Howdy!..and question

[Don Krag]

First, I just wanted to say and introduce myself. I just got set up with reloading equipment recently. I researched what I needed for a few months before buying anything. Ya'll have some really helpful info here and I'm looking forward to hanging out here. I'll be reloading 44mag, 44spl, 300WM and .223.


Question...
I bought a few thousand rounds of 223 about 10 or so years back. Reloaded Lake City brass w/55fmj. I opened up the last box of 500 this past November and shot a few dozen rounds. I had extremely erratic results and after hearing an audible difference in muzzle report, I stopped shooting. About 75% of the spent brass had neck and shoulder splits. It turns out, whoever reloaded these crushed the brass neck/shoulder area down which must be causing the cartridge to seat improperly in the chamber with excessive gap around the neck and shoulder. A close visual inspection shows a sligth convex curve to the shoulder with a slight "ring" just above where it starts to neck down from the body. The bullet is probably too far back from the throat as well when chambered. I'm guessing the ones that weren't too brittle fire-formed and the others split.

After pulling the bullets, emptying, etc, is there any way of fixing the brass? I can anneal the brass no broblem. If the overall case length is too short is the brass now completly trash?

[Catfish]

If the brass is in that shape and you bought it after it was reloaded by someone else I would not mess with it. 223 brass can still be had fairly cheap. just through that brass in the scrap box and get different brass. If you do not have a primer pocket uniforming tool, or don`t want to work on the brass make sure you don`t get brass with swedge in primers.

[mangulator]

Catfish, is correct! get rid of the brass, .223 brass is common and can be found new. But, I would pull the bullets from the unfired cartridges and use them later for reloading.

[davem270win]

You will want to pop the primers after you've pulled the bullets and before throwing the cases in the trash!

[Don Krag]

I have quite a few other metalworking hobbies. The brass will be melted down (....after popping the primers) and so will the lead and copper of any bullets that get scored up! I figure I'll get a few hundred rounds of new brass and go from there. I have a few friends saving brass for me as well. Most of what I want is distance shooting.

I have a 100 of the 75gr A-Max bullets I want to play with to start. These will have to be single shot, but the gophers don't mind. I'll get some 69gr bullets as well to have some cartridges that will feed from a clip.