223->221, what am I doing wrong?

[HP-Sauce]

Rough trmming brass on my keycutter and then finishing on my shop make headspace trimmer.



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[skeettx]

Great, sound like you have it going now

[HP-Sauce]

This is the first time I did any case forming and you guys been great with your ideas and advise. Would have been difficult without you.

So I went ahead and neck sized the good cases, seated 55gr bullets, aside from a light chamfer of the inside edge I did not ream or neck turn or anneal .

To my surprise all of them chambered with minimum effort in my CZ527 with factory chamber.

The cases are both military LC and civvi headstamps, the military cases actually seems to work well. I think I’ll do more testing with those.




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[muta4warrior]

I run mine through a Dillon 300 Blackout size/trim die first, chamfer mouth inside and out, then one pass with the 221 die. I am using once fired FC Tactical 223 brass (black and white box stuff). Out of ~200 pieces, I only had one piece split at the case mouth in the final forming pass.

[BK7saum]

While you're probably good, you need to know what your chamber neck diameter is in relation to the reformed reloaded cartridges. What does the OD of the neck of a fired cse measure and what do the necks of the loaded cartridges measure?

If the fired case neck is larger than the loaded case neck by a couple of thousandths you should be good. If the measurements are close, then you need to be meticulous with measuring. Also be aware if measurements are close, there may be several cases in you batch of mixed head stamp brass with thicker case walls and now thicker necks.Just because a round chambers doesnt necessarily mean that it will be safe to fire. Check/measure the OD of every round before firing the first time.

It is really nice to be able to reform brass for our rifles, especially with free or cheap range brass. However we should be cautious and aware that there are risks, so dont just blindly forge ahead without researching the pitfalls and dangers.

Good luck.

[uscra112]

^^^ AMEN ^^^ I ran into this when making .22 Lovell out of .223. Lovell chamber reamers were never standardized, and many gunsmiths of that era cut their wildcat chambers benchrest tight.

A tubing micrometer would be a mighty good investment about now.

In any case, turning the necks to make them uniform will yield significant accuracy improvement. The drawing process that made the parent case usually doesn't give uniform wall thickness down in the body area, and that will be exaggerated by swaging the body down to form the .221 neck. That was my experience, anyway.