Originally Posted by
Oldfeller
I appreciate you guys finding all that very nice expensive new brass available to be purchased, but I seeing that I had over a thousand pieces of Lake City 5.56 just sitting around and I had Lee expander/deprimer pins ranging from .224 to .243 to .264 to .284 to .308 to .325 and a 3 station auto indexing press to put them in I stared expanding the 5.56 Nato brass neck up by stages. Once I got past 8mm I switched over to custom made pins at .340 and .355 and a final trip at .366 off a Lee 9.3mm expander/deprimer pin from a 9.3x62 which I will now tune down and shorten to expand the reformed Legend case's base to ~.390" at the rebated area up near the head. Finishing trip will be through a full length sizing die which should collapse the case back down from the cylindrical form to put the proper taper back into the case. Case splitting loses on the 800 that are left will be 10-20% if the earlier stages are any guide.
Folks who are shooting the Legend all say that the .010" body taper will act to head space the slightly shorter cases that resulted from the hand made from 5.56 expansion by the very limited work that they have done.
I will withhold judgement on that point until I have actually done it in volume. I am also not above custom sizing the brass (by partial insertion into the full length sizer die) to tighten the fit up of the resulting "slightly short" case to the chamber of my AR such that it can enter the chamber freely and still do the rotational lock up freely but the slightly short finished round will always get a full impact primer strike indexing off the case taper.
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AR people really do like having lots of ammo on hand. This is not the world of bolt guns or of target shooting, it is the world of run & gun competitions and "blasting steel". So much for the recreational uses.
Pig shooting isn't really hunting out on a farm, it is for the eradication of a farm pest, and the goal is to hit as many pigs as you possibly can before they scatter. I think the wounding of up to a half dozen pigs with a 66 grain .224 bullet is pretty much "unsportsman-like conduct" by my old grey-headed hunting standards but the farm folks who are affected by those pig swarms really don't seem to care much about sportsmanship when blasting at swarms of invasive pigs who are rooting up their planted seed.
Give them a 20 round magazine on a 350 Legend AR with 3 each .360" buckshot balls per case and let them go perforate their invasive pigs more quickly and effectively. 3 triple aught buck on a string from a LEE mold weights ~215 grains once powder coated, so it isn't going to be all that different than the gas checked main bullet I am working up at the moment.
Yes, if I can make the cases work out well using three repeats on a 3 hole LEE progressive press and two quick annealing steps it might could possibly be worth doing as cast boolits are inexpensive, as are the mil-surp powders I will be using.
Starting price per case is 5 cents a case at Everglades when buying 2500 case lots of their "damaged mouth" 5.56 brass. I am pretty sure you can find lots of 5.56 Lake City even cheaper on occasion.