5.56 & 223 Brass Tests - Part 2

welcome back guys today I want to continue our brass tests for 223 and five five six if you missed the last video we picked out five different head stamps of 223 and five five six brass loaded them all up with an identical load went and shot them and we took some readings of case weight average you know average case weight and how much that deviated we measured case capacity and how much that deviated we measured velocity we measured velocity you know the standard deviation of the velocity of course we measured group size so we just kind of looked at the results and tried to make you know make come to as many conclusions as possible we had to test guns in that video this was our target right if you remember this crazy stuff and we had velocity and we were talking about case capacity and and and whatnot the results were interesting and we'll review some of the results from video one at the end of this once we get some results from these additional from head stamps that I want to test from the first test I think I proved to myself at least in a preliminary manner that the two guns I tested with showed similar trends with the different brass so I want to switch to just using one test gun but I want to do ten shot groups this time to maybe get a better idea about accuracy you know five shot groups weren't quite enough for me to feel comfortable make you know coming to conclusions on accuracy so I want to shoot ten shot groups where we're going to use my colt 556 AR le 69 20 and otherwise we're going to try to duplicate the previous test just with seven new head stamps so me run through the head stamps for you real quick all right here's the brass lineup for today's video see if I can get these without too much glare the first here is federal two two three the last video we did we did federal five five six so this is this is the two to three head stamp next up if is very Glary oh this is Remington RP two to three head stamp next is pp you 223 WCC five five six unfortunately with the WCC's I wasn't able to match up all of the dates so you can see like there's a 13 there's an O nine so there's a 12 I think so unfortunately I didn't have enough to to match the dates but it's good enough to test with next is perfect 223 and let's see next tray first up is Lake City these are all 13s so Lake City thirteen five five six and PSD five five six and those are all PSD for teens so there we go PSD Lake City perfect WCC ppyou Remington and federal so there's another factor that is very important when grading brass I guess we could call it and that is the the flash hole and whether or not that flash hole is centered let me see if I can get you a picture of this guy this is is an example of one that has a very out of ciner flash hole if you can't read it this is a perfecta and looking at these seven perfecta is the only one that has just awful out of center off-centered flash holes all of the others seem okay including PP u the PP use are fine and one thing I'm wondering about this PP you this did come from a box of their match ammo this stuff shot really well in my gun like this was uh this was a surprisingly accurate ammo for me so I don't know whether their match stuff has any better brass than the cheaper stuff we may you know we'll look into that later but later on in the video at you know at the end once we're kind of looking over the results I'll pull out the the brass from last time and inspect those flash holes I know that PMC had some that were off-center but I'm pretty sure that normal wolf the federal 556 at Hornady which were the others we tested last time we're all centered okay but I'll pull those out later and we'll verify it and we'll make that an additional additional check that we do on this brass as we test I don't know if this this will be the last one the last video or whether we'll just keep on going with this that probably depends on what we find and what we're able to to conclude from the data we're using the same load as last time which is 23 grains of AR comp with CCI number 41 primers and 69 [Applause] yep should have seen that coming alright stay close 69 green sierra matchking so that's our bullet that's our powder that's our primer these these cases have already been prepped I resized all of them they've obviously been wet tumbled these are all just range pickups except for that that the PPU that I showed you I don't think I shot any of these originally so these are all range pickups so they were all wet tumbled and then resized trimmed military crimps were removed from the from the ones that were crimped and the case mouths were chamfered and ebert so these guys are ready for primers that's what I'm going to be doing next I'll probably skip over the vast majority of the reloading steps here like I did in the last video and just get them knocked out and we'll get out to the range and shoot them okay so as promised we have skipped over most of the loading here just finishing up the last of the bullets eating right now and I just buggered up that one a little bit that it's not bad make sure I didn't damn it down into the case or something nope two point two six zero still good alright twenty in this box 50 in this box so let's get out and see how they shoot okay 70 rounds of ammo to shoot so let's get started I am using my Colt upper my Colt le 69 20 upper but I have switched out the lower for my the one that's normally on my 16-inch 300 blackout and that's to take advantage of the better trigger here so I've got this has a CMC three and a half pound trigger we should do a little bit better than the than the factory Colt lower I've been shooting a few shots through it to make sure it's cited in so the guns warmed up ready to rock so let's start out our first brass to test is Lake City ten shot groups we are at a hundred yards okay next up is WCC alright our next contender is federal 223 okay fourth up is PSD okay next up is perfecta I'll tell you all of these I seeded them probably a little bit too long it is there you know almost all of them are dragging the nose on the magazine just a little bit not a huge deal it's been okay but if we happen to have a failure to feed or something that might be why okay PPU 223 okay last up Remington Peters RP alright overall I see a whole lot of consistency so let's let's get to the bench see what we can make you this so I've been just sitting here staring at the wall because I'm not sure how to explain what I need to explain here I've got a lot of data and I'm not sure which conclusions I can come to and then support it with actual good information so let's just dive into it I took all 70 of the cases that we fired in this video I weighed them and I also weighed you know then filled them full of water and weighed them full of water to get an idea of how much water they hold just like the last