I have started buying 'processed' once shot .223 military brass from online suppliers. I just finished sorting headstamps from my first order and couldn't be more impressed with the product.
I've been reloading for several decades and I'm pretty darned anal about preparing my brass for reloading. I blueprint my brass before reloading it. A question I have is on sorting brass for the different military head stamps. Is the Mil-Spec specification military brass is produced to tight enough to make sorting military brass by head stamp necessary? I understand the difference between military brass and commercial brass (different brass alloy), but I wonder if sorting military brass by head stamp is really necessary (for best accuracy/consistency). I never have and probably won't start mixing military head stamps, unless I get a lot of people telling me they have and don't have accuracy issues. Comments?

Best way to sort it is by weight. It's heavier than commercial brass because it's thicker. You'll have to work up loads for it carefully as it won't hold as much powder as commercial brass thus increasing pressure.

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Bob from Idaho

It depends what kind of shooting you are doing? All Lake City (LC), for example, should be similar enough that you won't see an accuracy difference in service rifle match shooting except at 600 yards. As the years go by, the tooling that makes the brass wears out and is replaced, so for long range matches I do keep the year the same then sort them by weight looking for weights that have more cases hitting them than others. Those often identify a set of tools. Sort them after the blueprinting because then you are matching case powder capacity, as well, which helps at long range.

Keep in mind that the military hard brass is for withstanding loose full auto chambers. You won't subject it to that, but the harder alloy will work harden faster than soft commercial stuff, so be prepared to anneal case necks every four or five loadings. Also try to set up your sizing dies to just bump the shoulder back slightly for long range, then load them singly for that course of fire. That will help the hard brass keep from cracking at the pressure ring and letting the heads separate.

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Nick

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