.223 brass question.

[moptop]

I have a friend that bought a Federal 200 rnd bulk pack of .223's. He was going to reload them but he found that all of the primer pockets have a small silver bushing in them and a primer smaller in dia. than a standard small rifle primer....possibly the size of a small pistol primer. He also said that they were all head stamped "LC"...(Lake City?) and not Federal.

Has anyone else come across this or can enlighten me on what's going on here?

[c3d4b2]

I can help part way.

Federal has the contract to manage the Lake City manufacturing for the government.

[2ndAmendmentNut]

Sounds like the primers have a military crimp on them. You need to run them through a universal deprimer and then use some sort of primer pocket reamer. FYI small pistol and small rifle primers are the same size diameter.

[GabbyM]

Never head of such a thing. But I'll bet if you deprime them that "bushing" will pop out.
Maybe we could see a photo of this?
If it is some new primer system that's non relaodable , well. Hold on because the conspiracy bugs will be a crawling.

[.357]

i ran into some federal brass the deprimed fine but with my RCBS hand primer it was hard as H**L to reprime. i had to two hand several of them.

[easy ed]

Here's what you need. A RCBS Primer Pocket Swager Combo, RCBS part number 9494. Graf and Sons has it for $30.95

Easy Ed

[StarMetal]

The guys anwering so far are right. Apparently the primer crimp is crimped in such a manner it looks like a bushing. I don't believe any company would go to the expense of bushing a primer pocket for a smaller then industry primer, nor would the military want that...what for?

Joe

[mike in co]

sorry ..i just gotta say ...duhhhhhhhhhh........

as an alternative to swaging the pockets, you can ream them.
the lyman vld inside neck reamer is an excellet tool for doing small rifle crimped pockets....

mike in co

[beagle]

Sounds like military LC brass with the milspec crimp in it. After removal and swaging the crimp with the tool mentioned above, I'm betting it will take a standard small rifle primer.

The only bushings I have ever seen for primers were used by the benchies several years back to adapt large primer pockets to small and that worked only so-so and the practice was dropped for the most part.

The Army tends to do these crimps on all cases destined for automatic weapons to keep the primer from backing out and jamming the weapon.

Don't know why they do it as in 23 years in the Army, the only malfunctioning primers I've ever seen was several lots of 7.62 Nato linked for the mini-gun where they had a die malfunction and the primer pockets failed to get punched. This tends to pop the primer out, crimped or not and ties up the gun./beagle

[SierraWhiskeyMC]

You gave the LC head stamp (for Lake City Arsenal), but not the year. The year code will be two digits.

Practically all military small-arms ammunition have the primers crimped in. The only types I have personally seen that were not crimped is the National Match ammo, but forget about trying to find THAT stuff nowadays.

I have had some mil-spec 5.56 ammo (came in a mixed lot) that I had a problem with getting the primers out. I don't know if the primers were swaged too much, or the primers themselves were somewhat brittle. When the decapping pin tried to push the primer out, the head of the primer popped off with the anvil, leaving the rim of the primer stuck in the pocket which resembled a bushing. I had to use a pocket reamer on those to get the rim out; a swaging tool would have made the situation worse.

Sorry, I can't tell you who made those particular cases, nor when - except it had to be pre-2002. I didn't make a note of it, and I experienced this problem seven years ago as of this writing.

All mil-spec small-arms ammo that I ever recall seeing have had brass primers, with the exception of some pre-WWII .45 ACP rounds that had copper primers; I have two examples of these, one made at the Frankford Arsenal in '14, and one F.A. made in '32.

I bought some milsurp Federal XM193 5.56mm M193 ball ammo (lot 38) a few years back. Head stamp is LC 02, primers are brass, and they are lightly swaged in their pockets.

There are basically only two diameters for modern small arms cartridge primer pockets; small and large.
The small primer pockets are around 0.174", and the large around 0.210".

I do not know of any primers used by the military that are smaller than the standard small pistol/small rifle primers, which are the same diameter.

Any chance that you could post more information?

[eta]
Since this is mil-spec brass, it will have a smaller case capacity than commercial brass. This will result in higher chamber pressures than commercial brass when used with the same amount of powder. Don't mix mil-spec brass with commercial brass for that reason.

[badge176]

I got a whole bunch of LC .223 brass (like 7,000) not too long ago and everyone above is dead on.

Primers crimped in by circular staking around primer for all the reasons listed so far.

I invested in a LEE Military primer decapper (basically a .22 rod with a hella strong short pin at the end). I did this after bending or breaking a couple of decapping pins.

The rod is inserted in the neck till it fits the pin into the primer flash hole inside the web of the case. The case is then set onto the recessed circular base supplied with the decapped and you rap the top of the rod (with a hammer) to knock out the primer. Then swage or ream out the circular crimp.

This is most of the "process" you see when people advertise "processed once fired Military brass". It's a fair bit of work, but I got the huge pail of brass a "waste" from a law enforcement range that usually tosses out their brass (now they sell it as brass scrap- any registered CB members want it by the pound?)

[moptop]

Gentlemen, I want to thank all who replied with the answers and information I needed to pass along. My friend purchased one of the RCBS pocket swagers yesterday and he said it works great. He told me to tell you all he appreciated you sharing your knowledge with us. We'll find out tomorrow at the range how they work.



Once again, thank you all.

[ETG]

Just an FYI - military cases do not have the same internal volume as comercial (they are thicker walled). Most people I know reduce the max load by 2 grains.

[BruceB]

This business of reduced capacity for military brass holds true for 7.62 NATO and .30-06.

It DOES NOT apply to .223/5.56 NATO. Some months back, I weighed cases of every possible type I could lay my hands on...Remington, Winchester, S&B, PMC, Federal and likely a few others in the commercial stuff, and many different years of WCC, LC and whatever other military brass I could find.

There was no meaningful difference in weight in the entire assortment. All were right in the same ballpark, with only a grain or two max spread for the whole bunch. Let it be known that "a grain or two" of weight variation in the brass amounts to essentially nothing in case capacity.

That said, I still segregate cases by headstamp to minimize ammo variation from other causes such as case hardness etc. Besides, they look nicer in the boxes that way.

Be very wary about the volume difference in 7.62 NATO and military .30-06 from their commercial counterparts, and reduce the starting loads. For the .223/5.56, don't worry about it.

[ETG]

Thanks for the correction - I made the incorrect assumption that all mill cases were thicker. I never weighed the cases.