Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition manufac

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Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition manufac

Post by Archer »

In General...
I am extremely leery of remanufactured rifle ammunition. During my own reloading I have found many rifle casings which I think are ripe for either case head separation or otherwise thinning the case wall to the point that a burn through might be imminent. I don’t see how a commercial reloader can take the time to check the casings to detect that sort of problem. I purchased a lot of equipment and components from a coworker who used to shoot competition. I probably discarded a couple hundred .308 cases I got from him because the case wall inside the case had a groove in it near the case head. There was no way to know that was happening from the outside of the case.

My introduction to commercial reloads was several outlets in the Atlanta area in the mid to late 1980s that were selling 'Master' branded reloads. I'm not certain how long they lasted but I bought a box or two and went back to 'factory'. In .45 ACP they were soft lead electro plated bullets showing some dinging up from handling packaged loose in a 2"x2.5"x3.5" box with a inner paper tray. The powder charges seemed a bit light, there was quite a bit of powder fouling and I never felt like the bullets were properly crimped.

About the same time frame there was a company that was producing reloaded ammunition and selling it commercially through some of the big box sporting goods stores. I THINK the company was 3-D ammunition and at some point they overstamped their loads on the case head with 3 D so that it was rather deeply engraved over the manufacturer’s markings. I think I bought one box of this and it was pretty good but as I didn’t like the engraved headstamp and I was already collecting brass although I had not started reloading my own I didn’t continue to buy it.

Friends of mine would occasionally buy range reloads but my experiences with ‘Master’ brand had somewhat soured me on them. This was compounded when a friend of mine was letting me shoot his Browning High Power. I had not shot one before mostly I had shot a lot of .45 ACP through my 1911 and .22LR through a Ruger MK II. He brought the gun out of his safe and bought a couple boxes of range reloads. The gun was sluggish having to be assisted to feed the rounds and they felt anemic, like they weren’t coming out of the gun with much force. I was not too impressed with 9mm for a year or two until I fired a couple Sigs with factory ammo. The BHP in question had been put up with some RIG lubricant that was more heavy anti corrosion grease than lubricant so the combination of old heavy grease and light range loads lead to a jam-o-matic.

Georgia Arms started up when I was in college. Their loads were consistent and several friends of mine in college used their ammo without any problems. Their .308 rifle stuff back then was excellent. I have bought quite a bit of their first run ammo and trust it pretty well. Their 10mm seems to be reasonable but maybe a little mild.

I noticed Alabama Arms at some of the gunshows a year or two after I noticed Georgia Arms. I never used their product. What I saw of their stuff did not look as nice as GA Arms.

Black Hills Ammunition has had an excellent reputation. I have not heard of any problems with them. I have had excellent results out of their first run factory rifle ammunition. I have not tried any of their remanufactured ammo. I have a friend who would use Black Hills exclusively if he could get all the calibers he shoots from them.

I have heard that Ammo Bros have been hit or miss in the SoCal area. I have seen them at the gunshows but I have not purchased any of their product.

LAX ammunition has a good reputation. I have bought both major factory ammunition from them as well as their own product. When buying LAX branded ammo I have mostly purchased their first run ammunition but I have picked up a case or two of 9mm reloads over the years. I have not had any issues with their ammo. I don’t buy remanufactured rifle ammunition.

Ammo Valley is an outfit I found a few years ago. I have purchased several thousand rounds from them in first run ammo in at least 3 or 4 calibers and a few thousand remanufactured rounds mostly in 9mm. I have shot about half the ammo I bought from them with no issues. I did a search before buying from them and the only complaints I saw from anyone was 1 guy complained the reloaded rounds were a little dirty. I have not complaints about them so far everything has worked fine. I have not found the rounds to leave crap on my hands and I did not see any more fouling on the gun than with normal factory ammo.

I am slightly leery of remanufactured handgun ammunition. Georgia Arms, Black Hills, Ammo Valley and maybe LAX ammunition have my respect and I may use their remanufactured product but I'd buy their first run product by choice if available even if it is a few dollars more.

