Bulk .223

[ThrowBack]

I'm thinking of purchasing a Dillon 650 progressive for reloading bulk .223. I'm also planning on reloading .45 ACP, .30 Carbine and .38 Special on it. I would like to use a progressive for .223 because I practice service rifle drills as vigorously as I practice IPSC drills and it's not uncommon for me to go through up to 300 rounds of .223 on a typical range session. The LAR-15 mags haven't slowed my ammo consumption any.
So my question is, is it practical to reload bulk rifle ammo on a progressive? What steps would I have to take loading rifle on a progressive vs. single stage? Is loading rifle on a progressive a great deal different than loading pistol ammo on a progressive?
I loaded bulk pistol on my Lee for years and with some training and mentoring, it became relatively straight forward. I understand that with rifle ammo, especially for a semi-auto, there are some things that come into play like factory neck crimping and full length case resizing are musts.
Any help or input is greatly appreciated.

 

[rnbra-shooter]

I'll occasional load up a bunch of .223 for my AR-15 on my XL650 (the rest of the time I use it for my .308 match ammo, basically as a single stage press with a case feeder!)

I end up loading bulk rifle ammo in two separate passes. The first pass is to FL size the brass, which involves having lubed cases. (if necessary I'll also do case trimming in the press at this time, but to be honest, if you haven't already bought Dillon's RT1200 power trimmer, I would recommend against it).

I then throw these lubed cases into my vibratory case cleaner (brass polish, corn cob, and a tablespoon of Varsol - cleans and degreases the cases wonderfully).

The second pass consists of everything other than sizing:

stn-1 is a decapping die (the primers are already gone, but it is to push stuck bits of media out of the flash holes)

stn-2 primes, and charges powder.

stn-3 is empty (I could install a powder check die, but rarely bother with that)

stn-4 seats the bullet

stn-5 would crimp (usually I don't bother)



Other than the fact that I do it in two separate stages, you would probably find the way I load AR-15 and Garand ammo to be very similar to how you've loaded pistol ammo. Other than dealing with lubed cases (and adding a second step), you'd also see occasional neck trimming (perhaps every fourth or fifth loading), and one-time primer pocket swaging (if using mil brass). But in the regular swing of things, it'd be much the same as you'd expect.