lake city 223 brass

[craiger40]

Hey ya'll , I have been trying to load some Lake City brass that i got from a box of Black Hills remanufactured ammo. I have been having hell with this lot of brass. The brass was extremly hard to deprime and size and every case required alot of trimming. Anybody use this brass ? Should i countinue to work with it or should i toss it and use the other good brass i have ?

 

[Desert Fox]

Problem with LC brass from Black Hills is that, they're of mixed bag. Some have tighter primer pockets while others have offset flash holes. Just sort them out and get rid of the bad one. Other than that, they're good brass. I bought a few hundred virgin LC brass from Midsouth a while back and I have'nt had any problem with them so far. They're tough brass with thick wall. As a matter of fact, I like them better than any commecial made brass. Goodluck. RJ

 

[Jeff Olsen]

I've been reloading a bunch of .223 in LC brass since buying a little AR15 M4 to mess with. Most of the brass I have is from Black Hills reloads, or stuff I picked up. You will find that it generally needs a LOT of trimming- I just hooked a drill motor up to my trimmer, otherwise it was gonna drive me crazy! You will also want to sort it carefully. I had one case that the primer pocket was extremely loose on, and it looked funny down at the base of the case. I've seen a couple cracked necks on other cases.

I have thousands of rounds of the stuff, so I'll keep sorting it and using it. As for whether it's the best brass out there, I have no idea but I'm not buying anything else until I've worn this stuff out! If nothing else, I lose about 10% of my cases each time I go shooting ( I shoot on big gravel with logging debris, and it's amazingly hard to find cases flung by a semi-auto!)...


I think the most important thing is that with used LC brass, it's provenance is suspect at best. It got fired the first time in who-knows-what (could have been a machine gun), then reloaded by Black Hills or whomever, and now you have it. So inspect it carefully and don't hesitate to toss any that hit you funny.

-jeff

 

[craiger40]

well RJ and Jeff since both of you had nothing bad to say against the Lake City brass i've completed trimming the cases. the Lake City brass seems to be lighter or softer than my lot of Remington Brass which interestingly enough is packed by Black Hills Supply. Could the hardness of the case be the cause of the extreme stretching?

Thanks

 

[Jeff Olsen]

I have no idea- I bet someone will chime in- but I would suspect that the stretching is from being fired in a military rifle or machine gun with a lot of headspace, then YANKED out of the action, then being reloaded (I doubt Black Hills trims the used brass) and being fired from ANOTHER aggressive action (like a mini-14 or AR15) with probably a fair amount of headspace... sort of the very definition of how to stretch brass!

I prepped another hundred cases of LC tonight out of boredom. I had to trim a BUNCH off of some of them. I warn you, the last time I owned an AR15 I thought I'd get cute and load up 500 rounds, and I ended up giving myself a repetitive-stress injury in my right wrist that still bugs me today, years later! Seriously; I WISH I was kidding. That was from manually trimming all those cases. Now I hook up a 1/2" drill to my RCBS trimmer and it's much, much easier.

Have fun! What's your load going to be?

-jeff

 

[craiger40]

As a matter of fact Jeff as i was trimming all the brass i asked myself what was i going to do with all this stuff. I have 40 and 60 grain V-Max's and 50 grain Nosler Ballistic tips. I have tried all the "cookbook recipes" from Hornady and Nosler with good results except with a few 40gr recipes, i dont think my gun likes them. I am looking to use someones favorite recipe, do you have any? I have a Ar-15 with a 24" 1-9" barrel . I would buy all the ingrediants if i dont already have them and i'am not set on any particular brands.

 

[Jeff Olsen]

As a matter of fact Jeff as i was trimming all the brass i asked myself what was i going to do with all this stuff. .

Shoot it up! Don't take long with an AR!

Seriously, I'm finding that my little M4 is the perfect way to use up pounds and pounds of various powders that I've have left over from various loading adventures over the last few years... W748...AA2250... H322... IMR 4895... etc. However, when it's all used up I'll probably just use Benchmark for my .223 loads.

Right now i'm using little 50-gn WInchester soft points of some type. They seem to work fine. I'd rather be paying less and shooting FMJ, but there isn't any in town to be had in raw component form! Even places like Midway are expensive for FMJ if they even have any. And surplus is so dang expensive that I can load for about 1/2 the price of surplus, or maybe a little more, so it's actually worth it to reload for .223. Last time I did this AR15 thing, when I got done loading that 500 rounds I did the math and realized I could have just as cheaply bought surplus.

-jeff

 

[craiger40]

When i originally bought my ar-15 from bushmaster it came with a 20" barrel and it quickly became to much fun and that is why i bought the 24"barrel. I bought the surplus ammo but that led to more rounds so it became to expensive to shoot like that.(also in fort worth most ranges dont allow fmJ ). I have been shooting large hunting rifles or magnums for the last few years and in my opinion the ar is much more fun and forgiving to shoot. If you look at cabelas and midway usa often you can find deals that make the ar so cheap to load for, i prefer cabelas because it is right up the road. My rifle prefers Benchmark like you said but also BLC-2 works really well.

 

[Desert Fox]

I have the feeling that the 40 grainer won't work on that 1 in 9 twist barrel of yours. Give it up. Stay with 55 and 60 grainer. BLC-2 is my preferred powder for my 223 Kimber. The 1 in 12 barrel on it will shoot any 224 bullet from 40 grain up to 55 accurately. The optimum twist for 40 grain bullet will be 1 in 14. I know that for the fact because my 14 twist 222 Remington Magnum 40X Rangemaster preferrred that weight better than a 50 or 55 grainer. My powder of choice for 40 is Hodgdon H335. The 222 Remington Magnum is just a 223 with slightly longer neck. Goodluck and good shooting. RJ

 

[Jeff Olsen]

AR's are just plain fun. My first one was a V-match, and I put a good trigger in it... it was very accurate, and fun, but just too big and heavy for what I wanted. I really like the M4 format, for just screwing around anyway. It's such a nice break from "heavy"rifles! They are surprisingly accurate, even with that short sight radius.

I would like to have a Mini-14 (again) too, just for grins, but they want too much money for those things, for what they are.... IMHO.

-jeff