I have not mentioned Buffalo Bore, Garrett, Cor-bon or any of the boutique manufacturers. I don't have any problems with them but I don't have much experience with them either. I do know one of the outfits that used to make oddball caliber loads has closed up shop. I had found them when looking for some obsolete ammunition for older guns. A friend of mine was using them for some of the specialty .45 colt loads they were making and hasn't found anyone making a comparable product as it seems everyone is either making powderpuff loads or making .45 Colt Magnum loads.

Almost every gunshow has small volume remanufactured ammunition sellers. Many are selling plastic bags of ammunition. A few are selling branded boxed ammuntion. I do not buy anything from these people. Those two high school kids selling boxes of their own reloads may be doing everything right. Same thing for that older guy with the plastic bags of his reloads arrayed around him. On the other hand I've seen enough go wrong with factory ammunition over the years from the big three that I'm not exactly up for trusting some person who is unlikely to be around if there is a problem with their product.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Arroyoshark »

Beyond this brief comment, I can't really speak to this one. For past forty years I've rolled my own, for several reasons. I've picked up a bunch of cast bullets from vendor's tables at gun shows, but while I saw reloaded ammo being offered, never even gave it a thought, good or bad. I did have occasion to shoot a couple cylinders of a friend's ammo can of Georgia Arms .357 mag ammo tho. I found the stuff pretty mildly loaded, and I don't load barn burners myself, except for a few hunting rounds.

Hmm, thinking on that more, I need to walk back my comment a little. About 20 years ago I acquired my first ,223 rifle, a mini-14. I bought 200 rounds of Sandia Reloading rounds, made in Albuquerque, so I could shoot the rifle until my reloading supplies came in. My recollection is all the rounds went "boom". The mini-14 is long gone.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by rondog »

I can't remember the last time I "bought" any ammo, been rolling my own for so long......
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Archer »

I recently watched a video of a competitor from Australia who was using a .303 Enfield (what else).
He mentioned that ammo was a problem. That they were reloading .303 casings and that new ammo was not quite up to the standards of the previously produced Commonwealth ammo. Very slight dimensional changes in the rims of the cartridges and that S&B brass was somewhat brittle.

He said broken case extractors, which apparently were never very common as they had been part of the automatic machingun kit and not part of the rifleman's kit had increased greatly in price and it was not uncommon for a competitor to use the next round in his gun to try to remove the forward part of a separated case.

I have never had a case head separation myself.
I have seen or picked up off the range several .223/5.56 rounds jammed into the front portion of a separated case however. I suspect very few of those rounds were first run factory ammo.

Issues with factory ammo do happen. I have been processing a lot of brass over the past week or so and one of my .45-70 (Winchester) cases had a blemish about a half inch back from the case mouth. When I examined it with a flashlight I determined it was a pinhole. That case was factory loaded and the flaw was evident after the first firing. It will never get another.

I had a factory .45-70 round that got cycled through the magazine without firing. Apparently Federal didn't crimp it as the bullet impacted by over a 1/4".

A friend was shooting his new Mossberg .30-06 rifle when a factory Remington round would not chamber. My friend gave the round to me. The round would chamber with a bit of force in my CZ550 but I did not fire it and reported the issue to Remington. They asked for the return of the round, box and any other ammo from the box I might have. A few weeks later they sent me a box of ammo which I split with my friend. They said the case for the round had missed an important sizing step during manufacture.

We've all seen the recalls and often posted them on this board or others indicating a certain lot of ammo has been recalled for fear it was loaded with the wrong powder or that bullets loaded for a specific lot might not have been the correct size. I recently read an article indicating that a 10mm Glock had failed because the bullet was undersized and impacted during feeding. The manufacturer of the ammo checked the bullets used and determined that there were a handful of projectiles out of thousands that were somehow undersized enough that they could not be held in the case mouths without impacting.

