dauntedfuture

I don't think that will happen.

Ok... getting back on topic, I don't think that the issue has been properly identified "the rifle chambered in 223 REM fails to eject the casing after 2-3 rounds and it is really stuck." A failure to eject is when the spent case is still in the upper and fails to come all the way out. A failure to extract is when the case is stuck in the chamber. I don't see information on the make and model of the rifle. I suspect that the chamber is too tight for either .223 or 5.56mm. Don't get wrapped up in .223 vs 5.56mm. If this was a bargain gun show special rifle, im even more inclined to say its the chamber.

I load everything with 24.2 tac that way I don't have to mess with the measurer. Everything from 55's to 82's shoot well enough. I have not tried as light as 40's but its in the agenda for the winter.

Most ARs are not capable of benchrest accuracy, the ones that are, are few and far between. Years ago there was an article in precision shooting about a guy that took his AR to a benchrest match and actually did well...with one group out of the rifle. The proof is in the pudding so they say and a group at one range is exactly that, a group at that range. A rifle that will shoot 1" at 100 yds is not a rifle that will shoot 10" at 1000; in theory yes its possible....in reality not likely.... If your rifle shoots well with 77 SMKs use them for LR and try some nosler 77s for short range, I suspect that the noslers will shoot better then 2 MOA if your rifle will shoot 1/2" or better with 5 shots at 100 yds with the sierras. Nosler 77s in bulk are not much more then Hornady 55's.

If my rifle was shooting like that i would take a serious look at the scope and barrel wolf ammo does not even shoot that bad and that stuff sucks

If your gun will shoot 1 hole at 100yds enter a benchrest competition. 1.5 at 60 yds does not tell you much and thats more like 1.5 at 60 yds. 2" @ 100 yds is 2 moa. If your rifle really shoots that much better with ??weight smk bullets and RL15 then i woukd try your 55s with that same load. If it really shoots 1.5@60 and no better then i would reserve the 55s for 100 and in.

Buy a new barrel

I think you might think about asking yourself a few more questions in an attempt to quantify ".223 out to 600 yds." Almost any .223, or .22 lr will travel 600 yds. What do you want to do at 600 yds and or what game are you playing, what kind of accuracy do you need? NRA Highpower, which I have lots of experience in is very different then 3 gun which is also different then bench rest. Since this is mostly a 3 gun forum, I have to assume you are wanting to shoot 3 gun which requires less accuracy then NRA HP and much much less then BR ever will. My standard for 3 gun is a 10 shot group at 200 yds that's 2-3". that's it... for my NRA HP rifles, I can and have held 1-2" groups at 200 with iron sights so much more prep work is required for my NRA HP Ammunition. You also should think about bucking the wind or having a flatter trajectory for 3 gun. I like 77's for 200 yd+ stages because they shoot better in my guns and buck the wind better. many top shooters run factory 55 FMJ all the time for 3 gun. If your focus is really at 600 yds then I suspect that your going to want a heavy match bullet because it will buck the wind better. If you have a 5 round group with Hornady 77's that's 1.03 at 100 yds then I suspect that a sierra, berger or Lapua 77 will shoot better but they do cost more. Sorting brass by weight and head stamp will help decrease Extreme Spread (ES) which I think is really more important then Standard deviation (SD) because even 10 rounds will not really provide a statistically accurate SD. ES will be a reliable indicator that something is "wrong" or more sorting, weighting, turning necks etc. is required even with 5-10 rounds. Sounds like you are making progress. Good luck and think more about what you really want your rifle to do and how much money you want to spend. Don't get discouraged if your rifle is not shooting great. Experience tells me that many more people claim their rifles are "Sub MOA all day long" then actually are. A three shot 1.0" group at 100 yds is a far cry from a 10 shot 1" 100 yd group. food for thought; You can often pick a few pellets out of a pattern of buckshot that will be "sub MOA" but that does still not make my benelli a precision rifle.

your asking the wrong question. You should be asking yourself how well your load shoots and if its reliable. You have plenty of velocity.

