Don't worry about the speed of reloading, you should only worry about the accuracy and consistency. Lake City is fine. I've used swagers and reamers to deal with the crimps.Starting the reloading process for the 223. This is a much slower pace than I am used to lol. Was able to resize and trim a few hundred pieces of brass. About 90% of my brass is Lake City so I'm at a stand still for priming until I get a primer pocket reamer.
I have a Forster bench rest full sizing die. Anywhere from 3-15 rounds in, the decapping pin would stay stuck in the primer and fall out. Extremely frustrating. Is there a trick to this or could it be due to the crimped primer pockets being harder to remove?
Also plan on loading berrys 55 grain BT bullets with Winchester 748 powder. The Modern Reloading manual has it at 26.2gr min AND 26.2gr as the max load at 2.165oal. Lymans 50th has it as 25.0gr min and 27.8 max at 2.260oal. Anyone have any recommendation for starting? I'm thinking to do 26.0gr at 2.260oal?
As far as the de-capping pin goes - that's weird, what die are you using for that? I gave up on the de-capping when full length sizing my brass. There is a separate universal de-capping die I use - you just have to be careful because the flash holes are different sizes between things like small primer and large primer brass.
As far as the powder loads go - yep. Different manuals have very different powder loads. It's a process for sure. If you're shooting for accuracy, load some rounds at the minimum level and go up. I usually look at 3-4 different reloading manuals and start in the middle of their recommendations. Guns are strong - if you don't do anything idiotic, you're probably going to be fine.