Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Federal headstamp meaning?

I have some of this Federal brass and am wondering if its the same as LC or different.



Looks to be a military headstamp and has crimped primers.

School me.

Standard FC stamp, 3 dots indicate crimped primer.

What about the 17 or 18?

Year made

The first and third pics have dots used to identify the lots from SCAMP fabricators. They are almost certainly from Lake City Arsenal which Federal operated for the government until last year. There have been numerous arguments on the 'fire as to whether they are identical to LC marked brass.

The 18 is almost certainly the year of manufacture, where those were made I don't know, probably someone else can hazard a guess.

10-4. Will weigh em all and see if similar weights.

Would a military headstamp use the civilian 223 Rem nomenclature?

FWIW a while back I weighed a large number of LC brass (multiple years, all 21st century), FC and Frontier, all with the SCAMP dots. All were in the 92-94 grain range.

According to Federal, that brass is the same as L.C.
The dots indicate which production line the cartridge came off.

Good point. Not sure military was correct terminology.

One thing that I have noticed when processing range pick-up brass that includes FC and LC, is that the FC is always shorter than my trim length. The LC brass usually needs trimmed.

Interesting observation scoony.
I load the L.C. but I have several hundred of the late production F.C with the SCAMP coding that I haven't processed.
Out of curiosity I just measured 10 of each, once fired.
F.C. average length 1.740" with a .004" overall variance, 1.739" - 1.743".
L.C. average 1.751" with a .032" variance, 1.734" - 1.766".
Since the L.C. is loaded to higher pressure I would expect a little more stretch, but that's a big difference.

And would brass stamped 223 have a crimped primer?

Yes, I have a bunch of Federal and Hornady with crimped primer.

Just posted pics of 223 brass w a crimped primer so I would say yes, at least that's my guess.

Yes, I have FC, Hornady, Frontier, RP, Winchester, Norma and RWS that has crimped primers.

It's basically mil spec brass stamped 223 for law enforcement units.

Get some from a bud that runs a Tac unit. They used to have all Lake City stamped stuff, now its like the headstamp pictured.