There are many good options out there. Look for ones that have a carbide expander button or it as an option as its worth it. I don't own carbide rifle dies and im not sure there is a need. Don't worry about bushing dies for "normal stuff" they are sometimes more of a headache then they are worth. I have 8-10 .223 dies and of them all I like the Foster dies the best with a carbide button and a hornady lock ring. They size the necks just about right with LC brass and they are 25-28.00. Consider running a RCBS lube die in station one as a decapper; it will distribute the lube around the case, even it out a little and mop up any excess. I have been doing this for years but I still lube with Dillon spray lube first. Stay away from the Lee decapper as the shoulder on the decapping rod is sharp, I think redding has a nice tapered one if that's the route you want to go. Clean the brass well to start and lube well and let the lubed cases sit a few minutes before you run them.

or send them to me and ill make sure they are good

anyone know how firearms registration is going to work for the match?

yes they are.

I might suggest the following in attempt to expedite things: Buy a box of sierra, Berger or Lapua 69 or 77g bullets. Load them in a case with 24g of Varget, Reloader 15 or TAC and match primers. Shoot them at 200 yds. See how that Hornady stuff shoots or buy a box of Federal GM .223 and shoot it/ them at 200 yds. - If one of those suggested loads with one of those bullets does not shoot you have a rifle issue or a reloading process issue. If that hornady stuff or the federal stuff shoots good then you have a reloading issue. - Don't forget to adjust parallax. - Don't forget to include as much information as you can. " I shot a 1/4" group" is useless information.... 1/4" at 1 foot, 100 yds or 1000 yds... - The further range you can test ammunition the better; shoot 10 round groups and let the rifle cool a little in between. Its almost always hard to tell "Which is better" at 100 yds, its almost a statistic impossibility. At 200 or 300 or 600 its quite apparent....but we have to make due with what we have.

I have experimented with loading ammo for GI mags vs steel vs p mags vs cut front and with a bullet that's intended for magazine length it does not matter. That extra .01 or .02 will not make a difference. Federal GM is good shooting stuff and its loaded "short" and shoots great. The truth is that Load Tolerant Bullets (LTB) are not significantly affected by OAL. If you seated a, say 77g-whatever out so it was .005 off the lands vs magazine length about the only thing you would do is it would allow slightly more velocity with more powder for possibly less pressure. My advice to shooters backed by years of NRA HP competition is that unless your shooting VLD bullets, seating LTB or other "normal" bullets close to the lands rarely produces statistically and significantly smaller groups. What happens more often is that you start running out of bullet in the neck which reduces neck tension which increases your SD and ES. or to put this tangent all another way and tie this back to the 68g Hornady bullets, seat them to whatever magazine length. if you must shoot them, play with powder and primers. I would start with 24.2g of RL15 and a 7 1/2, but that's just me.

Good luck. If you really want to shoot at 600-800, and you want a magazine length bullet, I suggest you try a sierra 69-77 TMK, Hornady 75 or a 77g offering from Lapua or Berger or Sierra. All will work better then a 68g Hornady.

If you are working with 68-69g bullets in a 20" barrel for 600 yds you will not get 2900 fps. if you are testing powder charges you need to have 200, 300 yds, is better to do so. Testing ammo at 50 yds for LR accuracy is a waste of powder and barrel. About all you can do at 50 is check for stability. You need to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy, velocity and ES of your ammunition. For example, no matter how accurate the load is, at a certain point you will not be supersonic. also, no matter how accurate your load is, if your ES is not acceptable, you will have elevation problems. I would pick a 1 MOA load with an ES of 10 all day over a 1/4 MOA load with an ES of 50. 50 FPS for .223/.308 is about a minute at 600 and 2 Minutes at 1000 or so I think.

