Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Winchester made 223 Brass

I posted this in the Canada section, but I don't think many of them reload. I was given 200 223 Rem cases, but was shocked that the company would let these out the door.

How many of you have seen this with their brass?

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...inchester-brass-lots-of-pix#Post16034356

I've seen it with R-P brass

I’ve used many 1000s of Win brass. I have not noticed that, but have not bought any in 2-3 years.
And how big of an issue is it?

Because I read about issues with Winchester brass, I wanted to post and see how many have seen this. Not just with 223 cases, but any of their brass.

I haven't bought Winchester brass in many years. The last buys were 222 Rem. I bought them about 10 years ago. They were normal. Nothing like what I found in these bags.

I’ve seen this with the newer Winchester 223 brass... quite a bit actually... along with split necks and other issues... the only other newer Winchester brass I’ve dealt with is 22 Hornet and it was also poor quality... I have a friend that manufactures ammunition and he dropped Winchester brass all together and went to Hornady...

I bought 1000 Winchester cases in 223 about 10 years ago, great quality with ZERO issues. apparently their quality went down hill sometime in the last 10 years

Speak for yourself. I'm sure most of us reload.

That's what many people are saying. You would think if their QC dropped badly, Winchester would have corrected things. How wide spread is it?




Interesting. I wonder how 308, 30-06 brass and other cases from Winchester are wrt quality?

Maybe you are living under a rock ,but I thought it was a known issue with Winchester brass. I stopped buying it because their QC really sucks. I know there have been threads on this. Mainly regarding the red and black bag stuff. I had to buy a damn chamfering tool to take burrs out of the inside of the case in the flash hole. Never have had to do this before with any manufacture's brass, but Winchester has been total garbage for about 5 years now.

I buy Prvi and Lapua brass mostly. Some Starline. I have for years. In some respects, living in Canada had its advantages. We used to have larger access to Euro companies.

Living under a rock could be interpreted as having access to better components. 😄 I bought better and cheaper cases.

That said, I wonder why Winchester would allow that to be sold to the public?

I use a lot of Winchester Brass.... I haven't seen those kind of issues whatsoever...

maybe I am the one living under a rock... but hey, I pick it up as range brass... maybe they are taking the poor QC stuff and sending it to select towns in Canada...

I have never had an issue with Winchester brass, but I'm still using out of my stock that's about 15 years old.

There’s also an issue with the economy (cheap) line of 12 gauge shells. The brass at the base is too thin and swells causing ejection problems with autoloaders. I’ve been avoiding all things Winchester the last couple years. Too bad because it used to be fine but the last few years there has been primer problems, brass issues and now shotshell issues.

Most of my Win brass is the old blue bag stuff. Got a couple bags of the red and black bag but it's on the shelf as backup. Read some time ago that Win and other companies were farming out brass production, some to multiple makers. Might be where the problems are coming from.

I hope that is the case. It's easy to stop using that company. I've never had a one third rejection rate before. The stuff on my bench came in the red bag.

Just grabbed a random handful out of a partial red/black bag of 223 brass and found this one...

Wow. I wonder if the QC people are paid to eliminate the good ones from the bags?

The next question is, if a person doesn't buy, or won't buy Win brass, what is the most commonly purchased 223 brass in the US?

I've run into some crap WW brass in the older blue bags. One batch had inclusions in the metal, think the brass version of casting a bullet with dirty metal that had not been fluxed. There have been jacked up flash holes, folds in the neck/shoulder, neck splits on second loading, shoulders in the wrong place, case mouths cut off way out of square and probably other things I just don't remember at the moment.

I would have to say federal.... aka... lake city

I started out (this time) with 100 of the sorted and prepped Nosler. Excellent, but spendy. Then I got a good deal on unprimed Lake City 5.56 from Federal (no pesky crimps). 250 in a bag for $45, IIRC. Also very good stuff and tough, so it’s said. Since LC is under the control of someone else now, who knows, but MIL SPEC should mean something, right? My guess is LC is as close to the “standard” as anything. Once-fired, processed or not, seems very popular and cheap, if you don’t mind a bit of work.

I have a bunch of Fiocchi from their good and cheap American made factory ammo. It’s a lot heavier than the others, so I back off a bit on the powder. Their 40gr VMax loads have shot well in a couple of rifles and cost about $.40 a round. Have some 50gr on backorder now. I also picked up 100 rounds of Nosler Blem ammo with their bonded 64gr bullets for less than I could buy the brass and bullets for. Doesn’t look blemished to me!