Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles .223 shortage?

I nlknowvSmall rifle primers are hard to find.
How about .223 brass?

Curious as I saw 100rnd "cannon blank" packs for $44 made from 5.56 brass.
Was thinking about either Dumping powder & trimming the cramped necks or firing, sizing and trimming..

Considering 223 new brass is ~$32/50 it seems reasonable...

Id be leery of blanks of modern design.

They aren't proofed for repeated use.

All of my 223 rem brass has been free. I find it laying all over the place...

I guess I’m no longer the crazy guy with 5-5 gallon buckets of 223/5.56 brass.. Also sitting on 14k small rifle primers..

You aren't crazy. If guys are too lazy to go to the local gravel pit, range or side of the road to pick up 223 brass, you could always sell some of yours to the lazy bastids... I seriously got tired of picking the chidt up off the ground. Now I just step on it and don't pay any attention to it..

I got buckets of the stuff too. But seeing all that good brass on the ground brings up old "waste not want not" feelings and before I know it I'm spending just as much time picking as I am shooting.
It's probably some kind of sickness and a habit that I hope I never break.

Is this a story about " the Haves & the Have NOTS"?

I'm totally out of all brass and primers...and bullets

and lost all of my firearms in that terrible flood the previous spring...

and joined Mom's Demand Action... and Every Town USA...

my welder buddy always goes out & finds brass...

Just yesterday he gave me a bunch of Hornady 223 & 45 ACP's 1X's

What dummy goes out a sprays 223 in the hill side & leaves the Horny brass on the ground ?

Yea its usually the same slobs that leave all their trash & schidt behind after shooting

I do have some new 223 brass along with clean 1x's..I'll bump my ad TTT

I pick up 100-200 rounds every time I go to the range. It all has crimped primers so I know it is once fired.I sort it out by mfgr ,but most of it is LC or Federal.The rest goes into a larger can. I can chamfer primer pockets a lot cheaper than buying new brass

LC to me is by far the safest, most-consistent "scrounge" out there. I actually combined three good LC scrounges into a "batch" that shoots no different from my other LC collections -- only thing I did was run an average case weight from three samples of 20 and culled three percent (I forget the exact number) below and above. Chamfer, FL size, trim and chamfer neck, then go.

Package said "made from 5.56..."

I can’t help picking it up, is there a recovery group out there??? Brass anonymous??

You need some kind of intervention?

If you don't pick it up, someone else will be along shortly to pick it up. Its not like its "going to waste". Like I said, it's all over the place though, I will never buy 223 rem brass, no need to..... As far as buying blanks to make ammo with. No probably not.. Maybe some of the old guys that post here can send him the brass they get OCD about picking up and let someone put it to good use...

Trash-diving becomes more fruitful before deer season. Found Nosler .308 Win in the brass bucket last week. But I need more .223 brass like I need snow most Maine winters.

Doing a reloading class and hope one of these guys will take it. Same for the unsorted 9mm.

kind of like an Easter egg hunt when you were a kid eh ?

My fav to pick up is the Rem ML brass shown in link

What dummy leaves this stuff laying around ?

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1016764695?pid=344736

This could be why some of your AR's don't shoot so well, you feed them Schit brass !!!!!!!!!

BoatAnchor,

I use plenty of range brass, probably most of it I have, is range brass.. plenty from OSP. shooting and leaving their brass...

In bolt actions, I've NEVER had an accuracy issue with the brass if it is sized correctly....

heck I have even experimented with Tula steel cases, that I've reloaded and they were totally giving very respectable accuracy
with Hornady V Maxes and their SPs....

Since I already have all I can possibly ever use, usually bought on sale, I almost always just leave it for others, unless I want a few for setting up dies or dummy rounds.

Take it from someone who just spent over a year cleaning out his father’s house, your children will thank you for getting rid of as much “just in case” or “this might come in handy” crap before you go under as you can. After hunting season is over, gonna start on my own pile.

I second that Pappy. I am doing the same thing being 77.No way can I possibly use all the brass I have or even shoot up the loaded ammo I have. I was looking a few days ago and I have 3 each 3# coffee cans of 38 special brass and 3 cans of .357 brass and 4 cans of 9mm brass.
I gave an Ithaca SXS, a Win 94, 30-30, a HR single 12 gauge and a Crescent Arms single shot .410 to my nephew. I recently gave a Fox Sterlingworth SxS, a JC Higgins .06, and an M1 Garand to my Godson along with about 300 rounds of ammo and 300 rounds of brass to go with it.

Boatanchor is an idiot. All of my AR's have placed in the black rifle challenge and shoot sub moa scores. I've yet to see any of his in that challenge. His must shoot pretty chidty. When he can at least post one of his AR's in that challenge, maybe someone will give him credit or believe a thing he says. Just as an example, here's how chidty my AR's shoot with range pick up brass:


boatanchor, "put up or shut up", until you know what you are talking about..

My Rock Rivers shoot whatever brass I put in it. I learned the hard way to trim all of it.

I haven't trimmed any 223 brass for years.

BSA,

I'm hesitant to call most guys on the campfire here Idiots..

We deal with trolls who show up, and try to divide and hassle a lot of good folks on the campfire..

There is too much of that going on all over the internet..

