I reloaded some 223 mixed brass for the 3rd time. I thought I had culled the Fed brass out of the mix, dumb mistake. Loaded 55grn dog town with 23.5grns. H335 2.23 AOL. Same load I’ve used many times in my AR and Mini 14. All cases were full length sized and trimmed. Took my AR and 150 rds. to the range and on the 43rd round the bolt jammed and wouldn’t eject or move, it was seriously locked up. I was able to determine that the jammed round had indeed fired and it was inside the group at 100yds, ok no danger of a cook-off. Went home, I could not get the lower/upper separated, I poured a little Croils down the barrel and let it sit for a couple of hours, very judiciously tapped on the fired case with a steel cleaning rod until I was able to remove the fired case, no signs of pressure, case length was good. I examined all the fired cases and lo and behold the lone Federal case had no primer in the pocket! I believe this was the round fired prior to the jam.( I load and fire 5 rounds at a time, pick up the brass and put them in a 50 round box). OK having already proved I’m an idiot I decided to call Windham, the rifle is only 2 months old, the gunsmith theorized the primer had fallen out and lodged itself somewhere in the BCG. He recommended I not mess with it and send the rifle back to him for repair. No more Federal brass again! I should have paid attention to you guys. BTW I’ve been reloading many calibers since 1975, so no excuse other than complacency!:nono:
I may have missed something so please excuse me if I did. Was the issue a loose primer pocket? Possibly a hot round? If so, wouldn’t that be more fault to the reloader than of the brass? Either way, I’ll take all the Federal brass off your hands if you don’t wish to use it. 
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Never had an issue with Fed brass either, but I am just one man.
There is no need to send the rifle back if you can field strip it. If the piece is jammed somewhere in there you can remove it. There is no reason that it would have made it into the BCG, but even if it did, disassembly of the BCG is no harder than taking the battery out of a cell phone.
In my exp. they tend to have a shorter life span than lake city brass. I tend to save federal for practice and range play time. Lake city for matches.
I’ve never taken a case to its failure point so I don’t know exactly how long they last. I just listend to the old timer who got me into service rifle.
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Yep, I’ve reloaded and shot thousands of FC brass, never had an issue…O.L.
It was my fault as I did not cull that piece of brass, it had a loose primer pocket, as much of the Fed brass I had used previously did. I got rid of all of them but this one slipped by me. Sorry the garbage man has them now. 23.5 grns. of H335 under a 55 grn. hp bullet is far from hot
As I stated I cannot field strip it, the BCG is jammed about 1 1/2 inches back from the chamber. I tried to separate the lower from the upper and it too is stuck. I really don’t want to force anything, the rifle is 2 mos. old and under warrantee and I have zero skills as a gunsmith. I have had hundreds of of red box Fed 223 brass from my dept.'s range pick up and after 3 cycles the primer pockets were getting loose. This one got by me.
I understand I’ve had the BCG disassembled degreased, cleaned and lubed from day one and a few times since, that is not the problem. I cannot remove the BCG as it is stuck in it’s channel and neither the forward assist nor the charging handle will budge it.
Right. My point was more of a “sometimes mistakes happen”, ie over charge… and a loose pocket should’ve been caught when priming. Automatically tossing any Federal brass seems wasteful, especially when this case appears to be operator error. At any rate, it’s your decision. Me? I’d rather use Federal brass than a Windham rifle but that’s a whole different story.
BTW, welcome to M4C. Have a good evening.
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I’ll bite my lip and excuse the blame game and rifle snobbery. I was looking for advice OK?
Today, Sunday, after thinking about the problem on and off all night I figured what the heck the rifle is made to take considerable force so I used the Federal case that contributed to the problem as a drift punch. I kept tapping the bolt forward by it’s lugs until I was able to use the forward assist to gently hammer the bolt into battery. Presto… I was then able to disassemble the upper/ lower and remove the bolt. A squashed primer fell out of the rifle. I cleaned and lubed it, manually worked the charging handle and bolt. It all seems fine, I’ll take it to my range and see how it all works, for now I’m very happy!
nickn10,
Sounds like Windham has good customer service, but happy you were able to cure the problem yourself.
So the gunsmith knew exactly where that primer was?? Is this a common occurrence with Windham? Can a tight chamber spike pressure? Dunno something about gunsmith calling the shot, makes me curios (like he’s seen it more than once), who knows he may just be a hell of a gunsmith…
He was on the phone with me for over 10 minutes. I went step by step, prior to when and after the event. He asked pointed questions and when I told him the Fed case ejected without a primer in the pocket and the jam occurred on the next fired round he surmised it was a primer still in the action that caused the jammed the BCG. Although the jam was not the fault of the rifle he offered to repair it for free if I paid postage to Windham. Can’t ask for more than that. Seems like they are more than willing to take care of their customers.
OP, when hand priming fired cases and you feel a primer pocket is loose, mark said case with a marker and discard marked cases when working brass for next load. Follow this and federal cases are not an issue. I’ve loaded well over 10,000 cases and do not read the head-stamp but trash anything without a snug primer pocket.
Show us a pic of the headstamp of the F C brass, if you would.
this is one case from the same lot of brass, as I mentioned in an earlier post this lot was range PU from our Colt duty rifles, then reloaded 3X for a mini 14 and the final load of 23.5 grn. H335 and a 55 grn Dogtown HP in my AR. All cases were full length resized, and trimmed to specs.
Has anyone other than me noticed that Federal .223 brass is always shorter than others? Seems like it never needs a trim versus lake city, pmc, etc.
Just bought 500 cases of LC brass, cleaned, trimmed and pockets swaged. I have 150 cases of Win Brass and 100 cases of RP. I trashed all the FC, I can’t reliably say how many times some of them had been reloaded… I will take note of your advice. Tossing $.20 brass after 4-5 reloads is a lot cheaper than $30.00 shipping for repairs to the BCG.
Yep, that is the “large font” FC brass that folks avoid due to the thin webbing.
The smaller/thinner font brass – and especially the recent FC that looks a lot like the NATO LC headstamp – hasn’t shown the thin webbing that I’m aware of.