What a pita! Pistol all day long.

What kind of problems are you having?

I've been reloading .223 since back in the early 80's when I found out it was a great varmint cartridge.

Worst thing (thing I hate doing) is removing the primer pocket crimp on the surplus brass.  It's a one time thing but it still adds an extra aggravating step to the process.

Tell us what you do, where you have issues, and maybe we can tell you how we do that and get you some help.

My .223 loads in the AR15's shoot way better than the factory ammo my nephew has bought.

I've been loading .223 for years. It just takes so much longer to load a couple hundred rounds. My Dillon 550 spits out 9mm at 300 per hour. I'm just ranting.??

I've been loading .223 for years. It just takes so much longer to load a couple hundred rounds. My Dillon 550 spits out 9mm at 300 per hour. I'm just ranting.??

I sent a case of once-fired off to Blue Ridge Brass, they cleaned, re-sized, trimmed, and de-crimped it for a couple of cents per case. Their backlog waxes and wanes, but they're generally pretty quick, and it's super-convenient.

The other part is to have a system for your in-house processing. I used to reload a few k per year for competitions, and the point was that if you're squared away on the brass side it's not awful.

1. clean
2. re-size. Before you run it through the die, look at the primer pocket - it's easy to tell if it's got a crimp at this point
- crimped (which is once-fired) goes to one bucket
- the rest goes to another
3. When there is enough brass needing de-crimping, do a de-crimping run, it then goes into the crimpless bucket
4. length-check, inspect, sort by:
- needs trim
- doesn't need trim
- "questionable" (been re-loaded a bunch of times or whatever, it's a headstamp with potential issues) - this is "lost brass" match brass for hose-em stages
5. Once there is enough brass needing trim, fire up the trimmer (I have a bunch), trim it, and that brass goes in with the "doesn't need trim"
6. Final clean brass
7. Into the ready-to-load crate

If you keep everything labeled it's not a huge time sink - it's a matter of optimizing the process. Would a Dillon 1050 with automatic de-crimp and trim be better? For sure, except for the last-load brass sorting, and the need to inspect.

ETA: moral of the story is for bottle-necked brass is to have ready brass on hand - at that point there isn't a huge difference in speed in loading, and cranking out 500 pistol, 500 75gr match and 500 55gr for a weekend of fun isn't a lot of work

??

should not be that big a difference in time on a dillon

On a 1050, sure!

Why not go with a .22lr conversion kit? Let's you shoot your AR but not waste precious ammo or spending a very long time reloading.

I decap and size using a Rock Chucker.
Prime using an RCBS Bench Primer.
Run them though an RCBS 4x4 and produce a
loaded round with each pull of that handle.
Usually do lots of 500.

It's only more difficult because sizing means lubing and cleaning the lube before seating.  Definitely slower.  I started loading on 223 and 308, so while pistol is faster, especially with a progressive my baseline time investment is still for rifle.  Case prep for match cases is pain that I dont like to do for sure.  Not it is worth it, but I do it anyway.

Matched cases for competition really matter.

If you're competing for groups like in high power, absolutely, as does during cases by weight.

Not sure for 3gun, even on 6" plates at 500. I think if you have your load sorted for your rifle, 1 moa is fine for all but the big dollar matches, and I don't think that takes a lot of work out bread sorting to get there - just don't use 55gr Winchester or the Philippine projectiles.