WCC Brass

P

pyscodog

Active member
I recently bought dies and brass for my 223AI. Dies are Redding and brass is WCC, Winchester Cartridge Company. I assume its military brass. Its already fire formed to 223AI and primed. Do I need to do anything different in loading it? I read the cases are thicker than regular Winchester brass and I might see more pressure. I have a bunch of commercial 223 brass and have never used the military brass. Any precautions I should use? Is it good brass?
 
Just start low & work up or check water capacity of cases. Don't remember headstamp, but I ran across some military cases that were lighter than some commercial when I was loading a lot of .223.

Regards,
hm
 
If it is already formed to AI water volume won't work. I would weigh the brass or contact who you bought the brass from and find out if it is military brass.
 
If it has a date stamped onto the case head (like WCC 96) it is military. The fact that it is primed and fireformed tells me the primer pocket has already been either chamfered, swaged (military) or didn't need it (commercial). Check the case length and trim. Chamfer the case mouth if needed. If a case is too long it could jam into the chamber throat and raise pressures.
 
Pretty good brass but it will act similarly to Lake City and other Mil spec brass with thicker walls and webbing near the base in the sense that it will have lower internal volume (comparitavely to commercial brass) therefor resulting in higher pressures. If you have a load that is on the hotter side, reduce it.

I've found it best to do load development with the type of brass you plan to use. Learned it the hard way when I did load development on my mini mauser quite a few years ago. I used commercial brass for development and its favorite load was 26 gr H335 behind Sierra 52 gr BTHP. Well I loaded it using Lake City 1x fired since they are good casings and since H335 is very temperature sensitive, I had pretty good pressure signs when shooting that batch of ammo on hot summer days.

For those that use velocity to determine loads, you may find that less powder in a mil spec casing will give the same results since the volume is less, its a little more "efficient". For example, the load stated above may be safely backed down to 25 grs in Mil Spec brass yielding the same velocity and accuracy result as 26 grs in commercial.

Of course, this is all subjective and it is recommended you try it to verify it to get the best out of the rifle and your chose bullet and powder combination.
 
WCC brass in my experience isn't that much heavier than commercial brass if at all. The easiest thing to do is to weigh the brass and compare it to different makers. Generally (there are exceptions) the heavier the brass the lower the case capacity. Some foreign military brass is WAAAAY heavier than anything U.S. and I toss that stuff. If the brass is only a grain or two different you are not likely to run into pressure problems related to case capacity but the temperature effects will prevail.
 
Cat Shooetr did a thread on military vs commercial brass years ago. IIRC, the “military “ brass was no thicker. I thought WCC was. Western not Winchester.
 
FWIW here are some fired capacities on various brass I looked at one morning.

223 REMINGTON

LC69 95.66 30.88
LC 05 (N) 96.04 31.16
FED 95.72 30.80
FED (N) 98.36 30.46
FC 223 (B) 95.53 30.74
FC 223 (11) (N) 96.76 30.47
FRONTIER 89.06 31.64
GFL 101.06 30.34
HORN 96.46 30.77
IMI 97.76 30.57
PMC 223 96.23 30.80
R-P 94.76 31.10
SPEER (B-90) 96.57 30.16
SPEER 223 (11)(N) 95.56 31.60
WCC (10) 97.36 30.77
WIN 223 95.33 31.47
WIN NT 223 98.15 30.95
WIN NT 556 97.66 30.97
WIN SX 96.5 31.26


Not fired in the same chamber.

Greg
 


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