Cheap 5.56 practice ammo with WC-846

If you shoot a lot, you know the options for shooting more: have a lot of money, or reload. This is about the second one.

No pile of load manuals here: just one simple 5.56 / .223 recipe, as cheap as Shawn could make it. He worked it out more than 10 years ago and has put thousands of rounds of it through AR-15s with almost no problems.

Safety first. Reloading can be dangerous. You're responsible for your own safety and your equipment's. If you aren't completely comfortable, get help or keep reading up. Go slowly; details matter.

Where the money goes

Powder, bullets and primers cost the most, and primers and powder cost more now than ever. Brass is the cheap part, and .223/5.56 brass should last 10 reloads or more if you look after it. Pick up your brass.

Bullets

The 55 grain bullets for .223/5.56 are cheap: about 6.3 cents each, going by prices online in October 2022. Those were pulled bullets: bulk surplus that was loaded into a cartridge once but never fired. For high-volume practice that's a big saving. If it rings steel, it's good enough.

Powder: WC-846

The idea started when Shawn found 8 pounds of WC-846 for about $40. WC-846 is one kind of military surplus powder, usually pulled from .50 BMG or .308 NATO cases, and it was still sold in bulk online as of October 2022. A 16 lb lot was running a bit over $200. Compare that with 1 pound of Hodgdon powder bought at Scheels for about $45 after tax: the same amount of name-brand powder would cost almost $750.

WC-846 pulled from .50 BMG burns slowly, so it's a rifle powder, and it likes big cases. It does well in surplus cartridges, 6.5 Carcano through 7.5 Swiss. At the small end, .223/5.56 is as small as you should go with it, and it does that job very well.

Load data

WC-846 loads much like Hodgdon's BL-C(2), a spherical powder that started out as a military powder for the 7.62 NATO cartridge. One warning: surplus powder isn't as consistent or dependable as Hodgdon or other name brands. Start low and work up. With his 8 lb bottle, Shawn began at 19 grains and worked up to 24.5 grains, which gives about 2850 fps. Your results will be different.

That's it: surplus WC-846 saves a lot of money and buys a lot more trigger time. Go slowly, stay safe and have fun.