Commercial & Milatary brass in 223

[ronangelia7]

  Anyone tried commercial or Milatary brass in 223. Therer is plenty on the internet very reasonable once fired. I know that it may have a crimp and may have to  swaged  the primer pocket. If I cleaned it good,FL with SB die and NS and trimmed and swaged it,will it shoot good as remington or winchester brass. Need about 2000 rounds. Thanks

                            Ron

[stimpylu32]

Ron

I have shot quite a bit of the mil brass , the case cap is a little less than the comm. stuff and is a lot thicker brass also , i have fazed it out just because of all the extra work involved . it will work but for the price diffrence i don't think you save that much in the long run .

stimpy

[PlacitasSlim]

I use a combo of cases I purchased on Ebray(2,000) and a bunch of Chinese military I got from gunshows. After I grind out the crimp, I can't tell the difference for plinking.

[beemanbeme]

I bought 1000 1x LC cases.  I clean 'em up in lots of 20-50 or so and load 'em up and shoot 'em.  I don't need 1000 loaded cases at one time since I no longer Pdog shoot but I've made a pretty good dent in the original 1000.
You can ream out the military crimp whilst watching TV.

[PaulS]

I have weighed the military cases against Remington and they weigh the same. The internal capacity is the same. There is no discernable variance that can't be explained as case to case consistancy. The IMI cases are actually more consistant than the Remington cases. I use them to make 6mm TCU. fired from my contender they do as good as any brass. Accuracy is below 1/2 inch at 100 yards and they are a good white tail round.

[beemanbeme]

I have read somewhere that in the case of 30-06 and .308 GI brass, it is heavier but with the .223 there is no difference between GI brass and the house brand of whoever is making it.  It's raining today and so I plan on doing some reloading versus fruit tree pruning so maybe when I get the scales fired up I'll weigh some.   

[beemanbeme]

Well, I didn't get any real GI cases weighed.  I have a sack of LC out in the reloading shed but it's raining, etc, etc, whine, whine.
I did weigh some brass I had here in the house and it was pretty interesting.  First off, all of the brass had primers in them.  So the actual weight would be different but any variance between the cases would be pretty real. 
BHA brass with a military primer crimp but a BHA head stamp: High 97.2grs, Low 94.3, variance, 2.9grs
BHA match: High 97.4grs, Low 95.4, V= 2.0grs
Lapua, standard head stamp, High 107.8grs, Low 105.9grs, V=1.9grs
(and now we get to the good stuff) Lapua Match High 96.5, Low 96.1 V=.4
All of this brass was 1x and had been re-sized, primed, and trimmed to length.  I found the 10 gr difference between standard Lapua and match Lapua interesting. The sample size was 10 each.

[KN]

I tested brass once by loading three different head stamps exactly the same and test firing. There was 1-1/2" difference vertically in group centers between the three. First one tested and zeroed at 100 meters. Second shot 3/4" lower consistently, and the third printed 3/4" higher consistently. I could only attribute that to preasure changes due to brass variations. That doesn't mean alot out in the field but segregating my brass sure makes my groups tighter.   KN