Lake City Brass Headstamp?

kam582

kam582

New member
Powder Valley recently had a special on what they called Lake City Brass, reamed, sized, trimmed and polished. I like Lake City and the price was right so I bought 500 rounds. I have used Lake City before, however it was new brass. I got the brass today and find three different headstamps in the bunch. One for sure is Lake City, however the two in the photo I am not sure. Can someone help me? If it's not Lake City it's going back. Also, I don't know who trimmed the brass but its all the way from 1.750, which is the recommended trim length, to 1.755 or .756. Do you think I should trim it all? I am trying to make accurate loads. Thanks.

2014-04-03133857.jpg
 
The one on the left is Winchester Cartridge Co. and the one on the right is Federal Cartridge.

Regards,
hm
 
Thanks, I just called Powder Valley and complained, as most of it is that brass and not Lake City. The lady was going to check and get back to me. I've always liked Powder Valley as they have not gouged the pubic during the shortages. I might be done with them now though.
 
Originally Posted By: hm1996The one on the left is Winchester Cartridge Co. and the one on the right is Federal Cartridge.

Regards,
hm

It is not Winchester - it is Western Cartridge Company - affiliated with Winchester, but not the same.

The WCC headstamp is older than Winchester.
 
For the couple of hundred yards you will be shooting at Yotes, it won't matter that much. However you did pay for LC. I am sure they will make it right.
 
I'd load it and not give a second thought. And the .005"-.006" length is no issue at all, IMO. It does suck that the product was labeled one thing and you received the other.
 
I had a friend give me about 500pcs of the WCC stuff. I did some googling and from what I found, guys are saying it is comparable to Lake City brass. I know you can't believe everything you read on the internet, but that's what I read. Since I didn't pay for mine, I have no problem using it, but since you paid for LC I think they should have sent you LC.
 
I noticed this morning that Powder Valley has changed the listing for the brass from "Lake City", to "mostly Lake City". I'm curious as to how they could not be aware of what they bought and were selling. Still waiting for a call back, but right now I'm confident they will do the right thing. I use my. 223 for yotes and prairie dogs so I try to reload as accurate as possible. It's going back.
 
I'd venture a guess that they don't do any of the processing, just selling. And I bet they see lot by weight, not hand sorted count. They're just the end of the line in the horse trade.
 
Just heard back from Powder Valley. The guy said the outfit they bought the brass from guaranteed it was 99 percent Lake City, when in fact it's not even close. They're waiting to hear back from them. They were very professional and helpful. My order is going back on their dime. I wonder if they will do any more business with that particular distributor?
 

I have never had a bad CS event with Powder Valley. I am
glad to hear they took care of the error...You should get
what you paid for, and they advertised.

On a side note, I have a couple of accuracy loads, for 223
Rem. developed on LC brass, that shoot with no POI shift,
velocity change, and have very comparable SD, with WCC
brass. Can't say the same for the FC brass. I keep that
for the 5.56 NATO SHTF rifle, for plinking and SD practice.
So if it is lost in the grass, or shot on a "Lost Brass"
range, I don't care. And that load isn't an accuracy load.
It is a 55 gr. Hornady SP bullet load, where the ARs deform
the soft points pushing them from the mag to the chamber.
So if you get in a pinch to get LC brass, you might try WCC
brass.

Squeeze
 
Originally Posted By: scouteyesThe wcc brass is pretty good brass. Probably better than most mfg brass made today.

It's good brass, but I scraped 1/2 a ton of it 3 years ago, cuz the rims were 20 thou smaller than standard, and the damm stuff kept falling out of the loading machines and jamming them
frown.gif


Now I wish I had it.
 
Originally Posted By: Squeeze
I have never had a bad CS event with Powder Valley. I am
glad to hear they took care of the error...You should get
what you paid for, and they advertised.

On a side note, I have a couple of accuracy loads, for 223
Rem. developed on LC brass, that shoot with no POI shift,
velocity change, and have very comparable SD, with WCC
brass. Can't say the same for the FC brass. I keep that
for the 5.56 NATO SHTF rifle, for plinking and SD practice.
So if it is lost in the grass, or shot on a "Lost Brass"
range, I don't care. And that load isn't an accuracy load.
It is a 55 gr. Hornady SP bullet load, where the ARs deform
the soft points pushing them from the mag to the chamber.
So if you get in a pinch to get LC brass, you might try WCC
brass.

Squeeze

I have no poi shift, velocity difference, and negligible if any accuracy change going from lc to fed brass. I usually take the wcc brass and set it asside in my scrap/backup brass bucket, same goes for pmc, pmj, toa, etc etc

Lots of people hate federal but I have had real good luck with it. 2 years ago I started loading some fed 07 and lc 12 brass, both have 3-4 firings on them, annealed every other firing. Just recently i had about 10 pcs of lc brass with split necks but have not lost a piece of fed yet.
 
The Federal brass dated 2011, or "11" is Lake City....kinda.
ATK/Federal has the contract for the DoD @ L.C.
Here is a picture of "Lake City" M118 AB-39 mil. issue 7.62 loaded with 175 gr Sierra match kings:

2012-01-31_19-08-11_478.jpg
 
WInchester / Western use to use their names interchangeably. Not sure about today. The Lake City brass will have a slightly smaller case capacity than the commercial counterpart. The WCC was a military case, but the FC is probably not. This is in the 7.62. With the 5.56 military brass, I checked the military versus commercial brass case capacity with a burette, and there was no difference.
 
Several years ago Federal was running contracts for the military in their 5.56 rounds and applying the same crimped brass to their civilian market..Now, as to the specs on the cases I'm not sure regarding the capacity...I still have several hundred rounds of the civilian rounds that are crimped and when I called Federal, they explained that is wasn't economically feasible to convert to the non-crimped rounds for the civilian market...

Due to that, and the problems with reloading the brass after the first firing, I held onto what I had for use in competitions where all used brass was considered "Lost" as we were not allowed to recover it..I will say that the Federal 50gr HP is some of the more accurate factory ammo that I had found at the time...
 
I don't like mixed brass either. I would have sent it back as well. Now, if it would have been 99% Lake City, I would have kept it and notified Powder Valley of the situation.
 
A couple of years ago,I purchased some American Eagle XM193BL, 55 gr. FMJ 5.56 ammo which was advertised as Quote:" XM193 product is first run, first quality product manufactured at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant for Federal Cartridge and is made to Federal specifications typical for commercial ammunition. " and came in American Eagle boxes but which contained mixed headstamps, some w/crimped primers and some w/o.

Experienced blown primer right off the bat. Posted the problem here


Untitled-5.jpg



The problem has been resolved and IMO was basically a combination of poor quality control and soft brass. When I pulled down 5 randomly picked rounds, I found up to .5 gr. powder variation and up to .013" COAL variation.

While I have had good luck w/reloaded LC 02 brass in this rifle, apparently the LC 11 brass was soft; especially that w/o the NATO headstamp & crimped primers. I am keeping the LC 11 brass separate and will use as a last resort and w/mild loads only. Perhaps the extra headstamp and crimp served to harden case head sufficiently to prevent case head expansion @ highest pressures produced w/various combinations of higher charges/longer coal???

Regards,
hm


 
Back
Top