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fav powder and primers for 69gr 223 in rifle-length ar-15

davsco

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Minuteman
Jan 1, 2014
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NoVa
rather than resurrect a decade old thread... so new to reloading i don't have any equipment or supplies yet...

recipes appreciated as well as any technicalities (neck tension or who knows what else)... i've been using black hills blue box reloads but they stopped making them, and of course everything else has dried up, as well as primers, presses and everything else... this is for 2/3 gun out to ~500yds.
 
23.5 gr of 8208 and BR4s.

As usual, 69SMKs are hard to beat, but I hear of some guys running the 52s to good effect as well for 300yd and in.
 
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Some powders are hard to find, RL15 was not and standard CCI SRP & Win SRP with the 69SMK has been about 3/4 Moa out of a 16" 1/8 twist AR.
 
Varget, RL15, and 8208 are my go to with CCI400’s. I have run these using a few different brass names, along with the 69smk and the Hornady 68 bthp.
 
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loaded up varget with nosler custom competition and had good accuracy results. saw where i could speed them up but havent had time to try them
 
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Yes cfe223 is gtg on all the light to medium bullets I have tried.

I have a 52g plinker running 27.5gr (a full grain under book max) I'm getting 1.15 moa out of a cheap 16 inch upper and the 52g bulk culls. This was ran on a dillon.

I just today ran my fc brass in a -.002 mandrel so I can compare it with -.004 neck tension I was running.

A few days ago cfe223 was available at brownells or midway and I recently got a jug of h335 when I was almost out of cfe223.

H335 is also recommended for light to medium bullets but I have not ran any yet.

Get what you can and run what you got for now.

Mandrells are a new step for me so this will be a good test on that.
 
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I use 25.0 grains of cfe223, cci small rifle primer and sierra 69 grain bthp out of an ar 15 with a 16 inch barrel with 1/7 twist. This gun loves these bullets and this recipe.
 
I have ran both the 68gr Hornady BTHP on top of Varget, and the 69gr SMK on top of 8208. I got better results out of the 23.5 grains of 8208 with a 69gr SMK then I did with the Varget/68gr Hornady 68 BTHP out of the same weapon system. That's just me and this system though...