Getting Ready to Do Some 5.56 Brass

[Pawnee Bill]

Lake City vintage '73-'74-'75. My buddy gave me a bag of brass that belonged to his dad, so I thought I would Match prep it and see how 44+ year old brass will do.

 

[dolek]

I have always had great luck w/ LC,keep us posted .

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Thats good brass

 

[pdog2062]

I have some of the same vintage that is loaded right now for an upcoming prairie dog shoot, been using it for years with no problems and it has been loaded many times

 

[Pawnee Bill]

I have always had great luck w/ LC,keep us posted .

It may be a little while, I'm waiting on my new Bartlein 1-7.7 from Compass Lake Engineering.

 

[DDRanch]

If it is once fired you will need to swag primer pockets. Case capacity is less than commercial brass so work up your loads.

 

[Mad_Charlie]

If it is once fired you will need to swag primer pockets. Case capacity is less than commercial brass so work up your loads.

This is true for 7.62, not so much for 5.56. Still need to work up loads though.

 

[akajun]

No pp swage should be required in my experience
I would however anneal the necks , a lot of that brass was fired in worn out a1’s and has probably age hardened some too so you’ll get a lot of split necks on firing.
It’s good brass, will last forever

 

[Pawnee Bill]

No pp swage should be required in my experience
I would however anneal the necks , a lot of that brass was fired in worn out a1’s and has probably age hardened some too so you’ll get a lot of split necks on firing.
It’s good brass, will last forever

My Dillon 600 Super Duper Primer Pocket Swager will take care of those pesky crimped primer pockets just to be sure. I annealed them yesterday with my AMP annealer, what a sweet machine!

 

[dstoenner]

Remember this is military brass and military goals are reliability, not accuracy.

That said, I shot LC brass for my NRA High Power competitions. But there were 2 things I did when I got a batch of 1 time fired brass. After I had sized all of the cases I weighed them and I rolled them for concentricity. Once you have culled the outliers then You will have a good batch. I typically shot then 3 more times in competition and then used them for practice after that.

When I sized my cases I paid careful attention to the upstroke of the press handle. If i didn't feel the button "pull" trough the neck but was completely free that was a sign to me that this case was not going to shoot well and I just threw it in the recycle box. Starting with 1X fired I would find about 2% culls but as firings progressed I found that number climbing. I remember I had 1 batch where I hit maybe 50% but then those cases had maybe 7 or more firings.

David

 

[Pawnee Bill]

Remember this is military brass and military goals are reliability, not accuracy.

That said, I shot LC brass for my NRA High Power competitions. But there were 2 things I did when I got a batch of 1 time fired brass. After I had sized all of the cases I weighed them and I rolled them for concentricity. Once you have culled the outliers then You will have a good batch. I typically shot then 3 more times in competition and then used them for practice after that.

When I sized my cases I paid careful attention to the upstroke of the press handle. If i didn't feel the button "pull" trough the neck but was completely free that was a sign to me that this case was not going to shoot well and I just threw it in the recycle box. Starting with 1X fired I would find about 2% culls but as firings progressed I found that number climbing. I remember I had 1 batch where I hit maybe 50% but then those cases had maybe 7 or more firings.

David

I now use a mandrel for sizing the necks, as I think it does a better job than the sizing button.