video so I've got case weight case capacity in grains of water and of course we've got velocity and standard deviation as well let's look at the target there's our target nothing really jumps out so all of the groups were so our vest group was WCC at an inch and or no I'm sorry it was ppu at one point three inches WCC at one point five inches and then up our worst one was perfecta I'll tell you the one thing I'll say is perfect his crap those flash holes being way off centered they were they were bad well I showed it at the beginning of this video and I pulled out the 50 rounds we had shot from the last video you know those other five different head stamps and the only one that has any issue with off-centered flash holes is pmc and it is not nearly as bad as perfecta perfect as terrible pmc it's just slightly off-center sometimes you know a few cases so PMC I can almost give a pass but the perfect gap I won't be shooting perfecta and you can see it was the worst group of this video but just like the eyeball test looking at the looking at the group it wasn't even trying to group it just wasn't even trying to group so perfect it gets a thumbs down here's the next thing I want to show so PP u and w CC were our two best groups so they not only look like the best like from the eye test you know looking at which which which ones we're trying to group PP you and WCC we're definitely the ones trying their best to group and then of course then they were also the smallest on the ruler you know internet 1.3 inches in 1.5 inches if we go to the previous target the video are the target from the previous video the two best groups in this batch were federal 556 yea federal 2013 headstamp 556 and wolf so those were our two best groups so I'll come back to this but PP you WCC federal 556 and Wolf now I want to show you guys a chart and this is all of the brass we shot and I've got them sorted by case capacity so you can see the smallest case capacity was Norma the the green in the middle that's that's case capacity this is the smallest case capacity was Norma and the largest case capacity were PMC and Remington if you look there's a group of them that all have a case capacity of thirty point six grains of water federal five five six PP you WCC and Wolfe those are our four best groups those are the four head stamps that shot the best what that tells me is this load I was using you know 23 grains of AR comp with a two point two six zero overall length shoots the best with a case capacity of 30 point six those were those were the only four pieces you know head stamps that had a 30 point six grain water case capacity and they were the four best shooting groups now if we go back previous video when we're shooters we're a PMC and Norma you know which was really weird Norma's excellent brass but it shot one of the biggest groups last time and you know and and so did PMC if we go back to the chart you can see Norma is the smallest case capacity so it's four tenths of a grain off on case capacity from our thirty point six golden loads and what I say PMC is although that's the biggest case capacity 30 point nine so that's three tenths of a grain bigger more case capacity so I think all I've really done here you know proven to myself maybe is that you got a load worked up and you're looking to switch head stamps case capacity is pretty critical right or if you take one of your favorite loads and load it up into some some brass and new brass or something and it doesn't shoot now it might be what's going on you know it seems that just like we have a small window of charged weight that works best for us that needs to be paired up with a specific case capacity of our brass what that brings me to is most of the group size is probably not all that relevant right what's a lake city shot pretty poorly 1.9 inch group I know Lake City brass shoots great so I think it's just a matter of this load so Lake City let's see what was it it's thirty point seven so it's just a touch more case capacity then the ones that shot the best so maybe you know another tenth or two of powder charge would bring that would tighten those guys up and bring them in line with phase so that's kind of what yeah I'm just I'm struggling here to to gather my thoughts I really am with such a limited amount of shots you know I think it's just we can only really make the broadest of conclusions and none of them shot terrible even perfecta with it's super goofy flash holes it was still respectable but that's a good enough reason for me to say I'm not going to use that but all of the others shot respectable they absolutely shot respectable so if we go back to the chart here velocities were all kind of you know whatever the shots are you know the head stamps from the last video we were working on five shot groups so like that PMC was the lowest velocity and it had that really good standard deviation number of 3.9 I think that was probably a fluke velocity this time didn't like last the end of the last video it seemed to clearly trend with case capacity and it still kind of does but there are a few exceptions to that rule but looking at the chart like I guess you could say that you know the the smaller case capacity had the higher velocities for the most part except for a couple outliers I was happy with all of the you know your face weights varied from Norma at 102 grains all the way down to Remington ninety four point eight grains all of them were pretty darn consistent looking at like the standard deviation of case weight not bad less than a grain all of them so nothing to get excited about there yes so the the case capacity tells me that you know it is worthwhile to to separate your head stamps and anytime you're carrying about accuracy at all you know to just try and shoot the same head stamp if you possibly can just from you know the varying group sizes we saw here with the same load I think that's that's useful so I guess that's about it I kind of feel like I'm limping home here no earth-shattering conclusions were come to but I think we've at least proven that just about any 223 or 556 brass it out there will get the job done for you watch out for goofy flash holes and otherwise just you know match up head stamps and go out and shoot good groups so I think that's it we'll go ahead and wrap this up I don't have any more testing planned unless you guys bring up some good questions or or come up with you know things I did wrong or things that need tested further but at this point I think we're good and I feel pretty good about using whatever the frickin brass that's laying around as long as it has good flash holes so alright I will see you guys next time you

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 19,895

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Id: QHSim_bAhs4

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2016