Aguila .223 brass 13 firings

Gatehouse

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I bought a case of Aguilia .223 fmj ammo and had never tried it before. Seems pretty accurate but only tried 100m

Was interested in brass quality/life so I took some gear to the range and shot one round then loaded it 12 times before I got bored and stopped. No split neck or case separation. Trimmed once at 8 firings. These weren't extremely high pressure loads as I didn't want to do a full work up but they were a max load of H4895 behind a 50gr VMAX.

Interestingly the primers appear crimped in but they are not. Wasn't hard to prime at all, and primer pockets were still snug the entire time.

Decent brass, I think. I didn't weigh individual cases either. Maybe later. :)
 
I found some of the cases to be crimped and requiring swagging. So instead of messing with them, I swagged all cases, about 40% felt uncrimped but the others were pretty crimped. Nothing like FC crimp, but still crimped.

I've got 650 cases ready to size and workup. This makes me happy, hopefully I'll get similar results. But I bet an ar-15 will be much harder on the brass.

On accuracy, averaging 1.5-2 moa from ar-15 at 100m with sandbags. Pretty decent for 47 cents per round!
 
They all look crimped. But they weren't. I wonder if they form the commercial and military brass on the same tooling and then just close the crimps on the military stuff?

Whatever it is, it's weird. :)
 
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Left to right, 13x fired case. 1x fired factory Aguilia case. Looks crimped, right? It's not! :) And on the right is a standard PMC case with no crimp or appearance of the crimp.

When I'm doing load development I will take my Rockchucker to the range and bolt it down. For this project I just took the Hand Press. Handy for stuff like this.

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Gate, I have a never been used Lee hand press , if you would like a 2nd one for the other die..FS

:)

Thanks but if I decide to try this again and take it to case failure I'll just take my rockchucker :) I dn't get enough use out of the hand press as it is, I'm sure you can find a better home for yours! :)
 
good info, I'd be curious to the results of the brass in an ar15. i should go when it's dead and try the same thing with various brands of brass, but that's a lot of work.
 
The sales guy at wanstalls said people were getting 4 reloads on the brass in ar-15's. I would have tested it myself but I don't have any mobile reloading equipment. I guess I'll find out over years/months..
 
You guys want AR brass life? Ok, I'll re do the test with an AR15

Also, I mentioned that the load wasn't really high pressure, but actually looking at the pressure ratings H4895 is one of the highest pressure loads. No pressure signs in my rifle though.

What's good case life for an AR15 anyway? I rarely use full power loads in bolt action brass after about 5 loads, anyway.
 
Okay I tried it with a Norinco Ar15

Trimmed after 5th and 8th firings, do brass was flowing more than the bolt action. However I stopped at 10 firings without a split neck or case separation. Sorry I didn't take it to failure but I think 10 shots from the same brass tells us what we need to know!
 
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I fired the AR15 into my sophisticated braSS COLLECTION DEVICE- A CARDBOARD BOX.

Next step is to weigh a bunch of brass to see consistency. So far, I'm impressed. I actually thought this brass would suck
 
I recently processed a rather large amount of Aguilla .223/5.56 brass.

The only 'negative' I came across was a high percentage of them have off-centre flash holes.

It doesn't bother me (especially not for blasting ammo) but some people don't like that. In theory you might have issues with decapping pins but I knocked out a metric $hit ton of primers and no problems......
 
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