Xtreme 223 with Hodgdon 223CFE

[KnotRight]

There in no publish data for the Xtreme 55 FMJ bullets so I usually work off any 223 FMJ bullet. To go a step farther, there is not much data using 223CFE powder. In most manuals the max velocity is around or below 3,000 f/sec. When I went to the Hodgdon website it had 2 - 55 gn bullets. I averaged the charge, speed and pressure of them to come up with a load that took both minimum and maximum loads and came up with this:

6.5 grs of 223CFE
CCI 400 primer
OAL 2.230"
Velocity: 3,200
Pressure: 48,300

Would you be good with the above data? SAAMI shows the max pressure for a 223 of 50,000 and 5.56 of 60,000. BTW I am shooting them out of a CCMG AR piston driven gun.

[Bonz]

the ones that I bought from Xtreme were almost identical to Hornady 55gr FMJ bullets so I used that data. But, I won't be buying anymore Hodgdon CFE223 because its such a dirty powder, at least my reloads were. CFE223 - 26.2 grains

[LUCKYDAWG13]

I use 26.5 gr 55gr FMJ my self i like CFE 223

[osteodoc08]

One of the data sets is for the Barnes TSX bullet. This data you DONT want to use as its for their all copper bullet. The data you should work up from is the Speer SP data which will be closest your 55gr FMJ. As always, start low and work your way up. Generally the TSX or other all copper bullets require less powder for a given pressure. So if starting with regular lead cored ammo charges with the copper bullets, I imagine you'd runninto pressure issues fairly quickly.

i personally like the cfe223 powder but it needs to be run at the higher charge ranges to burn efficiently and cleanly. I use the same charge as LuckyDawg