terrace_mountain 0 Posted April 12, 2008 Report Share Posted April 12, 2008 Just heads up for you folk on this board... My father recently purchased a Savage Stevens 200 short action chambered in .223 Remington for hunting coyote in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. He's a fan of my Saiga 7.62 and he asked me to price .223 ammo the next time I went out for an ammo run. I let him know what I saw about a week ago and he followed up by stopping at the same FFL I've been frequenting. Prices have been going up, especially with decent .223 ammo. The owner of the shop was particularly upset with this. He can't get decent prices and a lot of the reloading ingredients are on back order for about 14 months, federal primers in particular. If you can recall the Wolf shortage a few years back, you'll understand why. Apparently within the next year, the US is going to re-outfit the Iraqi armed forces with the M-16 and it's cousins as opposed to the common Kalashnikov variety. A lot of manufacturers are hence diverting their resources to government contracts as opposed to the private market. This being said, buy your .223 now while you can....you might not be able to find a decent price in the next few months. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
BlackDog 1 Posted April 12, 2008 Report Share Posted April 12, 2008 this "shortage" has been going on for well over a year now,,, old news at my club, the .22LR shells are piling up like never before it's the only thing that you can shoot without hurting the pocketbook Quote Link to post Share on other sites
aka108 0 Posted April 13, 2008 Report Share Posted April 13, 2008 If you reload the 223 you can get by for 18 to 20 cents a round. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
O.S.O.K. 0 Posted April 15, 2008 Report Share Posted April 15, 2008 Yes, definately reload. You can buy components from the various on-line providers - Midway, Grafs, MidSouth, etc.. The way I look at it, if there is demand, there will be investment and supply. We just need to wait for the market to respond to all of this. Also, there is a company called Corbin - or similar that makes swagging dies, presses, etc. - you can use those piles of .22 LR brass to swage .22 caliber bullets that shoot as good as the average component bullets. You just need the time... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
IndyArms 10,186 Posted April 15, 2008 Report Share Posted April 15, 2008 how do you do the rimfire primers?!?!? is that the swaging? or am I not comprending something correctly here??!?! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
BlackDog 1 Posted April 15, 2008 Report Share Posted April 15, 2008 I remembered AR15.com had a post about this, but the pictures are gone now. I can't believe I found it. They take the spent 22LR brass and press lead wire into the cases and after a few steps, they have .224 bullets www.ar15.com/content/page.html?id=408 really cool, but too time consuming for me, I'll spend the $40 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Falcon66 1 Posted April 18, 2008 Report Share Posted April 18, 2008 (edited) I have a RCE (Richard Corbin Enterprises) Walnut Hill swaging press and I use it for custom .338 and .458 bullets. Swaging is for old farts or guys who want something that you just can't buy, it does not save money like reloading. Case in point, one set of basic swaging dies costs $600. Thats over twice the cost of the press. It is also a 4-6 step process depending on the bullet design and whether or not you are extruding your jackets from copper tubing, or buying ready made jackets. The .22 casing bullets are limited to about 60gr, and according to Richard Corbin and his brother, the other Corbin, 55gr is about the best. Apparently they make great varmit bullets as they are very thin jackets and explode on impact. However they do not like high velocity. So, for weight limitations, and low velocity, they are not exactly what I want, and probably would not cycle well in a gas operated semi-auto. Edited April 18, 2008 by Falcon66 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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