.223 brass Rem vs. Federal

Greyhunter

Greyhunter

New member
I have scrounged up about 700-800 of each, no primer crimps. So far I've been using my Win brass but eventually it will wear out or be lost, AR + snow = lost cases. I'm thinking of keeping one brand for my hunting/target use (to replace the Win) and one to load up some SHTF/plinking ammo. Any preference between the RP and FC for each use? Is one more consitant or desirable than the other?

Also, I resized 300 of the FC cases tonight. Not only did they seem to resize really easily, they also didnt seem to stretch. Most measured right at 1.750" and some as short as 1.740". Nice not to have to trim them, but is that normal? Most of the Win and LC brass I have used in the past required trimming.
 
I'd weigh some cases from each brand and see which brand is the most consistent. I'd use those for my accuracy loads. I have used very few Rem or Fed cases but not enough to give an opinion on which one is better.
 
Based strictly on personal experience, I've always found Federal to be the best brass around in commercially sold ammo. Now obviously I'm not comparing it to Lapau or speciality brass, but that Federal seems to outlast most other brass and is easy to work with. My next choice would be Lake City (when I can find it which is almost impossible these days) and then Remington.
 
I weighed a dozen or so of each and the FC was slightly more consistant than the other two. There wasnt a big difference though and the Rem were not deprimed or cleaned yet so it may not have been totally the fault of the Rem brass.
I did find an extreme spread of 4gr in 2 of my Win cases, enough to cause the occasional flyer?
 
Depends on who you ask. I shoot a wide mix of brass and have a 1/2" spread at 100 yards. I don't sort squat
laugh.gif
 
I've loaded some Fed brass both in .223 and .308 and found it to be pretty soft. This was brass from factory Fed match loads in both. I would pick Rem or Winchester to load before Fed. I think the Fed case life is shorter, but usable.
On mixing brass: While back I loaded up an assortment of .223 brass with some Sierra 53 gr bullets I've had for years. I just picked a load of Benchmark, 1/2 gr off max and loaded up a box. When I shot them thru my Tikka varmint, I got blowback in my face, flattened primers, and a couple of pierced primers. After calling Sierra to diagnose my problem, he said, MIXED BRASS, don't do it. When I shot my .223 for prairie dogs, I just loaded brass and didn't sort. I talked with several other guys in my shooting club, they said same thing about mixed brass. I've loaded for a long time, under the assumption that if you weren't over max, there shouldn't be a problem. Guess I was wrong!
 
nr123,

Mixing brass is a no-no in my book as is randomly loading a bullet 1/2 grain off max with no work up...

FWIW...
 
+1 on Federal brass being soft. There's a reason you found it easy to resize, and that's it. I won't use it anymore for any rifle caliber I load for (8 of them), although I will use it for pistol. I prefer Winchester to Remington for rifle brass, but Remington is OK.

YMMV.

1p
 
I appreciate the info guys. On the FC being soft, my assumption is that this would only effect case life and not accuracy or any other area, correct? Being that I shoot AR's, often in a foot of snow or tall grass, I'm probably going to be lucky to get 4 loadings out of anything before its lost. Alot of them never make it to the 3rd. If they werent free I'd probably look into a brass catcher of some sort.
 
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