advice for reloading .223 & 5.56 for an AR-15

[morefishplease]

I've been reloading for years but never had to reload .223, I have a ton of mixed brass in .223 and 5.56. Do I need to sort the brass or can I reload it all up in 5.56? Any tips being it will be shot out of an AR? Thanks for any input, greatly appreciated

[fishattacker]

I would sort the brass. I am going to assume the 5.56 is military brass. Sometimes military brass is thicker and has less case capacity. Also if it is military brass it will have a primer crimp in it that will need to be removed prior to putting in a new primer.

Check out www.accurateshooter.com it has a .223 Rem page with lots of good info on reloading for the .223 and 5.56 in AR rifles.

[mechanictim]

It is good reloading practice to keep brass in lots to keep track of the number of times it is fired. Cases have a finite life span. How many times can you safely reload a case is going to depend on its quality and how it is reloaded. There are a lot of opinions on how many times a case can be reused.

If a lot of your brass is military brass you picked up off the range it has been fired at least once and more likely twice. Sometime after five firings the necks of the cases should be annealed to prevent them from splitting. Depending on the source you reference a case should be discarded after seven to ten loadings. This is to prevent a nasty little surprise known as case head separation. I don't anneal case necks so when a lot starts to get a few case neck splits it gets dumped.

All reloads going into a semi-auto should be checked with a case size gage. A lot of recommendations from reloaders to get small base dies for semi-autos but in my opinion not needed if every round is passed through a case gage.

Now if we really want to open up a can of worms for debate we could discuss matching bullet weight to the rate of twist of the barrel. Lets just say that if the rate of twist is 1 in 9 you can try about any weight bullet that you care to try. Just buy one box at a time to find a bullet that the rifle likes before buying case quantities and trying to force the rifle to like the bullet. I like to use the load data from the bullet manufacturer as a starting point to select a powder. They usually indicate what they observed as the most accurate load in the load data.

In my opinion and experience the bullet has the greatest impact on accuracy. Powder selection and charge weight can be used to fine tune the load and pick which ever primer you like as long as you keep using the same ones for consistency when comparing loads.

My pet load for an AR type rifle with either 1 in 9 or 1 in 8 twist is a military case trimmed to spec with a Hornady V-max 50 grain bullet with a near max load of Varget powder lit off by a Federal match small rifle primer. This load works well for me weather I am punching paper in 90 degree heat or shooting coyotes in sub zero weather.

[redneckdan]

Case head seperation is caused by pushing the shoulder too far back during resizing, not by hardening of the case neck.

If you are purely after blasting ammo, then not sorting cases is an option. Find a load that is just enough to cycle the action but leaves plenty of room before MAP to account for changes in pressure. Differences in case capacity will cause pressure flucations and change in POI but if you are just dusting clay pigeons at the local pit it probably doesnt matter to you.