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I have a about 1500 once fired Lake Cities military brass I bought at auction. They are heavy duty brass in 556. Converting to reloadable .223 takes a little work but it is a 1 time deal and they then can be reloaded many times. I do it as follows
1. Lube, I lube the inside of the necks with Hornady hot shot spray lube and an old barrel swab, then spritz the cases with the spray lube and roll them on a pad. Quick, easy, works great.
2. decap and full length resize
3. trim to .223 trim length and then campher the necks
4. ream or swage the crimp from the primer pockets. This is not optional
5. clean and polish in media tumbler, this removes all lube and cleans and polishes the cases
6. clean and debur the flash holes inside and out, I use the Lyman hand tool made for that purpose
You now have a strong durable .223 case. Mine have the LC head stamp, which is Lake Cities (Federal I think) . They are a little thicker than most commercial .223 brass so I started at minimum loads. Medium loads of several .223 powders all are producing right at 3300 fps using 50gr V Max.
.223 does not seem to be very picky about which powder you load. All the .223 appropriate powders I have used worked equally well, none really stand out as producing better groups. Hope this info is useful. Praire dogs will be appalled.
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