SmallCaliberCentral

I have ordered an ar in .204 from model 1 sales. I am curious if any of you guys have any suggested brass, bullets, die sets or whatever that will produce reliable and accurate ammo that will cycle well in an AR. I am sure some of you have been doing this for years and know a lot of tricks. As for me I have been reloading for about 4 or 5 years, but only loading .30-06, .22-250, .45 acp and .357 mag. I have been reading a lot of your posts and i have been confused with some of the terminology( im just a good ole boy). I know that expanding the brass and bullet seating depth have a lot to do with accuracy, I was just wondering if you can give me any good ideas. I am definately in the market for some good dies, brass and bullets to get ready since my AR may take until christmas to arrive at the door thanks to the current administration.

Because its a gas gun;

If you want to use it as designed, you'll have to do full-length resizing to ensure reliability. You'll also have to use more neck tension "if" your going to use the weapon as designed.

If you have a specific load you want to shoot and single load you may be able to get away with neck sizing only (and only if its for that chamber) but you'll just have to try it. You can still uniform the primer pocket and deburr the flash hole.

As far as equipment

Dies; I like Redding dies although I've had good luck with others (Lee, Hornady, RCBS, Forester, Lyman).

Brass; Norma and Lapua are probably the best but I use Remington, Winchester, Lake City, IMI...

Bullets; You have to decide what you want it to do and how it will optomize with your barrel twist. The 40 grain bullets are right on the threshold of optimization with the STD barrel twist (1-12). The 39 Sierra Ballistic King falls in the same catagory. The Berger 35 is popular as well.

Powders; H4895, RE-15, Varget, RE-10x, Benchmark, H335, W748 are probably the more common ones.

Primers; Seems like Remigton 7 1/2 or CCI BR's are the most popular but as long as it goes bang everytime and these two brands are noted for having thicker cups, nice for gas-guns.

OAL; If you're single loading the rounds, the VLD bullets can be seated longer, if not, you'll be confined to a LT bullet and seat them to magazine length for the weapon to function properly.


HTH,

Jim

When you say I need to create more neck tension do you mean that I need to crimp the bullet into place? I have encountered feeding problems in the past with automatic pistols and uncrimped ammo. I also thought that I could load some ammo that is seated long and some that is seated to work in the magazine. First single load a longer round and then put on a clip. Theoretically the first round should be the one you take your time with and if you just so happen to miss(fat chance) , you can start spraying!!!

It will need enough tension so when shooting, the bullets in the rounds (inside the magazine) don't move, in or out. The tension provided by a typical (non bushing) seating die is more than adequate.

Jim

I started out with Lee die sets and after a year of moderate frustration over consistency, switched to Forster Benchrest dies and have had really good results.

Your neck tension will be determined mostly by the ability of the die and expander ball to work together and produce not only the consistent 'run out' for the bullet seating, but setting up the neck size for a tight grip on the bullet. Most of the dies on my shelf have a small hole at the point where the expander ball should be in the die and if clean, you can see the ball through the hole when the die is assembled. I do regularly clean my dies after a run of reloading to remove any lube that may have built up

While I tried crimping some of my AR ammo to see if it improved accuracy (it didn't), I've never found the need to crimp on a regular basis.....I have crimped some of my AR 'action match' stuff just as a peace of mind security issue to lessen the probability of a malfunction during a stage, but not a normal practice.

I prefer to keep all my rounds seated with plenty of room in the magazine since most .204s use a lot of jump to the lands anyway and it doesn't seem to hurt accuracy...In my case, I'd probably forget to load a single round anyway...