Chills1994

When I was shooting a Brig 92FS, the MecGar 20 rounders in 9mm, would usually hold 15 rounds of .40S&W (for those few times I tried shooting Major with a Brig 96FS) There might have been one or two mags that I could force 16 into, but that was more like the exception instead of the rule. That was the usual standard plastic MecGar base. I never tried anybody else’s mag bases. FWIW, way back then, I also had a Glock 22 with standard capacity type mags. I traced around the Glock mag with like a red ink pen or marker. Then I placed a Beretta 92 mag on top of that original red outline, and traced around the Beretta mag with a green pen. I also took measurements with my digital calipers. Almost 15 years later, I still have no idea how Glock does it.

That must have been with PMC brass, because before that I had used a .245 bushing with Lake City brass. I have a label maker, so I am pretty good, usually at slipping the label over the die:

I finally made it over to my reloading shop. Turns out the last time I did SPaRR, I used a 0.248 bushing in the Redding S die :

Since I trimmed my .223 brass to 1.740” using the Dillon Rapid Trimmer, on subsequent firings/reloadings it seems like all the brass stays under the max length of 1.760” . So I have separate load toolhead for my 650 that is: 1. Universal decapper 2. Redding S die with a neck bushing and no decapping rod expander ball 3. Empty 4. Dillon powder measure, retrograded…. Yes at station #4 5. Bullet seating die . I call it Single Pass Rifle Reloading (SPaRR). It goes rather fast. Of course, with no M die, I use boattail bullets with that toolhead /method .

Heck yeah it is! Especially if you are reloading on a progressive. Some dude on the “Hide” was selling Nosler 55 grainer flat base bullets. With the M die’s mandrel screwed down just enough to put a slight flare on the case mouth, I was able to seat those flat base Noslers without having them fall off the top of the case AND my fingers didn’t get mashed trying to keep the bullet vertical as it entered the seating die.

Aaaahhh! Okay! Anywhoo… Not to add any more confusion to my posts here in this thread, but there are these as well: Butttt…. I would think that if you are reloading .223 Remington especially for just an AR15, then a Lyman M die should be good enough. As a side note, I just got in a Redding S die for .22-250 that I ordered back in June. I would like to think I have a good collection of neck bushings. But I have this feeling that I will end up swapping out the bushing back and forth between the .223 and .22-250 die.

Just curious… how are you getting whatever psi reading or indication when seating bullets? DIYguy…. when I get back to my reloading shop, I will take a look at which bushing I have in my .223 Redding S die (without the decapping rod assembly). This is for Lake City brass. I haven’t checked the other brass I have for neck thickness. FWIW, I am reloading on my 650. If I trim, I do NOT use a deburring/chamfering tool. Instead I will rely on wet tumbling to remove any inside or outside burr. After drying the brass…, For one of my .223 load toolheads, station #1 has a Lyman M die to knock off any remaining inside burr. This is all done for the sake of speed / expediency / convenience.

If this is for a single stage press, about the only reason I could see somebody using an M die is if they wanted to knock off any inside burr from the case mouth….left over from trimming. Me? Personally? If using a single stage and a Redding S type die with a neck bushing, I would go with a “slick” decapping rod (no expander ball) if that’s possible. If the decapping rod assembly still forces you to use an expander ball, then I would go to the next size down which should be whatever a .204 Ruger uses.

There is some relationship between the orifice size, the temperature of the melt, the surface tension of the melt (which could mean antimony and/or tin content) and the head pressure of the melt above the orifices which can all have an effect on droplet/shot size. There is a pretty good thread about shot making in the reloading section of the Shotgun World forum.

My shotmaker throws closer to a #7 . I started out with really big hex headed bolts + Tweeco wire welding tips + channel iron + angle iron + broiler element + ammo can filled with water . I think my Tweeco wire welding tips were meant for 0.023” wire. At some later date I bought the dripper bolts from “Jim Stewart’s Better Shot Maker” in different orifice sizes that should have dropped #7.5’s and #9’s . But IIRC, they all dropped the same size.

Thanks for posting those primer sizes. I have had a Mec 9000 sitting on my reloading room floor for about the past 10 years. At the Grand earlier this year, I picked up my first brick of shotgun primers. They were Cheddites. There is kind of a local place near me that deals in reloading supplies. So about a month and a half ago, I bought another brick of Cheddites. That was $45 ( IIRC ). I also picked up a 25 pound bag of #8’s . (Even though I made my own shotmaker around 2007. A guy I used to shoot matches with was a mechanic at a Toyota dealership. He would bring me 100 pounds of wheel weights. I would bring 50 pounds of my homemade birdshot.)

