Moving from new brass to to recycled brass

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Django11

New member
So I’m fairly new to the reloading game and I’ve been using new Nosler brass while getting my feet wet and developing loads. I’ve found some a load that I’m very happy with and now I want to load a handful for general use. I’ve got a lot of spent brass of many different flavors. My plan is to use Hornady brass since I have plenty of that to go around and I would assume some of the best quality that I have. The load I found is pretty hot(not excessive) so I’m curious how cautious I need to be regarding using different brass. Any other suggestions regarding this topic would be appreciated as well.

The firearm is an AR with .223 Wylde chamber. The bullets I’m using are Nosler Custom Competition 69 gr as well as Hammer 70 HP.

Thanks in advance
 
Brass will vary by manufacturer.
For plinking, mid range loads, I don't worry about the brass.
For hunting, target, near max loads; I seperate by manufacturer.
It has worked great for 50 years.
 
IM not sure about Wylde but 223 has always had a warning about using military brass. It seems that the case wall are thicker and thus have less case volume and produce higher pressure, everything else equal..
True--it has been on the net for a long time by lots of loaders.
Call Sierra Bulletsmiths 800=223-8799 and ask them. they give advice about any
loading question/problem.
 
5.56 brass can have thicker walls thus less case volume. Separate 223 and 5.56 brass and tune the loads for the specific brass. 223 wylde is good for 223 or 5.56

If you want good consistent quality reloads, use the same headstamp. All Hornady, all nosler, winchester. All things being equal, most brass is fairly consistent within a brand. When using mixed brass, Different headstamps mixed together accuracy will suffer.

As far as your pressure concerns, there should not be enough variation to make any significant difference switching from nosler to Hornady imho

If your concerned you have 3 options
1. Throw caution to the wind, load one up, fire it, look for pressure signs. See what happens.
2. Use some caution. Rather than a full rework, start maybe 1.0 or 2.0g below your target charge weight and work back up.
3. All the caution. Work back up from start with the new brass to re-verify.

Personally if you know the load is good in your gun and not over book max, and I was just switching brand of brass, I would load 3. One at your target charge weight, one 0.5g low. One 1.0g low. Shoot them one at a time low to high, see if anything looks or feels off.
 
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As Shadow9mm said, different cases have different internal volume.
If you change any component, start over on load development.
 
If you change any component, start over on load development.
Click to expand...

this has been the standard advice (or rule if you prefer) for a long, long time. Most of the time, one works the loads back up and finds no significant differences between brands, batches, lot#s, etc.,

BUT

The potential for a drastic (and unsafe) difference always exists, until you verify it does not.
 
Much of what you have read is baloney. Military brass (produced by Federal Cartridge, when they had the contract) had a thinner web (i.e. the bottom of the brass), but this had no effect on the case's durability with respect to reloading.
 
That's correct. There is a list of 223 and 5.56 brass water capacities at 6mmBR.com about a third of the scroll down their 223 page, and the military has the most space in it. The tendency to be significantly thicker only applies to 7.62 to a significant degree and to some 30-06 to a lesser degree.

Hornady brass is the softest in the head, so you may have trouble with bent rims from extraction and pressure signs appearing earlier in your workup than with other brass.
 
Separate 223 and 5.56 head stamps. You will need separate loads as 5.56 brass can be thicker and have higher pressures and different velocities. Get a brass goat if you don't have one already. Snaps on your receiver, catches your brass. Really nice
 
Here's the page where the list of measured case capacities 1/3 of the way down the scroll space show some LC and WCC (5.56) actually having the most capacity, contrary to popular myth. That said, you never say never. It is best to actually check the case water overflow capacity of what you have. For the purposes of comparing different lots of used brass, resize and trim before measuring water capacity to try to eliminate capacity differences caused by being fired in different size chambers. For the purpose of projecting peak pressure, you need to measure case water capacity after firing, so you know what size they get to in your particular chamber. With pressures that peak at over about 30,000 psi, they will expand to that size before the pressure peak, and thus, that is the size that influences the final peak pressure value. To measure case water overflow capacity:

  1. Take a sample case with fired primer still in place (you can reseat a fired primer to plug the fash hole if necessary)
  2. Weigh the empty, dry case.
  3. Fill the case with tap water, stopping at the top of the shoulder so you can tap it on a hard surface to knock trapped air bubbles loose. Fill it the rest of the way to the case mouth but with no meniscus either positive or negative. If you go too far, the twisted corner of a kleenex of sheet of TP can be dipped in and out fast to eliminate the meniscus.
  4. Wipe any drops or wetness off the outside of the case.
  5. Weigh the filled case.
  6. Subtract the dry and empty weight from the filled weight. This is your case water overflow capacity in grains of water weight.

Don't expect a great correlation between empty and dry weight and the case water overflow capacity. The reason is the case head has a number of tolerances (rim thickness, extractor groove depth, angle of the extractor groove forward slope, etc.) that don't affect internal capacity, but that can account for several grains of difference from one make of case to the next. When I've tried to use the density of brass and case weight to predict the capacity of 7.62 and 308W brass, the predicted difference in water capacity had significant inaccuracy and sometimes would turn out to be backward.
 
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