Howdy,
I posted awhile back with my first 9mm rounds, and so far have reloaded 250 of those and all worked well. I just recently got 223 dies, bullets, and powder. Here's my test loads that I'm starting with:
Hornady 55gr FMJ-BT bullets
Hodgdon H4895 powder
2.20" COL
5 rounds with PPU cases @ 21.0gr
5 rounds with FC cases @ 23.0gr
I chose H4895 since it is so versatile and allows for 60% reduced loads. The starting load is 25.0gr with these bullets, and 26.0gr max. So, I could go down to 26.0 x 60% = 15.6, but I decided to start with 21.0 (since 223 doesn't even have much recoil anyway). I'm planning to load 30-06 in the near future too, so this will be nice for range rounds with less recoil.
I'm excited to try these out and do some more testing with 23.5, 24.5 and 25.5 loads or something of that sort.
Please let me know how these look! I did a light crimp as well (Lee die sets ftw). I got a tumbler too now, so working on getting better results in the future, but these turned out clean and relatively shiny... using Nu Finish with walnut media.
I posted awhile back with my first 9mm rounds, and so far have reloaded 250 of those and all worked well. I just recently got 223 dies, bullets, and powder. Here's my test loads that I'm starting with:
Hornady 55gr FMJ-BT bullets
Hodgdon H4895 powder
2.20" COL
5 rounds with PPU cases @ 21.0gr
5 rounds with FC cases @ 23.0gr
I chose H4895 since it is so versatile and allows for 60% reduced loads. The starting load is 25.0gr with these bullets, and 26.0gr max. So, I could go down to 26.0 x 60% = 15.6, but I decided to start with 21.0 (since 223 doesn't even have much recoil anyway). I'm planning to load 30-06 in the near future too, so this will be nice for range rounds with less recoil.
I'm excited to try these out and do some more testing with 23.5, 24.5 and 25.5 loads or something of that sort.
Please let me know how these look! I did a light crimp as well (Lee die sets ftw). I got a tumbler too now, so working on getting better results in the future, but these turned out clean and relatively shiny... using Nu Finish with walnut media.