Sorting 223 Brass

[Hosted]

I bought 500 once fired 223 cases a few weeks ago and was wondering how I should go about reloading them. I'm starting to wonder if I should have tried to find all with 1 or 2 headstamps. I'm new to reloading and will be using for a 223 bolt action to develop target and varmint rounds for my rifle. I read things online how you want to keep brass the same and even find the volume of different brands and adjust for that. Some of the LC09 has a dented flash hole area that you can see and feel when cleaning the pockets and was wondering if they were still good? I was kind of disappointed that there wasn't 500 there. I may just be worrying to much but wanted to hear your thoughts. Here is the brass I have.

Winchester. 95
LC08. 46
LC09. 78
LC misc. 20
WCC 02. 68
WCC 08. 12
WCC misc. 7
FC. 58
RP. 46
PMC. 17
PMP. 17
Unuseable. 9

 

[mdemetz]

All the military(LC,WCC) and maybesome of the PMC & FC will have crimped in primers if once fired. These need to be swaged or reamed to remove the crimp.
You may want to keep these separated as the feel of seating the primer will probably be different.

 

[Hosted]

Forgot to say they were swaged already. Well, most of them are. There are about 20 I need to figure out how to do.

 

[jcwit]

I have a few thousand Lake City .223 cases, very few of them have crimped primer pockets. Yes they were once fired till I started to reload them.

 

[indyjohn]

I read things online how you want to keep brass the same and even find the volume of different brands and adjust for that.

This is the only reason I sort my .223 brass (really, it is, I'm not OCD or anything... ).

Some don't care & run mixed bags. The only time it could get dicey is if you're at the extreme end of a safe load. I don't do that very much but still the cartridge voulme can dictate accuracy more that you might think.

 

[straight-shooter]

For my accuracy loads for my Rem 700, I sucked it up and bought some new Winchester brass. All my LC brass is general plinking loads for the AR.

I noticed the LC brass has a slightly thicker rim and doesn't load smoothly in the Rem 700 when turning down the bolt. The rim feels like it's dragging on the extractor.

If it were me, I would just use all that brass you have for plinking and buy some quality "new" brass for accuracy. This way you'll know your consistent.

 

[red_zr24x4]

I've never sorted brass by head stamp or weight or volume. I don't load at max charge either tho.

 

[sloughfoot]

Whether you should sort your brass depends on what range you will be shooting at. For 200 yards or less, it just does not matter. For 300 yards if you want 1/2 minute or better, it kind of matters. If you are happy with 1 MOA at 300 yards, it doesn't matter. For 500 or 600 yards, it matters much more.

We are not very far from each other. I live in Huntertown. PM me if you want to talk about it.

Edit to add:

HEY, the 500 once fired cases only add up to 473. That ain't right. Whenever I sell cases, I always throw in an extra handful so I am sure I didn't short the buyer. I would be really ticked off over being shorted.

 

[lon]

I'm with straight-shooter... If your rifle shoots under 1" moa, I would defiantly pop for at least 100 new cases from the same lot and completely prep it (trim, uniform pockets and de-burr flash holes) and eliminate that variable from your load testing.

 

[Broom_jm]

If you take out the "unusable", that's only 464...nearly 8% less than you SHOULD have rec'd. I hope you didn't pay the going rate on once-fired brass.

Are you going to be firing these from an AR? If so, you'll probably be OK, as long as you stick with a middling charge. Most of my reloading is done for accuracy, so I take the time to sort by headstamp and then proceed with load development, using the most available brass.

For my money, I'll pay a little extra for brass that is already sorted by headstamp.

 

[giovani]

For my 45acp,38special and even my 270 hunting rifle I will use range pickup or used brass.
But for my 6mm target and 22/250 varmint rifles I always buy new , in one large quantity, say 200 and prep them.
You need to take out all the variables you can or you will wind up scratching your head , wondering if its you or one of your components causing the rifle to not shoot well.

 

[Hosted]

I'm going to contact the seller and at least let him know I got shorted. I did pay more than I would have liked for it. I guess a lesson learned in this sport. I'll get some new brass when I get a chance. I'm feeling the pain of buying all of my reloading supplies and Christmas right now so I'll have to wait a few weeks. I guess I'll just load the smaller lots into some shorter range varmint rounds and work on some loads with my bigger lots until I get some new brass. I'm starting to slow down on shooting with the weather anyways.

 

[opus1776]

Hosted,

Depending on how hot you are loading the .223, be careful when using the PMP brass. One of the mods on arfcom has come across PMP brass that is heavier(less volume) so a load that is ok in LC or WCC might be over the max in PMP.....

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