How Hard is Your Brass? 5.56 and .223 Rem Base Hardness Tests
Lake City vs. Lapua — which brass is harder? And how about Remington vs. Winchester? Is the widely-held belief that Win brass is harder than Rem brass really true? To help settle these burning questions (raised in a Forum thread), Forum member Catshooter recently sampled the base hardness of four brands of .223/5.56 brass. He employed a very impressive tool for the task — a $2,500 Ames Hardness Gauge. Catshooter explained that his Ames Guage “is FAA certified and approved for testing aircraft engine parts — it does NOT get any better than that!”
Catshooter measured four cases picked at random from batches of Lake City (LC) 2008 (5.56x45mm), Lapua .223 Rem Match, Winchester .223 Rem, and Remington R-P .223 Rem.
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| Lake City | Lapua Match | Winchester | Remington |
Photo Shows Ames Gauge Base Hardness Measurement on Lake City Brass
Photo Show Ames Gauge Base Hardness Measurement on Winchester Brass
TEST RESULTS
Using Rockwell hardness standards (.062″x100kg, Rockwell “B”), the brass measured as follows:
LC 2008 = 96
Lapua 223 Match = 86
Winchester 223 = 69
Remington “R-P” = 49
Summary of Test Results
Catshooter writes: “For all you guys that have believed that Winchester cases were tougher than Remington — you are vindicated, they are a lot tougher! However, Lake City and Lapua are ‘the pick of the litter'”. Catshooter notes that both Lake City and Lapua are significantly harder than either Winchester and Remington .223 brass. That’s something that we’ve observed empirically (Lapua and LC stand up better to stout loads), but now we have some hard numbers to back that up. Hats off to Catshooter for settling the hardness debate with his Ames Hardness Gauge.
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Tags: .223 Rem, 5.56, Lake City, Lapua, Remington, Winchester
Nice artical! My general experience shooting thousands of .223 rounds in service rifle competition has been about the same. If I had to set a chart up id put the LC first and Lapua next to the Winchester well to the right. Then another big jump down to the Remmington. Based on longevity with the primer pockets and split necks. Federal is best not mentioned.
So that means that cases made out of steel or other substances are better. So what does this prove? Cat Shooter, you did a good job, but don’t really know what this means.
Should have tested more samples from each manufacturer and from different lots.
At least 25 of each. That might be enough to just start a baseline.
Editor: No one commissioned Catshooter to do a comprehensive test, he just did this in connection with a Forum discussion. We all realize that sampling 100 (or more) pieces of brass would be more scientific. But this is still revealing, and that is the point. Better to have some results than nothing at all.
He`s pretty much right on the money. The LC is the best choice and no it shouldn’t be compared to steel cases. The scale actually shows brass life and can be used for that purpose.
It is not comprehensive, but it mirrors my testing (except for the Lapua case) when I was working with a brass manufacturer. At the time, all that was avail. for Lapua was the old stuff,… and like Federal, not worth mentioning. Thank goodness the step up in Lapua quality on their current 223 case. The Lake City stuff is run by a program with pretty tight std’s,… has been for a while and will continue to be for some time. Good observations from Catshooter in my opinion.
Thanks Catshooter,
Great job!
There was a time in the past when I would by five gallon buckets of .223 range brass and separate the LC and the Federals and not use the rest(mostly Remingtons). For many years now I haven’t used hardly anything except LC and Lapua. About a year ago I reloaded some once fired Federal cases for a friend and that second load which was not excessive trashed the brass. What happened to Federal?
Mark
Mark, I think you were doing good getting two loadings out of the Federal! It is terrible.
Thank you catshooter & Paul for that info.
Much appreciated!
Catshooter – assuming the Lapua was the newer ‘blue box’ stuff. Is that correct?
I’ve never used Rem myself based solely on the experiences of my more experienced friends who all say the same thing that dimensionally it can be very good, but the heads just don’t hold up with pockets loosening up pretty quickly. It may however, vary depending on the cartridge in question as I have three other friends who all have a fair amount of experience with the Ultra Mag series of cases, and they have all said that they were very pleasantly surprised with what they each saw independently. They felt that the cases were surprisingly stout & produced excellent accuracy.
I did personally spec-out some friend’s ShortActionUltraMagBrass & found that to be dimensionally excellent, but I never followed up to ask how it shot though.
I’ve also heard similar complaints over the years about Norma brass regarding primer pocket life despite being dimensionally excellent. Heard rumors well over a year ago that Norma was addressing this issue with a new process or new machine that would work-harden the heads some more during production. Can anybody verify or discredit this rumor for me?
Thanks again, fellas.
I’d like to see actual numbers on the Federal. I’ve used Federal in .308 for years. I get five or six firings out of it for my semi-autos. For bolt-actions, I just use the Federal .308 for subsonic ammunition.
Were all the cases unfired (new)?
Its great what you have done, but really answers nothing. The results hardly even qualify as anecdotal. New or used brass, once fired our multiple reloads. Is the hardness different throughout the length of the casing our just at the base in the picture? One case of a test shows absolutely nothing. What if these are all outliers? What we end up with is just another log on the fire.
It’s the recommended neck hardness I’m concerned about. The base is useless for it’s supported by the breach. Neck hardness controls the velocity of the projectile. As well as the longevity of the ammo. This is why annealers are used.
Del;
Annealed 70/30 cartridge brass has a plastic yield strength of about 11K psi, fully work hardened it has a yield of around 65k psi. Which would you prefer holding back that chamber pressure? Remember, the last .2 inches of case in the AR 223/556 is not supported by steel- so the case head/web is what keeps things together.
Annealed necks release the bullet uniformly at around 11k psi, and are soft enough to expand at those pressures to seal the neck end of the chamber, keeping everything moving towards the muzzle. Hard case heads also help keep the prier pocket tighter longer. One of the shortcomings of federal 223 is that it is almost not reloadable after one firing- primer pockets are too loose and web expansion makes resizing a problematic task too.