I'm interested in opinions and advice on reloading .223 for use in an AR rifle. It's a Colt M16A1 upper. The reloads are going to be for plinking, so I don't need to squeeze every bit of velocity or accuracy out of every round. What I want are rounds that are reasonably accurate to 100 yards, enough to cycle the action, and are safe. The most important of the three is that the reloads are safe. This rifle is as close to the M16A1 I carried when I was in, and A1 uppers are getting harder and harder to find so I do not want to damage mine.

I guess for clarity, I'll start with what I already understand so maybe my questions will be taken in the right light.

For maximum safety:

1. Cases should be weighed and seperated by weight and loads developed for each different case weight.
2. All cases should be trimmed to 1.750
3. Every powder charged should be individually weighed.
4. For semi-autos bullets should be crimped and CCI 41 primers used to prevent bullet push back and slam fires.

So, understanding the above, I could do exactly that and load batch style, single stage, one round at a time. If I was doing 100 rounds, that would be fine, but currently I have 2200 rounds to load. About 1200 of them are mixed headstamps, and about 1000 are all Lake City, but different years. I have a Lee Classic turret press. I would like to be able to use it as a turret and load faster than single stage. So that brings me to my questions,

1. Do I really need to weigh every case? For what I want to do is it that critical? I don't plan to use max loads.
2. So far I seem to have a lot of cases shorter than 1.750. None seem to be under 1.740 yet. My Lee quick trim die says they can be between 1.730 and 1.760. Videos I've seen show people setting a trim die to 1.750 and if a case doesn't trim, they don't seem concerned about it. How much do I need to worry about cases under 1.750 (but over 1.730)
3. Understanding the absolute safest thing would be to hand weigh each charge, how does anyone load in volume. I've read reviews for every powder drop I can find and I read everything from "It throws every charge within a tenth of a grain every time" to "It never throws the same charge twice" I was going to buy the Lee pro autodisk recommended for this press, but now I don't know.

I want to be safe, but I'd also like to shoot again before summer is over at it will take a long time to sort by weight and hand charge 2200 rounds. At this point I have cleaned and deprimed the cases, swaged all the military brass, full length resized, and checked each case in an LE Wilson case gage, and now am trimming them all to 1.750.

How would you guys proceed for this many rounds. Even if I just do half, that's still a lot of rounds to do one at a time.

My wife shoots the AR platform a lot....thousands of rounds a year.

I shoot the AR rifle quite a bit myself....probably just over a thousand rounds each year

It is not a finicky rifle

It does not require small base dies but I do full size each case as they need to fit more than one rifle in her/my collection

We dont trimm....if we do its -.020 and never again
We dont weigh cases
we dont weigh powder

55 grn fmj over 24/25 grns of WC844 in any .223/5.56 case

CCI small rifle primmer

I crimp on my progressive

I do tumble my cases before I load

Batches of 500 are tumbled then spray lubed with Dillon lube in a large cardboard box and tossed and shaken to distribute the lube

500 bullets are dumped in a bin to the left of the press

The powder hopper is filled also the primmer station is filled

My wife sets bullets as I feed brass and pull the handle

500 bangin rounds are ready in about 2 hours

I lightly tumble for 10 minutes in batches of 100 these live rounds to remove the lube

Bulk pack or put in 100 round box's

You are way over anal if all you want is rounds that go bang and plink. Just load them, don't bother with weighing brass, nor trimming, do not weigh charges; just throw them from your measure, yes, crimp them. Any small rifle primer will work. This is from experience loading many thousands of .223s.
I get asked this all the time; guys do not learn the basics first, but want to jump into some advanced loading techniques. For ARs. mostly a waste of time.
Now, if you are bench resting, or serious varminting, then, still don't need to weigh each charge.Even bench rest shooters do not weigh charges.

