I was wondering if wall thickness is near lapua? I neck size for .223. What type of dies are other members using?
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I was wondering if wall thickness is near lapua? I neck size for .223. What type of dies are other members using?
Not sure. The measurements that I've seen with regard to case capacity has shown LC brass to be near the top of the heap when it comes to case volume. More than most all of the commercial cases. I don't remember where Lapua fell but I seem to recall it being near the bottom of the list. That would lead me to believe that the Lapua cases have thicker walls, but most of the difference could be in the web and head.
Usually, military brass will be heavier and thicker walled than commercial. If your Lake City brass is NATO headstamped, it will be much heavier than any commercialy made.
Not true for 5.56 brass. .308, yes, but not true for Lake City 5.56.
none of the lake city brass i have is stamped with anything other than L C. Is it 223rem or 5.56? someone gave it to me and im new to loading for this round and am not familiar with Lake City brass.
Disclaimer: The below is "AFAIK" and if you know differently, please feel free to correct or amplify.
Lake City brass is produced for the Government by (ATK) Federal's Lake City plant. Usually the military headstamps show an "L C" and a two digit year of manufacture. The Lake City brass I have is all military once fired and also has the NATO mark (small circle with a cross or plus sign inside) indicating that the cartridge meets all the 5.56 NATO specifications (versus .223 Remington-the civilian equiv). Apparently some LC brass has no year...but is supposed to be
Here's some more information from a different bulletin board:
http://www.perfectunion.com/vb/reloa...223-brass.html
I ordered this .223 lc brass from midway. go to the midway website and it will show dettails of brass. thanks birdie
Brass has no flavor in regard to those two cartridges. They are 100% interchangeable.Quote:
Originally Posted by keeki
Hey Birdie, Thought I'd weigh in here. As to dies for .223 I use a redding body die at each 3rd reload. Neck size w/ Lee collet and a Dillon .223 seater. All loaded on Dillon except when working up loads for new bullet type, then I use my rock chucker. Funny you should mention the Midway site. I bought some LC09 nato from them last year. Midway listed the brass then as "special purchase" The brass was filthy dirty & required 5 hrs tumbling w/ treated walnut to clean. About 30% of the cases were bulged at the web and showed signs of being resized w/ vertical burnish marks & striations on the bodies. I'm only guessing here but it appeared that 70% of the brass was good and the other 30% some kind of odd ball rejects that required resizing. Just a guess. The 2nd from the bottom customer rating for this brass @ the midway sight is mine. Hope they found some better dregs to ship this year. Dale
If we are talking .223: I did measure before and can't seem to find the numbers. I do remember WCC (Winchester Military) and LC to be almost the same. I believe LC was about .2 gr more more than WCC (average of 10). Lapua though was about a full grain less than both LC and WCC.
For .308 it was the opposite. LC was about a full grain less.
:) The brass i got in looked good.i am very happy for the price..thanks birdie
i have some mixed 223 brass i was measuring and found that all the federal brass measures only 1.742" long, while the LC, Win, and Rem all measure 1.756". Has anyone else ran into this or know why it would be so short?
Federal loaded rounds are known to have short-ish cases. It's shorter than trim length but actually not shorter than the SAAMI min length. There have been reports in the past of the Fed cases having thinner case heads than other brass which can lead to loose primer pockets. I have not experienced problems myself but there are a lot of people that simply refuse to reload Federal .223 cases based on these old anecdotes.
Helotaxi is correct. Not true for LC 5.56 brass, even though many say it is thicker at the base (which is true for 7.62/.308). Lake City is good brass, and I know many match shooters that won't use anything else. Myself, I use Hornady brass and Fiocchi brass for my match ammo. The only reason is that they don't grow hardly at all after repeated firing/reloading, which makes trimming an easy chore.Quote:
Originally Posted by helotaxi
Personal anecdote: A state trooper acquaintance of mine gave me a bucket of .223 brass from one of their practice ranges; half Federal (FC) and half Winchester. As I was sorting them out, I noticed that several dozen had split necks, so I started tossing them in a scrap pile. They were all FC brass. Then, when I was resizing the sorted brass, the Winchester cases all came through normally, but about half the remaing FC cases split their necks open coming out of the sizing die.Quote:
Federal loaded...<snip>...I have not experienced problems myself but there are a lot of people that simply refuse to reload Federal .223 cases based on these old anecdotes.
Because of this, I didn't trust what remained of the FC brass, so I tossed them all in the scrap pile. I now had a half-bucket of scrap, but I had a half-bucket of Winchester brass, for which I was grateful.
I have a couple thousand Federal (FC) cases. The only time I've seen split necks is when it was fired in a particular AR-15. Now this AR-15 in question tears up every kind of brass shot thru it. Not sure why but I let the guy know he has some sort of issue with his weapong and should have it checked out.
As for the primer pockets on Federal cases. I've heard about the loose primer pockets. I've never experienced this myself even after firing 10 reloads in them. I did not have a problem with spit necks either. At this point I scape the cases.
Like the other guy noted the FC cases are on the short side. It often takes a reload or two before I trim them. I measure my cases at 1.751. Anything over that gets trimmed back to 1.750.
I like the Lake City brass cases too. They always need to be trimmed, which isn't a bad thing. I get uniform case length when I trim and measure them myself. Most of the cases I've weighed are fairly consitent too. When using the same headstamps. Surprisingly the Federal cases were very consistent in weight too. Although the Hornady brass has proven to be the most consistent in weight from my small batch of 100 cases I have. They weight the most too.
.223 Rem Case Weight vs. Capacity
Case Manufacturer Case Weight* H20 Capacity**
Lake City 06 92.0 30.6
WCC99 95.5 30.5
Sellier & Belloit 92.3 30.5
Remington 92.3 30.4
PMC 93.5 30.4
Hirtenberger 93.7 30.4
Lake City 04 93.0 30.4
Federal 96.3 30.2
Hornady 93.9 30.1
IMG (Guatemalan) 95.4 30.1
Lapua (new lot) 93.4 30.1
Winchester 93.9 30.1
Olympic 97.4 30.0
Radway Arsenal 96.1 30.0
PMP 104.5 29.9
FNM 93-1 97.3 29.8
Lapua (old lot) 104.0 28.0
.223 AI Case Capacities
Lapua (old lot) 103.4 30.9
Winchester 95.5 32.2
Lapua (new lot) 93.4 32.4
Lake City 02 93.0 32.5
When I built my 20 VT I started looking for a BATCH of brass. Someone had 1K of FC for sale so I said sold. All were nice, clean and once fired. For safety I got a set of jewelers stamps and put a line thru the FC and the 0? then stamped VT between the FC and the 0?. Again between the 0? and FC they got stamped 20. I was not worried about neck splitting or having to trim necks as that was a given, like 1/2 inch. Yes I outside trimmed the new necks and everything is good after several reloads, no splits no loose pockets but because some people gave them a bad rap I got a great price on some military brass.
I think military specks are much tighter than SAMMI anyhow.
The issues that I have heard about were always with Federal commercial brass, not the Federal headstamped mil brass coming out of the Lake City plant.