Home Forums Reloading Handgun Reloading .223 Lake City Brass

I would appreciate your opinion of .223 Lake City brass. I was recently given approx. 1000 of these little jewels and don't know much about their reloading quality. Are they good, Ok, or bad for reloading, and any advive would be welcome. Thank you,

Lake City isn't Lapua, but it has been as good or better than most commercial brass for a very long time. Measure the neck consistency to cull out the bananas and of course you have to get rid of the primer crimps before reloading it the first time but after that you are golden.

Having said that, Winchester took over the arsenal from Federal in 2020, I have no idea if they are still holding to earlier standards.

The primer pockets in LC brass seemed to last forever. However, if I'm shooting LC brass of unknown origin, there's a chance they've been shoot in larger dimensioned chambers than mine. With that, the first sizing process is always with a small base die. Once properly sized and primer pockets swaged, they tend to last a long time.

Some years back, MidwayUSA offered new LC brass that wasn't swaged nor loaded. That was great stuff.

Edited: Post this in the Varmint Rifles section and you may get more responses.

Thank you Son of the Gael and Devnull for your comments - your advice is well received. I did question where to post this and I looked for a Rifle Reloading heading, or just Reloading, but no go - so, I elected this heading in lieu of.
Thanks again ,

I stick a chamfer tool in the primer pocket and give it a twist. No more worries about crimped primer pockets. It is then good brass for reloading.

I get a mega long life out of Lake City brass. I pop primer pockets, but that is me, playing at the reload bench with "What if?" in my head. I experiment a lot, and push things to find out where the ragged edge is...so then I know and can pass that on to others who ask about some of the loads I do and am known for.

I shoot tons of Lake City 223 brass....

I have experimented with stretching out brass's life span, by load techniques.

I've got several small batches that have been loaded 100 plus times. The longest brass life I've gotten, and its still going, is 121 times. but that is Remington brass.. just by chance. It looks like Schitt but it keeps on trucking. Still NO loose primer pockets. Back of a hair or so on the powder scale, and keep your pressures in the low to mid 40 CUP range and Lake City brass will last and last. Its also real easy on the barrel life, by backing off your max pressures a little.

doing it with a little prudence at the reload bench and on the powder scale, you can wear out 5 or 6 barrels in 223 on a bolt action rifle. I've got several barrels with 30,000 plus rounds down the tube, and are still minute of ground squirrel out to 200 yds or so...

Don't know why so many guys think they need max velocity out of every thing. Must be a compensating for a small penis sort of solution in their lives. ( to quote Foghorn Leghorn, "Thats a joke Son!" )

Seafire, I agree. I shall hold my LC brass is high esteem and hope that it last me as long as mentioned here.
Again, thanks to all,

Mostly what I have used. Good stuff but the primer pocket is troublesome. Lots of people shoot it ay my range and once in awhile some migrates into mine and when you screw up getting a primer in when loading on a progressive in slows production.

All of my .223 shooting anymore is done with a Browning Low Wall. Favorite load: 40 grain Berger, 28.0 CFE-223, Lapua brass - good for three in 3/8MOA, five in a half minute. By switching to LC brass (all same headstamp) groups doubled in size. Knuckled down on the case prep protocols and groups shrunk to virtually what I get with Lapua brass. Darn glad for that because like everybody else I have a lifetime supply of LC, and the couple hundred Lapua brass I have won't last forever.

This works for me,too.

What additional steps did you do in prepping LC cases that shrunk your groups?

Thank you.

Frank

I bought several bags of that empty LC form Graf’s IIRC, before primed brass would’ve been a big bonus. Nice stuff, without a bunch of cleanup required. I use it in my bolt gun so it doesn’t end up flung into the ether. Fiocchi brass is decent and often comes loaded with good bullets at decent prices if you look a bit. It is just a bit heavier than most, so I cut the powder a touch.

Mainly in the necks: mic'ing wall thicknesses and rejecting those that exhibited variations, and also in some instances by neck reaming for uniformity. (I tried reaming in conjunction with outside turning but that made for a lot of rejects as you might suspect.) Annealing and uniform length too. I ream the crimps out of primer pockets the slow labor-intensive way, with my LE Wilson trimmer + pocket reamer cutter head - not that I believe it makes a whit of difference accuracy-wise.

The Browning Low Wall also has an indecently long throat which had me chasing the lands by seating way out, but that meant that my bullets were seated shallowly hanging on by their toe nails, which led to a few cartridges exhibiting poor concentricity. Seating a bit deeper cured that and accuracy didn't suffer.

LC is military, and is always military. The standards of mfg are lower because the tolerances are broader than with commercial brass, but historically LC has been held to near commercial brass standards. You still need to process LC brass completely, not just partially, and always check for off center flash holes, plus burs on the rims or flaps in the flash holes.

My LC processing is check for crud inside, clean, FL resize with small base dies, swage the primer pockets, cut the pockets to uniform them, debur the flash holes, trim on a 3 way cutter, outside neck turn, fire form, separate by capacity. I use a carbide cutter to mark the base. Outside my set limits is discarded and used for 300 BO subsonic load conversion.

I use LC for practice brass and commercial nickel plated brass for match brass, both selected by H2o capacity.

The SAW can cause 223 brass to be swollen due to the larger 223 machine gun chambers. Same situation as 308 fired through a mini gun, or a H&K fluted chamber, not worth fooling with at times.

By the way, consistency in everything you do has everything to do with confidence in your shooting. If you know where you are going to put the bullet before the trigger is pulled it can easily be the difference between winning a match and being an also came.

All Lake City brass.


Haven't trimmed a one.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/jWfA4GW.jpg?1[/img]

That little white dot is a half inch dia.