Today's reloading musings

[nlvmike]

I started off the day yesterday with a very specific reloading mission, and I feel like I got there, so now it is sharing time.

Last month, I jumped on a 2 for 1 deal at Global Ordinance and bought a lot of their Australian Defense Industries 300 blackout. It is 125 grain SMK bullets, and I have been really happy with it at the range. Super consistent through multiple guns. I zeroed two weapons with it at 50 yards, and the side benefit is that I picked up a lot of brass. Much of it was my own, but I was also at the range the morning after "Sig Day" of the SHOT show. I picked up a LOT of SIG 300 blackout brass also.

Also recently, I was at an auction, and picked up 48 lbs. of WC820 powder and 15,000 primers. That should keep me going for a while.

My goal was to come up with a Coyote hunting round that duplicated the ADI performance, so I could hunt without changing the zero. Pretty sure I got mission accomplished. I didn't really have much of a starting point with this powder, so I started my ladder really low. I used Nosler BT 125 bullets. I worked them up to pressure signs then backed off just a bit. In the end, I found with 18 grains, I got 2,250 fps out of a 16" barrel and 2,150 fps out of a 10.5" barrel. Even better, the POI was spot on with the ADI ammo.

One discovery with the mixed brass. I have to go through all the brass, like looking for small primer brass in 45ACP. I have to pick out the Hornady brass and swage all of them. If one of them slips in, it jams up the whole process. I use a Dillon 550, and the Hornady primer pockets are just too tight. The primer smashes up and it is a bear to get out. The brass works fine after swaging.

All in all, a good day. I loaded up 100 and am ready to take on the Yotes.

[warthog97]

Good tip on the Hornady brass!

[GunFunZS]

I've found that if I was loading mixed brass 223, if I had a primer do something funny on the progressive, it was almost always hornady brass. I mostly quarantine that stuff now, and set it aside.

I don't really do mixed brass any more though either. Now that I have a large enough stockpile of 223 brass, I do almost everything for a year's use out of a single headstamp, so that means everything in my brass catcher, or my shooting area is going to match and sorting is therefore less of a nuisance.

However, new brass does sneak in from strays, so sorting can't be eliminated. I wish there was a way. I've experimented with marking my brass with brass black, but that didn't work out.

I have been meaning to get the colored brass treatments like sculptors use on bronze and dipping my case heads in them. Then I can know for instance that all the purple stained LC brass are mine, and I already cleaned up the primer pockets.

[GunFunZS]

If that seemed off topic my ultimate point is that I think it would be a time saving thing when you sort in new brass to do something like stain all the large primer stuff red.

Then when you pick brass up, you know anything red is GTG, and anything else needs close inspection.

[Blowout]

OP, since your loading mixed headstamp, do you notice a change in POI that can be traced back to the headstamp? What do your groups look like with the Nosler BT?

Seems you have enough primer and powder so you don't have to do load development for some time unless you change bullets.

[nlvmike]

I do not notice a change that I can trace back to the brass. Take into account that I am usually the variable in my groups anyway. I felt the same way about the loads I worked up, then SPS went out of stock on the bullets I was buying, and they cost a LOT more elsewhere. Ugh.

[Luis_R.]

I do not notice a change that I can trace back to the brass. Take into account that I am usually the variable in my groups anyway. I felt the same way about the loads I worked up, then SPS went out of stock on the bullets I was buying, and they cost a LOT more elsewhere. Ugh.

Give them a couple of months, they will restock them.

Semper Fi,

Luis R.