Converting 223 to 300 Blackout brass Question

[Cardinal]

I too ran into brass that would not seat into my Wilson case gage.

The odd thing was that ALL of the cases that wouldn't pass were Lake City!

After researching this, it was determined that all of this brass had to have been fired from an automatic firearm (such as a SAW).

I called RCBS andthe tech there said he'd search through .223 Rem dies till he found one that would seat further down on the brass.

That "new" die worked! I was able to salvage 90% the brass that previously would't fullt seat using gravity's pull NOT pushing them in. Of the 10% that I resized but still wouldn't fit the Wilson .223 Rem OR the case gage, I reloaded them and fired in my Remington 788 .223 Rem bolt action rifle and as a result, all of thosenow pass the Wilson gage test!

I hope that my research helped solve this quandry.

[Cardinal]

Different manufacturers of Blackout dies.

First of all, I'm a pistol round reloader so when I tackled rifle round reloading, I had to learn a whole new set of procedures!

First rule I learned (from a good friend of mine) is that ALL rifle rounds MUST be lubricated or plan on the cases being stuck in the die.

Second rule I learned is that you MUST have a case gage for rifle rounds so I bought some from EBay (I got six of them for the price of one!), plus a Wilson .223 Rem and .300 AAC Blackout gages.

When I got my Blackout rifle, I also looked for a set of dies so that I could reload ammo for it. ALL of my other dies are either Redding or RCBS BUT I didn't have the cash flow to buy either of them so I settled on a Lee two die set.

The first set of cases would NOT load into my rifle so I called Lee. The tech there explained the press setup which was to take the sizing die down till it soundly touches the shell holder, retract the ram, and turn the die in 1/2 to 3/4 of a turn thus taking ANY slack out of the press assembly. That problem solved.

I was having a problem getting the rounds into the mouth of the cases so he said to buy an expander die. AND he advised me to buy a crimping die. So in the end, I had MORE invested in the Lee dies (four in total) than I would have spent on either the Redding or RCBS three die sets!

Before I started to reform the 223 Rem/5.56 NATO cases, someone said I need to anneal (sp?) the cases. As an experiment, I didn't anneal the first cases and I didn't have one problem reforming them. I have to say that from my experience, I didn't need to anneal any cases to get them to successfully reform.

Bullets: of all the different bullets that I have tried, THEE one bullet that my Red X Arms upper LOVES is the Hornady VMax 110 grain spitzer. That round is VERY accurate and consistent in my rifle.

I religiously follow the Hodgdon reloading data http://data.hodgdon.com/cartridge_load.asp.

I have found that Lil' Gun powder gives me the best results with the 110 grain VMax bullets. I also tried (due to the unavailability of Lil' Gun powder) H110 with good results. I also bought a chronometer so I could see what the velocities actually were.

Next, I tried 150 grain Sierra and Hornady bullets. The results were OK but my rifle liked the 110 grain VMax more.

PS: when I couldn't get ANY brand of primers, one local firearms shop happened to have a good supply of Fiocchi primers. I had never used them before but was desperate to get primers so I bought them a brick of them (which contained 1500 not 1000 like every other brand!). To my pleasant surprise, they are GREAT! BUT I haven't been able to find them locally again!