New to reloading .223

[newguy07]

I have been reloading pistol cartridges for awhile in .38, .44, and .40. I just ordered a SW AR in .223 and will likely want to reload for it. Aside from the dies what else will I need to purchase? What else do I need to know about reloading rifle versus pistol? I have a lee 4hole classic turret press.

[Don H]

Do you have calipers, scale, reloading manuals? Case trimmer?

[Unclenick]

Did you check out the reloader equipment basics sticky? A basic rule for reloading: Find at least three published sources of data and use the lowest starting loads among the three.

To decide which powder to use, try the old 85% rule. Basically, take a case fired in your chamber and that you have not yet decapped or resized. Weigh it together with a bullet of the type you intend to use. Fill the case with water and push the bullet in to its target seating depth (this squirts water out). Dry excess water off and weigh the case, bullet, and water. Subtract the dry weight you got before.

What results is the case water capacity under your bullet in grains. Multiply that by 0.85 to get the 85% weight. Now look through the load data to find the powders that give you the highest velocities with your bullet weight and that charge weight. They tend to be good candidates.

[4runnerman]

Unclenick---Your intelligence never ends. Thanks for the 85% rule. Never heard of it before,but you have me very intrested and off on another tangent here

[Jim243]

Unclenick, now that is neat. (a great idea)

Thanks
Jim

[mehavey]

I was scratching my head on that one until I realized that "85%" was an approximation of the powder's specific gravity (relative to water), and that the rule gives you ~100% full case.

I Googled around and found the exact densities one might use for several of the different powders here:

http://tinyurl.com/caxopmj

Really nifty idea......

[amathis]

I'm going to have to try that Unclenick. I always try to find powders to take up the space in my case but more than likely its trial and error based on the random powders I have access to. This may make things a bit easier

[Hawky]

If you going to re-use military brass you may want to get a swager to remove the crimp to the primer pocket. Also the Lee factory crimp die.

[Edward429451]

If you're loading for an AR save some money and buy the small base dies first.

[Unclenick]

The 85% rule is one I got from the Precision Shooting Reloading Guide about 15 years ago. It works best with single base stick powders, like the IMR powders, most of which have specific gravities in the range of .85 and up. Double-base stick powders will probably do better with 90% of water weight, and spherical propellants would probably do better with 97%, as those numbers are more typical of the low end of bulk density for those types of powders.

Once you narrow to a few powder choices, you can double-check the density issue using the Lee VMD tables, here. These numbers are the portion of a cubic centimeter occupied by one grain of the powder. Just multiply them by 15.432 and divide the result into the water capacity of your case. That will give you the number of grains of that powder the case will hold when it is 100% full. Ideally you would like a manual load that gives you among the highest velocities near there.

Note that Western gives VMD's for their Ramshot powders in both metric and English units (cc/gram and cc/grain). They're the only company I've noticed publishing that information. They also publish the lot-to-lot variation in VMD, which is useful to be aware of. One lot of powder might be, say 5% different from another, and that's why you work with percentages near the low end of density, above. You're not wanting to start compressing if you don't have to.

By the way, assuming you don't overpressure the gun and start stretching metal, which can reverse the trend over a short range (it's a pressure sign), you'll find velocity tends to increase monotonically with powder charge, both going up or coming down in about the same ratio over the range manual data normally represents. So, if you find load date listing two velocities for two charges that your 85% (or 90% or 97%) charge weight falls between, you can interpolate. Subtract the higher velocity from the lower and subtract the higher charge weight from the lower, then divide the first result by the second. That will give you the approximate number of feet per second per grain (fps/gr) the powder produces in that charge weight range. Just multiply your 85% (or other % value) charge weight by this number to estimate the velocity that charge weight would produce with that powder for comparison to other powders.