BHuij
Active Member
I have a bolt gun in .223 that shoots great with j-words, and am working on closing down group size as much as possible. To date I've only been running full-length sized brass, and I think shooting brass that's been fireformed to my chamber and then carefully sized so as to only bump the shoulder back 1-2 thousandths would make a noticeable difference.
Primers and powder are impossible to find right now of course, unless you want to pay 1000% normal market value (literally saw a brick of CCI 400 SRPs for sale yesterday from an online retailer for $234 + hazmat + shipping... disgusting). Unfortunately there's no way around needing to use a primer for fireforming. Powder however... well I have a couple of pounds of Accurate #2 that I have never been impressed with in any pistol load I've ever tried it in. Using that would let me preserve my dwindling supply of good .223 powder.
Burn rate of AA#2 is a hair faster than Unique and actually somewhat slower than Red Dot. I see cast .223 loads around various websites and forums in the neighborhood of 7.5ish grains for both of those two powders, both yielding velocity around 2k FPS. If even Red Dot doesn't cause a dangerous pressure spike in a .223 case at that load, that would suggest to me that AA#2 at that charge weight should be safe too.
Only concern is that 7.5 grains of AA#2 (a particularly fine/dense powder) is probably something like 25% case fill. Hence the idea of using the minimum amount of dacron I could get away with to hold the powder down against the primer, so I can avoid hangfires, bad ignitions, etc. that could result from powder being that loose in the case.
Reddit has ripped me a new orifice for even suggesting a pistol powder AND filler in a .223 case, never mind the charge. Is this as stupid of an idea as these people are making it seem, or could this be done safely with AA#2? I have some 2400 powder as well that I could use, and the loads I see for cast .223 over 2400 are more like 11 grains, so I'm guessing I'd be okay with no filler there. However, I actually have other uses for 2400, so if I can get the same results (50-100 cases of fireformed brass) with AA#2, I'd rather use that.
Anyone done this before and have some wisdom?
Primers and powder are impossible to find right now of course, unless you want to pay 1000% normal market value (literally saw a brick of CCI 400 SRPs for sale yesterday from an online retailer for $234 + hazmat + shipping... disgusting). Unfortunately there's no way around needing to use a primer for fireforming. Powder however... well I have a couple of pounds of Accurate #2 that I have never been impressed with in any pistol load I've ever tried it in. Using that would let me preserve my dwindling supply of good .223 powder.
Burn rate of AA#2 is a hair faster than Unique and actually somewhat slower than Red Dot. I see cast .223 loads around various websites and forums in the neighborhood of 7.5ish grains for both of those two powders, both yielding velocity around 2k FPS. If even Red Dot doesn't cause a dangerous pressure spike in a .223 case at that load, that would suggest to me that AA#2 at that charge weight should be safe too.
Only concern is that 7.5 grains of AA#2 (a particularly fine/dense powder) is probably something like 25% case fill. Hence the idea of using the minimum amount of dacron I could get away with to hold the powder down against the primer, so I can avoid hangfires, bad ignitions, etc. that could result from powder being that loose in the case.
Reddit has ripped me a new orifice for even suggesting a pistol powder AND filler in a .223 case, never mind the charge. Is this as stupid of an idea as these people are making it seem, or could this be done safely with AA#2? I have some 2400 powder as well that I could use, and the loads I see for cast .223 over 2400 are more like 11 grains, so I'm guessing I'd be okay with no filler there. However, I actually have other uses for 2400, so if I can get the same results (50-100 cases of fireformed brass) with AA#2, I'd rather use that.
Anyone done this before and have some wisdom?
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