Answer: Yes. Reloading is cheaper and usually more consistent. Therefore more accurate. Consistency lies with the one pulling the handle.

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CERAKOTE Svcs.
Class 01 FFL

That should keep you out of the taverns and off the street.

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That's just somebody talkin.

Agreed. I'm hesitant to always say that reloading always produces more accurate or more reliable ammo. Because I have seen a lot of people that just don't take the care needed.

I will say the following:

Reloading is easy and safe, so long as you treat it like it's hard and dangerous.

If you do your homework and put in the effort, you almost can't help but produce high-quality ammunition.

I'd have to say yes & no:
It really depends on what you want the ammo for. There's always 2 sides to every street.
One side:
It's hard to beat the price of the cheap steel cased wolf ammo.
You could sell your 1x brass to recoup some of the $$$ you spend on your cases of the brass cased ammo you buy.
The other side:
Where reloading your own 223 ammo really shines is the ability to upgrade your ammo for the same $$$ that you're paying for the cases of ammo. If your spending $330/1000 - $70 (sell the 1x cases for $.07 apiece), what can you actually put together for $260/1000.

Most have suggested cheap bullet, nothing wrong with that. But you could also buy bulk 62gr/68gr/69gr match grade bullets & load excellent highly accurate ammo for $260/1000.

Reloaders like myself look around and when deals come along we tend to buy in bulk. Last year cabella's had 1 heck of a deal going on with s&b primers ($100/5000 or $.02 apiece) along with free shipping (no hazmat). Needless to say a bunch of up ordered primers and powder. While their powder prices weren't that good the free shipping & no hazmat made it worth while. Some powders/loads take as much as 5gr more than other powders for the same load. Doesn't sound like much but if you found a load using 23gr of 1 powder or 26gr of another powder that's 280 loads more per 8# keg or $.01 difference per round @$170 for 8#. Ya I know 1 cent/penny, big deal!!! But that's 1 penny more for the same load towards the primers or better bullets.

Myself I reload the 223rem simply because I can not only make a better product for the $$$. I don't have to rely on others to have it on the shelves for me to buy.

I keep seeing threads like these pop-up all the time. It really got me thinking. Cheap & plinking coupled with 223 reloads. So I decided to actually take a hard look at those 3 works and put everything together and actually see what truly cheap 223 plinking ammo can do.

What is cheap:
Well, figured I'd start with a test bed for the reloads. So I went out and bought a savage axis combo, 1 of their hb bolt action packages that came with a scope for $300 + tax or $324 total. There was a $50 mail in rebate and & I sold the scope for $50. The end result was I know had a brand new $225 rifle to test my cheap plinking 223 ammo with. So I put a $500 scope on it and was ready for the range. Rifle/check

I bought a used set of lee 223rem dies (2 piece set) and had a bunch of range brass laying around. So I sorted the free range brass into 2 groups, commercial & nato. Then I sized the brass and trimmed everything to length. I have no idea how many times the brass was used/reloaded but free is free. If any primers that seated easily/no pressure, I put that brass aside to use for bbl break-in/seasoning then scrapped them for $$$. I use cheap $20/1000 primers and one of my favorite plinking powders for the 223rem, namely bl-c2. It meters like water and tends to be at it's best with 52gr to 62gr bullets in the 25gr to 26.5gr load range. Brass/powder/primers check

The last thing to do was select a bullet. So I bought a set of swaging dies to make cheap/free bullets with. The set came with 500 copper jackets so I used those dial in my bullet swaging skills. Needless to say the mistakes went for bbl break-in/fouling shots in a clean bbl. I used free range lead for cores and those factory jackets to make bullets with. Figured I get everything down and then switch to free 22lr cases for jackets. If I could get the copper jacketed bullets to shoot then I would use that as a baseline for the brass 22lr cases turned into jackets. So I took my $225 rifle to the range after cleaning it & checking the hold down screw torques. Broke the bbl in a then shot some groups with my home swaged bullets, free mixed nato range brass and some 20+ year old pull down powder I had laying around. I ended up with a moa group on my very 1st ranger session


That 22gr load doesn't look like much but it was a real eye opener for me. So I started the process of learning how to turn 22lr brass into 223 jackets. Wasn't hard & didn't take long to make up a bunch of bullets to test. I did a ladder test with the swaged bullets and bl-c2, here are the results. That 25.5gr 5-shot group works for me.


It doesn't get any cheaper than this for bullets. Free range lead for cores and free 22lr brass for jackets.


At the end of the day I found that I could take a cheap rifle (no mods, heck I never even did anything to the adjustable accru-trigger/left it as it came from the factory) Free mixed brass, free home swaged bullets, cheap s&b $20/100 primers and bl-c2 and actually get respectable plinking accuracy for cheap ammo.

Just because the words CHEAP & PLINKING are in the same sentence with 223 ammo doesn't mean that a reloader can't put together some extremely high performance ammo for the 223 for little $$$.

Very nice looking bullets. What swedge die did you go with? Are you using a Rockchucker or a swedge press?

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Front sight and squeeze

I'm using a corbin deluxe 4-die set to swage the 223rem (.224") bullets in a rcbs press.

The rcbs press that I use is a sr series press, it's the rcbs rockchucker press that doesn't have the priming arm built into it.

With the upcoming Kalli ammo ban (well almost) reloading is the only way to go, for now. Not going to worry about saving a few cents per round. Worth the cost to stay off the ammo buyer list, pay for a permit and all that other trash. But the real plus, gets me out of the house into the reload shack.

Ammo cost will go up with the ban. Look for an ammo tax shortly after it goes into affect. Once they fix how you can buy, no outside state competition, then they can tax the poop out of it. That alone will keep me from playing their stupid game. No ammo license for me, I will just handload. IMO though, they will figure out shortly after that many of us make our own ammo & I expect powder & primers to come under the same licensing/ban to happen. Give that one maybe a year or two, libs are kinda slow. I am laying in enough powder & primers for a good 5yrs worth of shooting then I am hopefully out if this krap hole.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO