I have about equal quantities of LC and FC once fired 5.56 brass for my new 20 practical project. Is one better than the other or same/same?
I would go with LC given those two choices. The LC wil be mil spec, FC maybe not. Have had FC be kinda soft in 308, no experience with FC in 223, though.
Federal supervises Lake City, but they do NOT set the standards. LC brass is some of the best you can get (not counting Lapua and Norma). FC brass is some of the worst.
XBBR: I agree. I did a fair amount of searching the internet regarding that very subject and I found only a few people endorse FC but many many more people said FC is poor quality and has a short life. Most common complaint is split necks.
The 5.56 brass produced with the FC head stamp, is the overrun remaining from the 5.56 LC brass produced by FC.
LC brass is government property, not Federal's property - they cannot take it and put their headstamp on it - doing that would get federal a free "Go to jail, do not collect $200" card. The arrangement is (and has always been) that private companies bid for the right to supervise production at government arsenals - it is a management contract - the supervising company does not own any of the product that is produced, and cannot label it as private headstamp, nor can they "sell it"... to do such is theft of government property.
Just as there is no SAAMI specifications for go-gauges…. right? Federal (Lake City) 223 brass - item# FDAE223UPB Federal (Lake City) 5.56 NATO unprimed - item# FDAE556UPB Lake City 5.56 NATO primed pull down - item# LCP556
Please show me: 1 - Where SAAMI has specifications for go-guages> 2 - Where those Lake City numbers are from?
Not to get in the middle of a dispute here but I think you could both be right. Any business deal can be put together in a million different ways. We'll run your plant and you get all the product. We run your plant and fill your orders, then produce our head stamp during the other 16 days of the month. (Downtime) We do what we want...(shhhhh,wink) and you get half a million in a Swiss bank account.
Absolutely. ATK essentially has a blank check when it comes to the operation of the plant. Remember, Lake City is a G.O.C.O. facility. Government Owned Contractor Operated, which means ATK doesn't have to pay for anything other than employee wages and benefits. They use the same machines, operated by the same employees for Federal (ATK) products.
bbassi, as you can see there is no answer, I would suggest you learn to measure before and again after; that would be before firing and again after firing. I read about it often about those FC cases with soft case heads and on one mentions case head expansion after firing. If I had a choice between cases with brittle brass and brass that will expand when fired I would choose to avoid the brittle brass. F. Guffey
I have a bunch of FC brass in 223; it serves my purpose for 3-gun and I'm certainly not worried about losing a few in the weeds. Split necks after 8 reloads is my experience (26.5cfe223 and a h55gr FMJ). I tried some for long range, annealed the neck/shoulder and got plenty of use out of them. Was it worth the effort? Well, I'm not going to set up my annealer with lapua to start... Overall; I'd leave it as plinking brass, but it is reloadable.
I am using FC in my 22 250 and 243, have no complaints and just had a bunch of 22-250 annealed that is probably close to 20 years old and been reloaded I don't know how many times. Primer pockets are still tight. I did have three necks split out of a lot of 175. The 243 is my target rifle that shoots in the .2''s and 3''s without much load development. I sort all My Brass by weight and it seems to work for me. Of course Lapua is the best and LC is very good.
