What's Your Favorite Brass for your .223 Bolt Rifle
- Thread starter perazzisc3
- Start date
Thats easy! My favorite is Lapua. My next choice is Winchester. I can't tell much if any difference in groups, but the Winchester takes a lot of work to match Lapua's consistency. It also does not last as long. Split necks on once fired Winchester caused me to buy an annealing machine. Lightman
I've used Lapua, Nosler, RP, FC, and Lake City...all work great in my 223/223AI bolt guns. Lapua is probably "best" for stout loads, though.
Primers? CCI 400, 450, Rem 6.5. Prefer 450s, but they seem to be unobtanium right now.
Primers? CCI 400, 450, Rem 6.5. Prefer 450s, but they seem to be unobtanium right now.
Lapua for the precision stuff and Winchester for gophers.
Lapua needs not prep.
Winchester needs some love.
Both are very accurate in my rifles.
Lapua needs not prep.
Winchester needs some love.
Both are very accurate in my rifles.
It dont matter in my gun all brass I load shoots the same small groups in targets. If I had my choice though I would own nothing but IMI brass.
I have used lapua in several calibers but my best group ever came from winchester. Lapua definitely last longer and is more consistent.
LC mostly, my 223 is for steel and prairie dogs. Hell I'll pick up range brass on that caliber, as a matter of fact I dont remember ever buying virgin brass for the 223.
perazzisc3, I like CCI small rifle and Remington BR when I can find them. I really like CCI in about everything. Lightman
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Love my Lapua for .308 and .223, with consistency and velocity SDs in the single digits. Save this stuff for precision shooting out of my bolt guns due to cost. Less critical shooting is usually with Winchester and Remington. My AR is generally fed with 5.56, mostly Lake City, and Western. Also just got about a thousand rounds of Speer 2010 that looks beautiful and I cant wait to try some out. For situations where I anticipate not being able to retrieve my brass, I use a mixed bag of stuff like Federal, PMC, AMERC, IMI, IVI, and anything else I scrounge from different sources.
After doing the typical case sizing and trimming I generally bevel the throats and flash holes and flash pockets. I always sort by weight, WITHIN each different headstamp.
After doing the typical case sizing and trimming I generally bevel the throats and flash holes and flash pockets. I always sort by weight, WITHIN each different headstamp.
I bought some Norma brass for my 223AI that will be finished some time later this year. It was kinda an impulse buy, Lapua was my first choice but found the Norma instock and bought a couple hundered cases. Since then Lapua has been available but I'm going to stick with the Norma. Needed the brass to send off to bugholes for chambering. From what I've read Norma is on par with Lapua, but I haven't heard of many people using it in 223. I'll give it a try and see how it goes.
3wide, you will get good service from that Norma brass! Boy, will it be good when the supply chain catches up? Lightman
Call me cheap. I've got 3K of 223 brass, that I "pulled" out of buckets on the range. Last summer. Not sure of the make, but it was free. I use Winchester brass, for my bolt. Should I "throw out" the other stuff? NO, I won't. It's plinking fodder. Funny change, between last summer and now: the "buckets are always empty" these days.
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