I have Tubb’s video on VHS. Yeah, it’s been a while and/or I am dating myself . Let me see if these pics will load. I can’t recall if Tubb said how he tweaked his 550: or if the particular 1050 mentioned here had improvements made to it:

Yes, 100 yards. I never said any one way of dispensing powder or charging cases was better than the others. I just ASSumed since our OP is asking about reloading .223 and commercially available pre-processed brass, that it is for an AR15 and not some high zoot F-class bolt action rifle. I could be wrong though. To a degree, reloading for an AR15, especially on a progressive press with Dillon’s volumetric powder measure, sacrifices some accuracy for the sake of efficiency in order to reload in bulk. If our OP wants to use a Prometheus or Auto Trickler to make reloads for his 16 inch barreled M4gery, I’m not going to stop him. Since the OP prefaced his comment by saying he has reloaded 6.5 Creedmoor, I am sure he has already seen the myriad of ways people can be anal retentive with reloading (weighing cases, flashole deburring, primer pocket uniforming, neck turning, weighing primers, weighing bullets, trickling up powder charges, strictly neck sizing, annealing cases, so on and so forth). That rabbit hole can get very deep. Some guns in some calibers just aren’t worth that much effort.

Uggg… who wants to shave necks on .223 ammo that is going to be blasted through an AR15? Forget that!

To answer the OP’s second question about “how to tell the number of times the brass has been fired?” If it is Lake City brass or some other military brass with crimped in primers, you go to knock the old primer out….to decap it…. Then when you try to reprime it, your new primers won’t go in at all or won’t go in smoothly, then the crimp is still there. That is how you know it is once fired brass. You will have to remove the crimp before repriming them. And then reloading them for the very first time.

Define match grade? These were made on a Dillon with the Dillon powder measure:

I can tell you this about my experience using once fired commercially processed brass. Some of the 2,000 pieces I bought are suffering from a banana shape. In turn, that causes the loaded rounds to have runout issues or concentricity issues. Now, whether that was : A. an original manufacturing defect from the Lake City arsenal or B. A side effect of being fired from a military machine gun or some ragged out M-16/M-4 or C. A side effect from being processed on a motorized 1050 or D. All of the above remains to be seen. But what sucks is I probably cranked out 300 rounds with 69gr SMKs, and probably another 200 rounds with 77gr SMKs only to discover that I was getting 3 inch to 4 inch groups at 100 yards. Arrrgghh!!! If I am paying a Cadillac price for a bullet, I expect Cadillac like groups at 100 yards. I have google searched my problem with my brass, and yes, there are a few websites that say the fired brass has become banana shaped because the brass is thinner on one side. It started out as a manufacturing defect. Soooo….I’ll never buy processed brass ever again. Call it once burnt twice shy. I have a 650 with the Swage It tool for getting rid of the crimps. Plus I have gobs of Federal (aka LC) factory XM193 and XM855 ammo that I save the brass from. So I can QA/QC the brass from start to finish and be assured of the final results. Here is a vide of my reloads in a concentricity gauge: And as a comparison, here is some Black Hills factory ammo that has produced the best groups of any 55 grainer I have ever shot:

Is anybody making kydex holsters for these (or any other Hi Power) yet?

I didn’t know that. But as it turns out, 1911HALLOWEEN also works for 1911 grips.

VZ grips is offering up a coupon code for something like 20% off for Hi Power grips. But it’s only good til midnight. Try HPHALLOWEEN for the coupon code.

That thought had crossed my mind.

Needless to say, I don’t shoot those very often. From the pics of this SA 35, it looks like Springfield Armory didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to the beavertail or the hammer. I was really hoping that they would extend the beavertail like Nighthawk Custom did with theirs.

I have two of the Browning High Powers that Israel surplused out a few years ago (pay attention to the hammer):

But you are only getting 15 rounds of 9mm shoved into them. 9mm is still considered minor in Limited, right? if they made a .40 cal version, then it might hold just 12 rounds. soooo….Limited 10? Or IDPA’s ESP division Or Steel Challenge in “limited”??? if you could find a holster that works.

Where would these new Hi Powers fit competition wise?