223 case life

[Slinger]

Fed brass is a curse to us reloaders for many of the reasons list here already. For me it Often splits on second firing, have had a primer fall out of the pocket and stop the gun, had primers seat during reloading with very little ramming presure. I just Do Not trust Fed brass. Same in 10mm ... it is my absolute worst pistol brass. 45acp seems OK. For 556 Win and LC without worry. Harold H.

Well I gotta say that they (Federal) must have cheapened their brass up in some way. I still have Fed. brass in 357, 44 Mag., 45 acp & 223 that's been reloaded alot back in the 1980s & early 1990s and I never had primers fall out or necks split on the first firing or second or third......I'm still using some of it and have alot loaded up. I always had problems with Remington brass giving up the ghost early on. Winchester was always good back then.

[thmpr]

4-6 times: if the neck splits (bullet seating) or seating the primer has no tension....throw it away.

[toddackerman]

Well I gotta say that they (Federal) must have cheapened their brass up in some way. I still have Fed. brass in 357, 44 Mag., 45 acp & 223 that's been reloaded alot back in the 1980s & early 1990s and I never had primers fall out or necks split on the first firing or second or third......I'm still using some of it and have alot loaded up. I always had problems with Remington brass giving up the ghost early on. Winchester was always good back then.

Bet you weren't shooting Federal out of an AR back then. Chambers for a .223 are a little larger than revolvers, bolt guns and .45 ACP. They didn't cheapen their brass. It's still good brass, just soft. Period.

You don't have the same problems in other actions like bolt, and wheel guns. 45 ACP pressures are so light that nothing splits until around 10 loads. (I've shot >100,000 rounds of it and almost all of it was reloaded).

[Slinger]

Matter of fact, I was shooting mostly Feds. in the AR & Mini-14. I still have a batch of 400 or so that have been reloaded several times, but now are finally starting to rip the heads off. I went thru them and looked inside the case near the web and threw the ones showing the tell-tale ring around the inside of the case. These were from the 1980s.