Quality .223 Brass?

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coleman1495

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What’s the best source for quality .223 brass these days? I found PPU brass for.40$ at XReload. Does anybody know if that is decent stuff? Wouldn’t need to be match grade but needs to be decently uniform.

Also factory ammunition that is worth reloading is a consideration.
 
OP, PPU brass seems to be manufactured to military specs and has thicker sidewalls, which restricts case capacity. Other than that, if you do your part in properly maintaining the cases, the quality is pretty good. I found weight and neck wall thickness to be very consistent. They will withstand many reloads if annealed properly.

Lapua brass is excellent but you definitely pay for the extra quality and get appx the same amount of reloads out of them before they need to be re annealed.

I'm going to get some flak over this but some of the best brass cases I've had were from that bulk yellow box Norinco stuff, which some folks found to be corrosive primed in some lots. Mine were all fine.

As far as metallurgy goes it's ductile and durable. You need to be very careful with it though because some of the primer holes are off center and should be discarded. Most people just throw it away because they don't want to be bothered. That's fine.

If you attend gun shows, I can see from your location that there are several per year in your area, decent quality 223 brass sells by the bulk bags of 500 anywhere from $25 per bag but no more than $50.

If you have a close by range the RCMP use for practice they often leave their empty IVI cases behind and you can have them by simply picking them up after they leave.


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It would have to be quality brass- not a Norinco product. This happened in my buddies T97 the other weekend. This is Norinco brass in a factory load:
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I had a similar case separation failure using Remington "Freedom Bucket." It had been reloaded 2-3 times with a fairly mild load. This happened:
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The key to good brass is consistency right...

So how do we define consistent?.... First and foremost is weight.

Lapua is known to be the most consistent but it is also very expensive... Like $1.00 each.

Here's what I did... I recently purchased 2,000 rounds of once fired IVI brass for $150 from Western Metal, then gave it all the full process resizing effort... I annealed the necks of all using a salt bath annealing system and initially sized them with a small base die.

Any remotely suspect cases were discarded.

Then I weight sorted them...and this is where you will see the value....

Over all weight between min and max was about 4 grains, but once sorted by weight and put into groups, I got 7 groups of 100 rounds that were within 0.1 grains and 6 groups of 100 with all cases within 0.2 grains... the rest were grouped as close as possible and designated as practice rounds.

So the moral of the story is that for less than the cost of 200 rounds of Lapua, I have 1300 cases that are closer in weight than Lapua, plus a bunch of decent brass to use for semi auto.
 
How are you seating primers in IVI cases? I have had nothing but issues when it comes to primers and IVI cases. Federal cases also suck. I have tried using a countersink bit on the primer pocket to allow for easier seating but to limited success.

Also I don't think case weight is indicative of case volume. In other words weighing and sorting them is a waste of time.
 
coleman1495 said:
How are you seating primers in IVI cases? I have had nothing but issues when it comes to primers and IVI cases. Federal cases also suck. I have tried using a countersink bit on the primer pocket to allow for easier seating but to limited success.

Also I don't think case weight is indicative of case volume. In other words weighing and sorting them is a waste of time.
Click to expand...

Primer pocket swager, problem solved.
 
coleman1495 said:
How are you seating primers in IVI cases? I have had nothing but issues when it comes to primers and IVI cases. Federal cases also suck. I have tried using a countersink bit on the primer pocket to allow for easier seating but to limited success.

Also I don't think case weight is indicative of case volume. In other words weighing and sorting them is a waste of time.
Click to expand...

The primers on IVI cases are crimped, so you need a crimp remover... it's like a primer pocket reamer with a chamfering tool to take out the crimp. Once you do that, they are fine.

Here's a link: http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2016/04/how-to-remove-the-primer-crimp-in-military-cartridge-brass/

Actually weight sorting is exactly indicative of volume. If the brass weighs the same between two cases they volumetrically identical. They can have different capacities in terms of water or powder, but that is measuring the shape and sizing of the case and that is not relevant once the cases have been fire formed to your chamber, then the capacity stabilizes.

Some will argue that weight sorting is a waste of time along with many other things (such as cleaning your barrel) on the belief that it just doesn't help. In reality, variability adds up and the more consistent each variable is controlled, the more consistent your velocities and groups can be.

Keep in mind that matches are not won in 3 round groups. They are won at the end of about 60 rounds per day over two or three days. If you have a "who cares attitude" it will reveal itself with a position at the bottom of the score board at the end of it all.

If we exaggerate the point for clarity, some cases like Winchester are known to be light and Lapua by contrast are known to be heavy. A max pressure load on Winchester cases would be too hot with Lapua cases and it would be a bad bet to expect the same velocities from both with the same load.
 
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