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221 FB Brass

Gabe22BR

Gabe22BR

Gold $$ Contributor
Which 221 FB brass do you like best- now that Lapua quit making it ?? I would like to buy some, and know no one wants to let that go…

I have made & sold & bought reformed LC. It’s alright, just not consistent..

I made some from Hornady - which surprised me on the primer pockets holding up

How about Starline, Nosler brass reformed?
How does it hold up??


I plan on making a 20 fb wildcat off the brass..
 
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I used 222 Starline and reformed. A bit of work, but worth it to me. I got sick and tired of chasing 221 brass, then it was usually higher than it should be. I bought a mini chop saw and a die, I neck turned as well.
PITA? Maybe kinda sorta,but no more chasing it.
I use it for 20VT and 17FB.
 
I bought some Starline .222, it looks good but I haven’t shot it yet.Funny Starline .223 is cheaper than .222 and if they ever offer .221 it will probably be more as well.Id like to see them offer .221 but for now forming it is not too bad of an option, not sure if the Nosler stuff is worth the money.
Matt
 
I baby my Nosler 221 brass, which is good brass. I mostly separate LC brass, by head marking/weight and then form it into 221 and 222 brass for my use. If you group lots it is consistant and works very well. And LC brass is much cheaper than anything else out there, just takes a little work to group it.
 
Of course Starline 223 is cheaper than 222. 223 is made in very large batches and often, where as 222 is only made in smaller batches and not very often! Pure economics. They have increased the number of calibers they produce brass for which means either additional equipment $$$ or more downtime for caliber change over an increased machine runtime.
Frank
 
I like to neck up the 17fb brass because the shoulder angle is same as 20VT. I formed 1000 Remington years ago and it is holding up well. When you have lots of brass it doesn’t get loaded very often.
 
Ok guys-

I had a great guy send me some brass.

Since I was going to size it (223) down to 20-221AI, I seen that he’d stainless pin tumbled it, so it was very clean on the inside.
I could stick my bore scope in to look at it.
The fellow had already sorted by weight. I was looking at 3 bags sorted by 1.5gr-2.5gr spread. There was a cull bag also. Since there was 3 bags of it, I did an experiment with 2 pcs from every bag. Keeping them separate the entire process.
- Forming it to 221
-Cutting it to length-1.410”
Deburring the inside of primer hole
-Using a PMA primer pocket tool to insure they was the same depth
-necking down to .236”
- expand w/ a 20 cal turning mandrel ( I made)
-turning to .016” neck thickness & run on shoulder a bit
- AMP annealed brass
- size in 20-221AI die to bump & start to form a 40* shoulder using finial.230” bushing
-Finally running them over the Giaurd trimmer.

Weighting each piece again-
I discovered along the way somewhere-
I either cut the inside burr out, cut the pocket deeper, cut the huge inside burr out, cutter didn’t even touch the bottom of pocket, or inside burr was non existent, & cutter was aggressively cutting pocket depth.

Needless to say- all the brass are less than .3gr apart now .!!

After shooting each piece (6 total) 3 times w/ my standard load- primer pockets are still tight, and bullet seating pressure is consistent between all them.

So Lapua might not offer it any more, and most discard this brass I used to form my case from anyways- I just use the bottom half of it-
It’s good stuff in my book-
AMP analysis code is the same as Lapua…
 
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As to date:

Starline Brass- I ordered some 222 then sized it to my 20 cal wildcat..
So far to date, I’ve got 17 firings on 50pc of brass, annealing after every shot, before sizing. I’m running a 32gr Nosler, 3847fps on 18.6gr of powder is a little hard on the brass, usually the primer pocket is the first to go…I’ve used this brass to push a 39grBK to 3715fps.

Hornady Brass- I have 26 firings on 50 pcs. Annealed after shooting. Kinda hard to believe after the reviews I’ve read…still hanging in there !!!
Both brass manufacturers primer pockets are still tight.
So it’s gonna be awhile before I need any more brass…
My used, premade , prepared, range LC 221fb brass was over swaged, undersized… so it now resides in the gravel walkway to the shop…

For futher wildcat, and varmint rds… I’ll buy Starline…

Now to wait on some Starline brass for my 223 to become available…
 
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