Hanging out and working at my friend's shop there were several guns that came in with issues. Most were traceable to poor reloads or poor reloading practice. One AR came in where the neighbor of the owner had given him ammunition he had loaded. He apparently managed to load several heavier bullets in a load intended for lighter bullets in one of the oddball calibers (6.8 SPC, .300 BO or 6.5 Grendel) and the extra bullet weight and maybe length resulted in a damaged and jammed gun. Several parts required replacement including the receiver extension, bolt and possible the recoil spring and buffer. The shooter was lucky it wasn't worse. A Rossi 92 showed up where there were SEVERAL bullets stuck in the barrel. I can't say what ammo was used. I recall a Beretta 92 where the barrel was caked with lead and the gun busted. That was from some of those commercial loads out of Florida labeled A-Merc if I recall correctly I couldn't say if they were first run or reloads. That was a year or three after I had tried a first run box of that ammo and decided not to use it.

Another pretty scary thing is having a customer come in with a gun that has ammo in the chamber that they can't get out.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Arroyoshark »

Archer wrote:Another pretty scary thing is having a customer come in with a gun that has ammo in the chamber that they can't get out.
Yup. Makes a pretty good argument against having forward assist feature on modern day AR guns. Trying to cram a round in by exerting much force on the Forward Assist can produce a really jammed cartridge in chamber that is more difficult to extract manually.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by runfiverun »

the old jam it more tighter button.
never once has it worked for me, and it jabs me in the back when I carry the rifle.
I hate that stupid thing.

I'm not a fan of the discount ammo business.
there have been some very good ones that run on a slim profit margin, and some that run on a wider profit margin usually because of a lack of quality.
or maybe it's inexperience and a lack of attention to detail in favor of higher numbers.

I know in the bullet making business your either pumping out jillions of bullets and getting them on the market or your not gonna be in business very long.
the margins are very slim, and the hours are pretty long.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Archer »

Arroyoshark wrote:
Archer wrote:Another pretty scary thing is having a customer come in with a gun that has ammo in the chamber that they can't get out.
Yup. Makes a pretty good argument against having forward assist feature on modern day AR guns. Trying to cram a round in by exerting much force on the Forward Assist can produce a really jammed cartridge in chamber that is more difficult to extract manually.
Yeah, but a heck of a lot of semi auto designs allow for direct smacking of the charging handle or op rod as well. Of course in most of those the action works both ways in that you can probably KICK the charging handle if it is stuck trying to get it open. That's not too easy on the ARs.

It happened with several semi automatic pistols without any forward assist. Had an older lady come in with one that we had a time getting open without it pointing at anyone.

A friend had this problem with a S&W 1500 bolt action rifle in .223. He pulled the trigger and the firing pin dropped but the gun didn't go off. The bolt wouldn't lift normally and it took one guy holding the gun and another big ugly dude to get the bolt open and get the round out. We found when cleaning the gun that a large grain of quartz sand had somehow gotten into a vent hole in the bolt and jammed up the mechanism but KNOWING the firing pin had been released on that gun while trying to clear it had some pucker factor.

I had sent a round into the chamber on a M1A when a cease fire was called. My own early reload. The action was a bear to open. When the op rod finally came back out came a cartridge spewing powder everywhere but no bullet. The bullet had gone into the lands from inertia and not enough crimp or neck tension and gotten stuck there. It wasn't loaded but with a round loaded long could have the same effect with the enough crimp to maybe lock it up.

Have seen revolvers jam at least three times as well although two of them were with fired cartridges under the hammer one was a Smith where the ejector had come unscrewed enough to jam up the action with live rounds. The ones with an empty under the hammer involved a friend who hadn't crimped his heavy .44 Mag loads enough and the bullets started backing out and an older 686 with the firing pin on the hammer that apparently pierced a primer on a factory round and got stuck.
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Arroyoshark »

Guess the new side charger uppers & BCG's for AR's would make it easier to operate the bolt both ways ?
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Re: Commercial Reloads and Smaller commercial ammunition man

Post by Archer »

I was just watching a youtube vid on reloading a few moments ago that illustrated WHY I don't trust most other people's reloads.

The character in the video was demonstrating a scale he had just bought and some dozen times in the video he mentioned being unable to see the scale clearly on both his beam balance scale and the digital scale he was messing with.

IF you can't see the powder charge weight STOP do not pass go and get your eyes checked before proceeding with ANYTHING.
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