Doug.....saw an old post of yours on saubiers referring to forming 17 remington from IMI or Lake city 223 cases .



What's your procedure and what do you use for forming dies ?



Picked up one of the CZ s in .17 . Looks like the little rifle wants to shoot , and it sure would be nice to utilize some of these abundant 223 cases........

First thing is always to segregate cases by weight in lots of 50, do it with all my cases. Then do the primer pockets and flash holes while the cases are still .22 caliber. Then I use Redding's form die set ( lube case lightly with Imperial size lube, run in form die #1, then form and trim die #2) followed by a pass through a Redding full size .17 Rem die size for a bit of a crush fit. Trim to length and turn the necks (you'll need to expand em turn em then resize em with a bushing die), I keep em .002 smaller then the chamber neck size, but .003 or .004 won't hurt and is a bit more forgiving. Then aneal load and fire form. After forming due to now being a tight neck I'd use a Wilson in line bushing die or a Redding S-Bushing die to neck size.
Up side of all that work is more uniform brass with a tight neck in a factory chamber. The down side is that .223 brass formed to .17 Rem will be about .025 shorter than factory length. That's not a problem unless your rifle has a really long throat and your shooting 20 grain bullets, in that case there's not much purchase on the bullet. My CZ by the way has a real decent throat and it's not a problem for me.
The solution to the length issue by the way is to form your brass out of .222 Mag, length is fine and you still get to turn the necks and have a tight neck case.
I probably made this process sound more confusing than it really is, there's a number of steps but it's not that tough.
With the new brass and a load it likes my last trip to the range yielded 3 five shot groups that agg'd in the .4's. For a factory rifle that the only tweaking is a bedding job and in a caliber that's not really known for stellar accuracy I'm pretty happy with it.

Thanks for the info doug . After reading about your good luck with the CZ and a couple of other fellas I too got my mitts on one . Haven't shot it a great deal yet but mild loads with the 20 gr vmax look like they will hover around 1/2 inch , so I am happy .

That form die #1 , what does it do , neck down to an intermediate size ? Then the #2 die takes it the rest of the way down to a .17 caliber neck ?

That's about the process, the last one lengthens the necks as well. If you have any try the Berger 25 grainers and the Berger 30 grainers. Both shoot extremely well in mine and that 30'll really reach out and touch em!
24.5 grain Varget and the Berger 25 with a 7 1/2BR primer is actually my working load, very accurate and really whacks em!