Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Feeding the AR

Why skip it? The front sight is an M4-A2 post which I start to lose when the daylight fades. I've never used tritium on a rifle before so I'm guessing. I am concerned that the tritium sight would lose all precision similar to fiber sights for my eyes. I would prefer to stay away from an optic for now. It's a process thing for me - I prefer to start basic and learn my way up.

I"ve won every match I ever won with military crap brass. FWIW

On another note, the 184 left for powder... it takes less than 2 pounds to load 500 rounds...

The time vs money thing everyone has to answer for their own.

At least at the range I frequent most of the .223/5.56 range brass is once fired and it's quite easy to recognize. Seems a lot of people go to Wal-Mart or Academy and buy the cheapest stuff they can find and just bang away with it. Shooters are supposed to sweep it up and put in a barrel for resale, but quite a few don't. It doesn't worry me a bit to pick it up and use. YMMV

JOG, another reasonably priced and accurate bullet to keep in mind is Hornady's 55 gr soft-point with cannelure, $12.59/100 at Graf's just now.

The one I have now is an XS systems post with the white stripe and a tritium vial running lengthwise. You turn it one full round to adjust, there is no 1/4 turn or half so if it's on it'll work great or shoot high or low if not. The tritium and white line won't let you use the top of the sight, in fact at night you will shoot high. It is also wider than I like.

I have had another one that could be sighted in fine but still shot high when relying on the tritium dot. And forget about using one with a low powered scope in low light. My shooting went south when I used either one. I have one rifle with irons only on it and with a bright light mounted in front of the post, I can see it better than in daylight. Doesn't help for shots past 100 yards or at dawn or dusk but I can live with it.

TWR - thanks for the advice. I'll skip the tritium sight.

My bullet cost for Hornady 55 BT or 55 SP is 6.50 per hundred if I buy in 6,000 count bullet.

Get a red dot if you don't want a low powered scope..

MM

That military crimp takes about 5 seconds to cut out on my drill press with a chamfer tool chucked up in it. I pick up what other leave behind. Yes, I'm cheap.

kwg

I just bought 1,250 LC cases once fired from Kaleo Arms, came in a nice .50 ammo can, too. Very nice looking brass. They actually sent me 1,279 cases (I think they just fill the can to the brim and call it good). Took a while to decap, size, trim, swage (Dillon Super Swager), and uniform all of that but now I have a good batch of "perfect" cases. You can get totally prepped once fired bass for about $135/1,000, or buy non-military commercial once fired for around $90/1,000.

Great info, NWPilgrim. Thanks.

We used to buy LC from gibrass.com. But once we hit well over 100,000 cases we called it good and have been since then.

I shot up quite a bit of PMC also, with off center flash holes but that stuff shot knots with our loads too.

We only ran commercial once in one of Carolyns guns that was a bit finicky chamber, and we ran RP nickel in that one but for the life of me with an AR I just had more than enough accuracy to win, even at nationals, with LC brass and never saw the need for "commercial" brass.

Just buy once-fired fully-prepped LC brass if you plan to reload.

Or, save your time and shoot factory ammo.

The reloading only comes into its own if you are trying to setup with a specific bullet that is not readily available in loaded ammo (e.g. Hornady 75AMax, 73ELD).

In 1 outing, I picked up 1200+ pcs of commercial brass that was like new and was once fired. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings about the military brass, but I have better things to do with my time than swage primer pockets.. YMMV of course.. I see no need in ever buying factory produced brass for the .223 rem. This is just a little of the range pickup brass I'm talking about...:

Properly prepped L.C. brass is about the best there is. I pick up all I need at the range. I prefer to do the prep myself.
I bought a batch of 1,000 prepped L.C. a couple of years ago. The primer pockets were poorly swaged and had to be re-worked, the shoulders had been set back 7 thousandths below SAAMI spec, and they were still pretty dirty. It didn't save me any time, and the short shoulders caused the brass to stretch beyond what was necessary leading to risk of early case head separation.
I won't make that mistake again.

One of the members over at Accurate Shooters did a hardness test on .223/5.56 brass awhile back and Lake City came out on top, with Lapua coming in second.

I wish I could pick up cleaned and primed brass at my range.

I agree.

kwg

I spend three hours at a drill press cutting the crimps out of 2,000 Federal brass, two handed non-stop and my hands looked like petrified monkey paws when I was finished. It took about two hours to straighten them out. I will never buy crimped brass again when non-crimped is readily available. I bought several thousand bulk Winchester that was fired through a pressure barrel and a lot of it has loose primer pockets, so the Federal and Winchester gets loaded and fired and looks golden to brass scroungers.

I rarely buy factory ammunition but recently picked up 50 rounds boxes of Black Hills re-manufactured 68 and 75 BTHP to baseline some AR's that are not shooting as well as I want with my loads. I also fired 10 shot groups of both through my Lilja barreled Montana and the 68's were 1" and the 75's 1.3", pretty good for .67/round.

Pretty good huh..

RE commercial brass... if you got that much, yeah I'd not pass it up either. For sure. Even if it wasn't as good as top line brass good free brass is good free brass. And most of the time it works just fine. Good job.

When we shot around 20K a year, there was no way in heck we could afford factory ammo, hence the reason we did what we did.

Just LC??

Come on Rost, LC is very good brass. Once fired LC costs more then once first Remington.