budget). I will sort them by head stamp and load accordingly.

Hopefuly I will get 1,000+ of 2 or 3 head stamps. And then load one head stamp until it fails, then move on.

I might trim them all to start.
 
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Ganderite said:
6 straight reloads. No trim. No anneal.

I just bought 5000 mixed cases from Henry (Budget). I will sort them by head stamp and load accordingly.

Hopefuly I will get 1,000+ of 2 or 3 head stamps. And then load one head stamp until it fails, then move on.

I might trim them all to start.
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I am going to assume you did a full length resize each loading. Not much to be done about head separations when using multiple rifles. Actually, I am kind of surprised you got away with 6 reloadings!

Let us know how the mixed cases work out. Unfortunately one never knows what kind of abuse they have already taken before you get them.
 
rick357 said:
I am going to assume you did a full length resize each loading. Not much to be done about head separations when using multiple rifles
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The SAAMI spec for the cartridge "forces" all rifles to meet a headspace dimension that is 0.004" long. Using ammo in multiple rifles should have little bearing on brass life. Over sizing the brass would be much more responsible for case head separations.
 
FWIW, I did a test a long time ago where I compared identical .223 loads using brass sorted by headstamp and weight (+_ 0.25gr) vs brass unsorted by weight and headstamps. The surprising thing was that the unsorted lot gave me the smallest groups. The test gun was an AR15 BTW. Maybe in bolt action guns it would be different. Being a bit anal though, I still sort by headstamp and weight but the test results made me wonder if it's really necessary for hunting type rifles.
 
RifleDude said:
FWIW, I did a test a long time ago where I compared identical .223 loads using brass sorted by headstamp and weight (+_ 0.25gr) vs brass unsorted by weight and headstamps. The surprising thing was that the unsorted lot gave me the smallest groups. The test gun was an AR15 BTW. Maybe in bolt action guns it would be different. Being a bit anal though, I still sort by headstamp and weight but the test results made me wonder if it's really necessary for hunting type rifles.
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I keep loading a batch of brass until I get some failures. Then I scrap the entire batch. This process does not work well with mixed brass because one brand may fail early.

I need once fired brass. I can sort it by headstamp.
 
I Dont Care About You said:
The SAAMI spec for the cartridge "forces" all rifles to meet a headspace dimension that is 0.004" long. Using ammo in multiple rifles should have little bearing on brass life. Over sizing the brass would be much more responsible for case head separations.
Click to expand...

I have 3 .308Win rifles. All three are Remington 700 actions - made by Remington. Two are identical other than one is threaded for a brake and the other is plane jane. Of the two which are supposedly identical and were bought the same year within 6 months of each other, the chambers are different enough that fired cases from one rifle will not chamber in the other two without full length resizing. So much for SAAMI. I now just keep my reloads matched with the companion rifle. I generally get between 20 and 24 reloads before the primer pockets finally give out. No annealing.
 
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