Lapua 223 Remington Cases

[Molon]

Lapua 223 Remington Cases


The standard Lapua 223 Remington brass cases originally sold as reloading components were significantly heavier than Lake City cases and as such they had lower case capacities. Those cases were head-stamped:

LAPUA

.223 Rem.












These legacy Lapua cases produced higher muzzle velocities than the same load with Lake City cases along with an attendant increase in chamber pressure.













High Power Service Rifle shooters using heavy OTM bullets wanted all the case capacity they could get and therefore were not very interested in using the legacy Lapua cases. Lapua later introduced their “match” version of their hand-loading component brass which was significantly lighter and had more case capacity than the legacy cases and were roughly equivalent to Lake City brass. This is the brass that is head-stamped:

LAPUA

223 Rem MATCH
















The Lapua match brass originally came in the boxes shown on the left and now comes in the plastic containers shown on the right . . .








Sadly, Laupua has been slowly increasing the weight of the match cases over the last several years and therefore decreasing the case capacity.


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[SecondsCount]

Just as Covid was ramping up, Ammunition Store had a big sale on Lapua Match 55 grain 223 ammo. It turned out to be 50 cpr which was less than the brass cost at that time. The ammo shot okay, hovered around 1.5 MOA out of my Remington 700 with a Bartlein barrel and match 223 chamber. The brass is stamped 223 MATCH. I also have several boxes of gold box Lapua 223, and is headstamped 223 MATCH.

I went and weighed some of each after seeing this thread-

Virgin gold box- 93.9, 93.0, 93.8, 94.0, and 93.8

Empty brass from the 55 grain ammunition, deprimed- 96.0, 95.3, 94.6, 95.5, and 95.6

I have resized and shot the brass from the loaded ammunition using a Mighty Armory die with the neck mandrel, and loaded with 77 TMK, Federal 205, and 8208XBR. 2.435" OAL which is long for an AR but the custom barrel has a long chamber. A friend let me shoot the load over his Labradar and I was surprised to see the SD was 9, after 5 shots. Not a huge sample but that is best by far that I have ever seen from a 223. I attribute it to consistent neck tension, and a good combination of components, including the Lapua brass.