You don't have to remove one-shot but your ammo will puck up dirt. Try some alcohol and a towel to wipe them down. You can also tumble loaded ammo. I think you find the Dillon spray lube works better, with cases larger then .223 you can really tell a difference.

if you are working up loads for .223, you need to work in .2-.3g increments, 1g is way too much. try 24g of RL15, TAC, or Varget and see what happens, then "test to try to improve, I doubt there will be much improvement.

You have too much neck tension. This has nothing to do with the fact that you are shooting a 68g bullet. It has to do with your 55 FMJ bullets have a thick jacket that resists deformation and those 68g BTHP. You need also likely need to chamfer the cases if your scratching up bullets or expand the case mouth a little. Since you stated that the necks are .218-.221, and when we provide or talk about necks we are talking about outside diameter, your sizing the cases way too much and or not using an expander ball or using it correctly. On the off chance that the inside neck diameter is .218-221, you need to change out our dies, expander ball, get different cases, or turn your necks (not practical I suspect) so that your inside diameter of your cases are .221-.222 for .002-.003 of neck tension or .224-X=inside diameter. "Thought there might be too much friction but projectiles measure out right." The "friction" is from excessive neck tension, you can see it in the spot on the bullets where they are contacting the seating stem. It takes a lot of powder in a case to achieve the same effect.

I highly doubt this as they are using factory primers and they are all about the same size. I suspect that firing the cases did something to the dimensions or your are measuring wrong. If you fired ammunition in a huge chamber, I suppose the back of the case would smoosh out a little and shallow the pockets.

Accurate and IMR 4064 are different powders that both have 4064 in the name, that's how they are different. Data is not the same as they have different burn rates. I suspect that they are close and that Accurate is trying to cash in on IMR 4064's good name. This is much the same way that IMR and H 4895 are also not the same powders.

Setting up a SBD die is the same as any other die. Screwing down the die sizes the shoulder down more and further down the case but its movement of the shoulder that you are after to properly set up your dies. Contrary to some casual and incorrect you are not "bumping back" the shoulder, that's different the FL sizing or neck sizing. There is some spring in your shell plate on a Hornady LNL or a Dillon that you have to compress that you don't have to overcome with a single stage press. Provided you have several .223/5.56 rifles, I would set up the sizing die for the smallest chamber rifle.

A few observations from a guy with a 14.5" midlength gas "combat gun", several carbine gas 16" "combat" guns, a 16" carbine gas 3 gun, a 16.5" rifle gas 3 gun, 2 x 18" midlength gas 3 guns ( one with an A5 buffer) and several 20" AR service rifles. All the 3 gun rifles have adjustable gas systems and Low mass BCGs. - While subjective, I do believe that the rifle gas system will produce a perceived lesser recoil; I think that this is due to the lower rearward velocity of the BCG. Or to put it another way, the longer gas gives more of a shove vs a sharp push. I should think that energy required to return a carbine system vs rifle system would be about the same but the rifle system takes longer to operate so if feels less. - I believe that MOST rifle gas ports need to be bigger then the same barrel with a carbine gas system. - While my 14.5" and 18" guns are set up a little different, I think that the 14.5" midlength gas does produce less recoil and neither one of these guns have comps on them. - Rifle gas systems on a 16" barrel work just fine but the margin of operation is smaller then my 18" midlength guns. My 18" mid guns will run a wider variety of ammunition from light 40 and 55's to 77's all set to a 77g min-operation gas setting. - an adjustable gas system does not do as much on a 20" rifle gas barrel as it does on a 16" carbine gas barrel, I can crank the gas way down on the 16" carbine gas barrel, not so much on the 20", this tells me that the 16" carbine gas guns are getting way more gas then they need to operate or are generally overgassed. As such, these over-gassed carbine gas barrels benefit quite a bit from the adjustable gas system. - I am confident that once you put aj adjustable gas block and low(er) mass bolt in an AR the gas port size is no longer critical as the adjustable gas block no becomes the limiting factor.

Normally when people say they are out of elevation adjustment they mean that they need more up elevation. In your case you need more down if I understand correctly. Provided your scope is mounted correctly and everything is stated I suspect that your scope is broken.