First time loading 223 Rem, and I'm confused
- Thread starter ParkGunner
- Start date
For those of you who have never had a toddler or 3-year old in their house. Hah, good luck keeping them away from anything! Honestly, the phrase "don't touch" carries some sort of magic to little kids.
If all the primers, bullets and powder are away, then you're being a good parent and things are safe. Otherwise, I leave all my tooling and brass out in the open. I want to make sure my kids do not think of my gun stuff as tempting forbidden fruit, but ordinary things that aren't very interesting and aren't worth putting in their mouths or dumping all over the floor.
To the OP, you really should look into getting some check weights. Every single time I go out to my reloading bench, I calibrate my scale to zero, then I drop some check weights in the range of the load I'll be using onto the scale. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Accidents happen, but I'd prefer to keep the accidents on the cheap and easy to fix side, rather than the KABOOM side of things.
If all the primers, bullets and powder are away, then you're being a good parent and things are safe. Otherwise, I leave all my tooling and brass out in the open. I want to make sure my kids do not think of my gun stuff as tempting forbidden fruit, but ordinary things that aren't very interesting and aren't worth putting in their mouths or dumping all over the floor.
To the OP, you really should look into getting some check weights. Every single time I go out to my reloading bench, I calibrate my scale to zero, then I drop some check weights in the range of the load I'll be using onto the scale. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Accidents happen, but I'd prefer to keep the accidents on the cheap and easy to fix side, rather than the KABOOM side of things.
It's like I wrote that. Great minds think alike. From the parenting to the scale calibration, all the same SOP.
This isn't correct for 5.56/.223 brass. Any differences are within normal variation between manufacturers.
http://www.6mmbr.com/223rem.html
Caution must definitely be exercised with other military brass, such as 7.62 Nato/.308, as there is a substantial difference in case weight/volume.
Ar180shooter
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Ottawa, ON
Either lock the room (if possible) or put sensitive equipment away, or where it cannot be easily accessed. I'm not talking about saying "don't touch", and I would encourage allowing the child to "check it out" under supervision... but leaving out things like scales and not calibrating them before use can be downright dangerous.
I let them make duds on the AP and they love it 
- Location
- The Orion Arm
This is the last line of the 3rd paragraph: "Military 5.56x45 brass often, but not always, has thicker internal construction, and slightly less capacity than commercial .223 Rem brass"
Did I misunderstand that? I always assumed that meant to reduce the load of a military case in order to be safe, and I did that after having read that same web page last year. Having reloaded regular .223 commercial brass from the various manufacturers, and Lake City mil brass, I can tell you that the Lake City holds less water than the regular commercial brass (the volume of H2O being a method to determine internal capacity), so it seemed to me that mil brass should not be loaded with as much powder as commercial stuff, even though the case walls are thicker in order to handle higher pressure.
That's was my reasoning. Someone please let me know if I'm wrong.
- Location
- Central Alberta
As someone else posted- mystery brass could be near anything, at a glance, .222, .204 brass could slip into the mix, I get just a few every so often at the sort after range pickup, I'm sure I have a few in the .223 bag.Not that I use .223 so it'll get sorted sometime................
