Some random thoughts on reloading for the ar's:
In my little neck of the woods there's always range brass laying around, mostly once fired. It doesn't matter if the brass that is new to me has a crimped in primer or not. I use a primer swaging tool on all of them. Then I use the reamer style primer uniforming tool, fl size & then trim to length.
I do this to all the primer pockets to make them consistent when I 1st get the brass. When I seat a primer in them after doing this they should be tight. If the primers are loose/go in easy that brass gets fired in a bolt gun then tossed. Loose primers can and will fall out in a ar. When they do more often then not they end up binding up the ar getting stuck between the bolt and the receiver. That's why posters have cautioned about federal brass being too soft.
I'll typically separate my ar brass/plinking load/blammo ammo into 2 piles. Nato brass in 1 pile, commercial in the other & use .3gr to .5gr more powder in the commercial cases.
Most 5.56 chambers are lllooonnnngggggg. When using shorter bullets don't bother trying to seat them close or into the lands. If you're not sure about the oal ask what others are doing or: Hold the bullet up next to a case. You want the bullet seated so that the case neck has full contact with the body of the bullet. The bullets base should be below the case neck. If the bullet has a boattail the boattail should be seated deep enough so that the full diameter of the bullet's body is being held by the case neck.
I've had several ar's in the past with the ar's setup for service rifle being extremely accurate. Now I have a couple of 16" bbl'd M4's put together from kits. 1 is a plamento state armory kit (1 in 7) the other is a stoner kit (1 in 9) from midway usa. Both were on sale and built on Anderson lowers and both have iron sight/carry handle rear sights. Most people say they get 1 1/2" to 2 moa from either kit/uppers. That's what I'm getting out of both of mine with my blammo ammo reloads.
Blammo ammo reloads ='s:
Mixed brass, home swaged bullets & h335/bl-c2
You're going to find that the 223rem is a fantastic caliber to reload. It's very forgiving and surprisingly accurate along with the components are cheaper than other calibers.