I must note

We own 1 dedicated varmint AR with a heavy barrel and we load for it differently

Single stage full sized

Trimmed -.020 just on the first reloading then never again

Anealed on the first reloading after that...never again

27 grains of thrown Varget compressed under a 55 grain Hornady Z-Max

Remington cases


****NOTE****

This is a MAX load and pushes the 55 grn bullet about as fast as it can be pushed from a gas gun

Ted,

If I understand this right, if you are trimming to -.020 then your cases are 1.740 correct? I only ask because when I started trimming with the Lee quick trim The plastic knob slipped off and the best adjustment I could get on it was 1.740. After playing with it more I got it set back to zero and it will do 1.750, but I have about 30 cases that are 1.740.

dpcd:
After one of our technicians fell from a ladder and was killed, the company I work for enacted a whole slew of new safety measures. When we complained that they were excessive, we were told "you can never argue against being safe" I get what you're saying and to a large extent agree. When I first started loading I loaded for my 8mm exactly as you described and everything was fine. Recently I found some of those reloads in a forgotten ammo can and took them to the range. One wouldn't chamber at all, and one, the bolt didn't want to open after firing. I had to bang it open with my hand.

I'm not completely new, and I'm not looking to jump to advanced loading techniques. If I wanted to do that I'd be setting up my dillon 650 presses. I'm coming back to reloading after 20 years away from it and I just want to do it right this time. That's why I'm reading everything I can and I haven't loaded a single round yet. I felt like I was being too anal about this too, so I joined this forum to see what others recommend.

so, here's what i do for plinking -- find the cheapest bullet that my guns like -- set powder for middle charge in the book, at factory oal or on the groove and buy a lee factory crimp (this step is optional). primers are whatever i can find, and i annotate the load, primer, bullet, call it a plinking load, and go shoot....

you certainly CAN argue about being too safe ... in fact, OSHA says as much ...

that always tells me that there are newbies in the office for safety ... the SECOND that they find out that they are spending 2.5X for labor, hole watch, and massive loss of productivity due to feeding the hog named safety, they will ratchet that back

cool story on feeding the hog
http://www.ethics.org/resource...ts-ethical-companies

great article! I can see examples of some of those things where I work.

I actually was thinking about doing, just what you said, just loading in the middle of the min/max range, but then I read lots of advice to others online about not jumping past the starting loads and I started second guessing myself.

I feel better that so far the consensus is that I being way too careful, and wasting valuble shooting time. :-)

one way around the trimming thing is to set your calipers to 1.755
I ain't never seen a 223 yet that wouldn't shoot this length or longer.
then pass each case through the calipers., only trim the ones longer than that.
that will narrow down your cases to be trimmed by about 98%.

you are gonna be swaging primer pockets, champhering case mouths, and re-sizing cases for a long enough period of time.
why add more cutting off excess brass that don't affect anything?

for general plinking stuff I like to use accurates 2230 powder it does meter very well and makes most powder dumps look like they are benchrest grade.
and I also like to use hornady 55 gr fmj with canellure.
I seat the bullet to the cannelure.

this gives me a 'generic' round that fits everything and shoots pretty well in everything too.

Enough reading and experience is GREAT. Asking questions when confused is great. Too much simply reading can be BAD.

I've shot 1000s of 223 reloads. toss the powder, no crimp I do use a small bass die since I load for several 223 rifles. Like Ted I trim my brass at the first reload a touch short and never worry about it again.

I would never advocate against safety, and the basic reloading principles insure that. Sounds like your 8mm rounds were not loaded IAW them. My comments are that you can spend an excessive amount of time on needless procedures that contribute nothing to the final product. Safety is not circumvented in any case. You do not need to weigh each charge to insure safety. No one does it for AR blasting rounds. Or bench rest rounds either.
Too much Internet information, much of it being useless drivel, is bad. Nothing I say on the internet is bad. You just have to be able to discern the difference and it isn't easy since everyone is convinced that their way is best. I know mine is.....