Range Report: 223 Reloads

[jwest]

Calgunners,

Went to Metcalf yesterday and shot my first .223 reloads.

Recipe: .223, 24 gr. Benchmark, 55 gr FMJ/BT Winchester bullets.

Remington Brass w/7 1/2 primers worked fine - my son shot the most and claimed grouping was good @ 100 yds. His target was peppered around the bullseye so I had to agree. I shot the first reloaded rounds to make sure they were ok. I had only reloaded 50 rounds with the Remington brass and primers.

Had some other reloads - nickel plated 'brass' and CCI #41 primers - had a significant # of misfires on that and stopped shooting it. Same recipe other than the brass and primers.

Is Benchmark 'dirty'? - the gun was pretty dirty and I did a complete cleaning as suggested in the UM by Remington.

Anyone know off the top of their head how long a 0.223 firing pin should be? Firing pin looks good - I measured with my micrometer - trying to remember if it was 3.279" or 3.729" - I've started a log - I will double check my I recorded. Just wondering.

Regards,
John

[Darklyte27]

misfires? whats the load data? specs?

I use cci #41 without problems.
LC / PPU brass
25 gr varget was when i first started
Win 55 gr fmj bullets

you gota take pictures and post them!

[Beelzy]

You probably didn't get the primers seated deep enough in the nickel cases.

I have seen that issue with nickel handgun cases.

[jwest]

I've already pulled the bullets and deprimed the rounds. I'll get pictures if it happens next time.

Recipe is in my post.

I thought I did a good job seating the primers - maybe not.

Regards,
jwest

[Darklyte27]

so you pulled all of them apart, they all had powder?
did the powder have any brass shavings in it when you poured it out?
did you crimp? are these primers new? So you used #41 and those were misfiring, but what were the other primers?

[jwest]

Yes - all had powder.
I did not see any brass shavings in the powder - I looked at it pretty closely - nothing unusual.
Yes - I did crimp - but my crimping could be better.
I bought the primers from someone I met on Calguns - they were allegedly new.
The other primers were Remington 7 1/2 - got those from Cabela's.

[Darklyte27]

hmm..
hopefully some reloading veteran can help.. im still only 6 months into reloading. I havent had any problems yet luckily. I cant think of anything else that might cause your problem. My only guess is that the primers were bad...

[pc_city]

Jwest got the primers from me. I've gone through about 150 from the same batch and they all went boom. CCI primers are harder to seat than Remington. Nickel plated cases sometimes have undersized primer pockets.

I seated mine to .005 below flush with one of these:

https://www.sinclairintl.com/product/9118/Priming-Tools

[cleanguy46]

Jwest got the primers from me. I've gone through about 150 from the same batch and they all went boom. CCI primers are harder to seat than Remington. Nickel plated cases sometimes have undersized primer pockets.

I seated mine to .005 below flush with one of these:

https://www.sinclairintl.com/product/9118/Priming-Tools

Agreed on #41CCI being a little more tougher to seat in the pocket. I just loaded 100 rounds using them in Federal and Winchester cases and some were buggers to get fully seated. I have been using the Wolf magnum primers due to the shortage and they seated easily and all went bang.

[Darklyte27]

hmm, maybe if the pocket is smaller, they are closing up? that could reduce the primer flash, thats my guess.

[pc_city]

I just got back from the Sunnyvale range: 200 bangs, no duds.

[jwest]

I'll give them a try in Remington brass and report back. Note not all were duds - just had quite a few misfires so I stopped shooting them. I loaded the nickel plated stuff with the CCI #41 primers - I didn't load any of the normal brass with them but I will give that a try.

All primers should have been OK as far as placement.

[dennis1979gm]

did you build your rifle yourself? Just asking because you might have installed the hammer spring in wrong. I know I did it on both of my AR's and had a couple of misfires. Might be worth looking into because #41 are a little harder and could be just enough with the spring upside down to give you intermiten misfires

[jwest]

No - but I will check it. Thanks for mentioning this.

[Tony Sopranno]

No - but I will check it. Thanks for mentioning this.

I'll bet that most misfires are caused by the pin not traveling right - dust, dirt, bad spring, etc. I've only had just 1 in about 300 CCI primers misfire recently, and that I attribute to a single badly manufactured primer. Any other misfires in the past year usually go back to the firing mechanism - getting some gritty gravel dust in there..