223 Brass Neck Cracks

[school of mines]

I reload 223 shells for my AR15 and in my last set I had a couple of my rounds have cracked necks after firing. I am looking for input on how to prevent this. I carefully inspect the brass prior to reloading and am still having failures. Should I just reload the cases so many times and then scrap them out? I don't care to anneal them. Thanks for the help!

[versifier]

If you don't care to anneal them, which is the only answer to your (fairly common and easily remedied) problem, then toss them. Most reloaders I know anneal every five loadings, sometimes more often for specific firearms. That is how to prevent neck splits, although a .22lr conversion kit would also solve your problem. It's just another facet of the loading process, and one it's probably about time for you to learn if you want your brass to last.

[school of mines]

Versifier,

OK so I spent a couple hours researching annealing brass and think I'll give it a whirl. Should I anneal the brass before I deprime/resize or after?

Merry Christmas

[versifier]

Usually my necks split when the expander ball of the sizing die is pulled through, though sometimes it happens during bullet seating. Usually the only time I see them splitting on firing it is when the brass is very old, though I know it can often happen in mil chambers like you are seeing. I usually do it before sizing to avoid any possible problems. Then I give the cases a day or more to dry out before processing them as usual.

I just use a small disposable cylinder propane torch, rotate the case mouths in the hot part of the flame and drop them into water as soon as their heads get too warm to comfortably hang onto with bare fingers. The larger the chamber as compared to the cases' dimensions after sizing, the more the brass gets worked each time, and the more often annealing needs to be done. An old SMLE in .303Brit my friend owned needed to have its cases annealed before every FL sizing.

I get a lot of free range brass in the common cartridges, so these days I only do it for the oddballs, but I shoot a lot of oddballs. The exception is for case forming .30 Herretts and necking up or down (unless the brass is brand new unfired). Before I happened onto the "goldmine", I did it to all my rifle cases. Collet neck sizers from Lee (and I have a bunch of custom ones, too) are as far as I'm concerned a godsend for my single shots and bolt actions as they work the necks so much less than conventional NS dies (no expander ball) and allow me to do it much less often, sometimes as seldom as every ten loadings. For my Garand and M1A, both of which have fairly large chambers but I can't neck size for due to feeding issues I must anneal every five firings if I want the brass to last. Fortunately I now get a few thousand .308 and .30-06 at the range every year, so it's not as bad as it used to be. I expect you will have similar issues with your AR.

If you keep good records, you should be able to tell after how many loading the splits begin to happen to each lot and brand of brass and that will give you a clear idea of when to anneal them. If I start noticing problems at the seventh loading (which I do in the M1 and M1A), then I anneal after the fifth firing. Sometimes it's a waste of time as with some brands of cheap foreign mil brass I must trim after every sizing - those get tossed when they would need a sixth trimming, so they don't last long enough to need annealing. Good USmil and American commercial cases do last, so they get one or two annealings in their lifetimes.

Since I can get twenty and often more loadings from decent cases for my single shots and bolts, they obviously get annealed much more often and it can double or more my average case life. With rarer and wildcat cases like 6.5x54M/S and .30-223, it makes enjoying those rifles possible and affordable.

[runfiverun]

and don't over do the annealing.
you don't want it to get to the red hot stage.
use the temp-il-lack.

[school of mines]

Just finished annealing my first batch! It was kind of exciting to do for the first time. I watched a youtube video on how to do it and followed his procedure. We'll see how these turned out.