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Question with .223 Remington brass length

5K views 20 replies 10 participants last post by  mseric 
#1 ·
My friend recently purchased 120lbs of once fired mostly Speer .223 Remington brass from a guy off of CL at a great price. Supposedly they didn't have primer crimps since they were .223 instead of 5.56x45, but I'm here to tell you that they have a crimp. We went ahead and purchased a bench mounted RCBS crimp remover since it would be a big pain in the neck to try to process this much brass with the press. Well after wet tumbling with the Thumblers Tumbler, drying, resizing, removing the primer crimp, cleaning the primer pockets, and micing the cases were finding that atleast 1/4 of our processed brass is coming way below trim length for the case. My Hornady manual says that max case length is 1.760" and trim length is 1.750" for the .223 Remington. I usually still use the cases as long as they don't fall below 0.010" from the trim length, but some of these cases are coming in down to even 1.732", way below the trim length. We bought 12 plastic shoe boxes from Wal-Mart and labeled them starting at 1.739" and below up to 1.750" and above and everything in between is labeled with its own number and sorting them according to length so we can get a proper crimp on the cases. My question for y'all is would y'all load the cases that fall below 1.740" or would you toss them? He gave the guy $200.00 for the 120lbs so at about $22.00 per K we could loose a few and no be too hurt on them.
 
#7 ·
1.732...that seems like it may end up leaving something like .164" to actually provide the neck friction for holding onto the bullet. I've been told to strive for the bullet diameter amount in the neck for semi-auto's. You have something about 74% of the diameter. If you are using cannelure bullets, that means less internal space. If you are using taper crimp, then you have less neck to use. You can't squeeze harder or you mess with the bullet. I'd think the powder vs bullet weight would broaden the response. Interesting question, I'd be asking the same thing. I have some cases that I have in my scrap bucket I may end up pulling out to re-use.
 
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