Politics particularly with the democRATS' shenanigans, is causing way too much of a divide in our nation....
those of us who aren't democRATS need to start respecting each other a lot better...
Face it, its us vs the democRATs and their followers.....

Just because Boat Anchor might see different results than some of the other of us, doesn't mean he is an idiot, or anyone else for that matter...

If one isn't a democRAT, we don't need to further divide ourselves, they are the enemy, not fellow conservatives and fellow shooters...we may be getting ready to enter at least 4 years of hell, and maybe even longer and watching our entire nation
go out the window.. FOREVER.....we need to quit referring to each other as idiots..

If anyone else feels different, then I honor you decision....but if you are against the left, then you are my brother.. period..

We are fellow patriots in a nation that is being occupied by communists....

Range brass is God's gift to those who are patient and are willing to look through garbage cans. I have bought brass from other Campfire members and will probably do it again in the future. Until then range brass will have to do even if sometimes it's quality is suspect. I'm willing to take the time to sort out the wheat from the chaff and make the best of it.

kwg

I only have range pick up in .223 /5.56 brass.95% or more of it has crimped primers which I remove. I know none of it has been fired more than once since it is crimped.The majority of it is either LC or Federal which I separate .The rest goes into a miscellaneous can that gets used for coyotes or?

I have shot groups like posted above with that picked up brass and my M4 and I am not a very good shooter

My stepdaughter and I were in Grand Jct today doing errands .. One was clothes shopping for me.. We stopped in Cabela's.. Got what I needed and headed over to the ammo dept. But the pistol ammo shelves were bare.. I have some, but my stepdaughter wanted some for her mom's 40 s & w that I gave her. Nothing.. Didn't expect any , but a guy came down the isle with a shopping cart half full of WW 5.56 ammo!!!! I found it their was quite a few boxes.. If was full patch, but I picked up one for my self and one for her rifle.. Most guys were getting a couple bx. it was 150 rds../ bx..

Agree. I've done searches re 9mm brass and found decent info, what's good, what's not. Same info, of course, exists in the shotshell reloading world, ie., what hulls are worth the trash-dive.

.223/5.56 seems less info available, except that mil and commercial generally weigh out pretty close. Which is good to know.

Years ago fired off a case of Norinco. Was told it was not reloadable. Well, the primers are crimped, yes. But it reloaded just fine.

The world, such as it is, how do you "sort out the wheat from the chaff" in .223? Eg., I use a LE Wilson case gauge to determine degree of stretch in once-fired brass. Especially bulk purchase stuff. Looking to cull brass that might have come from a Minimi, as 249 headspace specs are pretty generous. Not too likely to see such brass at most ranges.

Might be a fit topic for a separate thread?

Hello Sam
I start by looking at the primers. Silver primers usually mean they have been shot at least once. If it's military brass (LC) and they have no signs of annealing that means it's twice fired. They go into a separate jar as at least twice fired. Anything with a crimp and a brass primer is a good chance it's once fired. Anything "ugly" goes in my metal recycling bucket. It's humbling to have to go through the garbage cans but it has it's rewards. I shoot at a range that has very few LEO's shooting and NO machine guns so most of my brass is commercial and out of somebodies AR or bolt action. I have noticed there is very little left behind now. There used to be a bunch of it but no longer. There are a couple of guys who sell brass here at the fire. If things continue like they are, I'll be buying more from them because very little is getting left behind. I don't see that as getting any better for a long time.

kwg

Thanks, great point about value of intact primer crimp. Till recently that was, for many, a deterrent. But decrimping is pretty easy, and the (near) certainty you're dealing with once-fired is good. Don't see things getting better short term, either.

I got a email last week from CheaperThanDirt that they had "Lake City by Winchester M855" on sale.

$375 for 200 rounds!! Checked today to see if they still had any or had lowered the price.

New price $399.89! 2 dollars a round.

Don't know if that means they were selling out so they raised the price, or they just raised the price?

I aint buying, I have bullets, brass, primers and time.

You can’t have too much brass right now. Who knows what is going to happen??

Anyone have experience with "Frontier" headstamp?

Seems to be a Hornady product. But 3-4gn. lighter case as compared with new brass.

Frontier is just the head stamp Hornady uses on some of its less expensive products...

in reloading, it doesn't seem to be any less quality than their brass stamped with their name on it..

The recent Frontier .223/5.56 was loaded in the Lake City plant with LC brass under contract. Same with some of the recent Winchester.

Thanks
NVhntr,
Olin just g or full control of LC as of October.

I can find .223 but I'm having some trouble finding 308. I have 1000 large rifle primers so I'm good for a while, except for the brass.

kwg

Looking for a couple hundred rounds of once fired LC brass if anyone knows a reasonable source.

Thanks.

Frank

Got what I needed. Thanks very much to all.

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Frank

The Brassman...

brassmanbrass.com

he's a campfire member and great guy...

I have a bunch of Frontier brass, from my shooting it as well as range pick up. One concern with Frontier, is that it seems to have at least 4 different headstamps with different average weights. I need to go back and do a better job of documenting the differences. It is tough to distinguish some of the different headstamps if one was to sort them.

I am using it for reloading FMJ fodder and it works fine, just probably not going to make match rounds with them.