A year or two ago an acquaintance of mine bought a brand spanking new rifle,left hand stainless steel..cant for life of me remember if was a sako or a browning in .308 left shop with 2 boxes of hornady superpreformance 150 grn....of those 40 loads 4 flattened primers to the extreme 2 popped completely... they were loud and harsh

fast forward to now...guy on other forum has new 7PRC and also using Hornady ammunition...now thats about $6-7 per round to buy
after having similar things to my mate above..he pulled a few rounds.... the weights of what he pulled were diabolical...... he got 1.4grns variation and showed someone else who has 6.1grns difference from load hovering around 71 grains..shocking you cant pick what weight should be......
rumour has it there are numerous cases of this...
any of you chaps struck it yet???

Nope...I have NO factory ammunition in my house (just for that reason). All my reloads. All powder charges weighed.

Several years ago I was testing Remington-peters .45 ACP for velocity. All were running around 850 to 900 fps except one that ran 1250 fps. Recoil was pretty damn stiff. Thank Colt for a strong 1911.

I don’t have much in the way of factory ammunition, except for .22 rimfire, and like Bushy, I hand-weigh every one of my rifle loads. I throw the charge about four or five tenths of a grain light, then using a powder trickler, that I made myself, I bring the charge up to weight on my scales.

Apart from the fact that factory rounds are too expensive, I think that quality control isn’t what it used to be…obvious from what Elvis’s mates found. I wonder if the machinery making these factory loads is suffering from wear and tear, and the Company Owners ( investors usually) are loathe to spend the big dollars needed to replace the machinery.

I have some old Safari Grade Remington ammo for my 7STW, 140gr Swift A-Frames. Its hands down the most consistent and accurate ammo I've ever purchased in any caliber. Amazingly, its also the ONLY ammunition where the in field trajectory drop matched the estimated drop on the box. Like 1/4" difference at 500 yards. Crazy stuff.

But I reload for almost everything now. I've had a helluva time finding my favorite bullet: 160gr Nosler Accubonds in 7mm. Its been nearly 4 years since I've found any for sale. A person pointed me to some Nosler Blems that hit a clearance site a couple weeks ago and I bought 3 bags. Got them yesterday in the mail, and I cannot see a single blemish on any of them. IDK if they were from a over run or what. I've yet to weight and sort them, but I'm pleased to locate some anyway. They are mighty accurate bullets and work great on elk sized critters.

-DallanC

I managed a bag of 125grn NBTs a few years back,blemished....all I could see was some of the copper was uneven in colour.... nothing else looked or weighed out of place...they worked just fine... have never seen them 2nds/rejects over here before or since.
I reload everything..might buy a box of factory centrefire every few years for new brass...actually bought 50 rounds of .222 just because box said FMJHP and thats a contridiction in terms..... sure enough its just a tiny HP but a heavy BRASS jacket....weird.

The only factory ammo I’ve bought in the past couple of years was a couple of hundred PPU .303 174gr FMJ…only because I wanted the brass…PPU brass is very good…and the PPU offering in FMJ is very accurate, for .303. Apart from that, I’ve bought a smallish quantity of PPU brass, mainly for the 30.30 and .303…all other brass I have is Remington for my .243 and Winchester for my .223 REM.
I’ve built up a bit of a stock of .224 projies for the .223 (a fair amount of Hdy 55gr VMAX and an Aussie offering, 55gr SP made by ADI) and enough Hdy 87gr HP in 6mm for the .243 to last me awhile, and I have a couple of hundred Hdy 160gr FTX for my 30.30 Model 94.
I just wish Remington Primers were more available over here. I’ve always had good results with them in both SR and LR, but they are as scarce as rocking horse droppings. Fortunately I have around a thousand of each…but I gotta find the key to my safe.
Powders are also becoming a bit hard to find…even the Aussie made powders.
There are a couple of reasons for that…I believe that DG costs have a lot to do with it, and it bumps the price right up. I’ve also heard that the US and Aussie Defence Forces are ordering up a heap of ammo to replenish stocks post Afghanistan.

I just wish I had the money to buy whatever I need or maybe wish for…it would be fantastic.

I usually buy some factory ammo when I get a new gun just to test it and get the scope on paper. That way if something is wrong I can honestly say that I didn't use handloads. And I'll have some brass to reload. But I have some guns that have never seen a factory load.

I do have some factory stuff set aside for "just in case".

Pumpkinslinger wrote:

I usually buy some factory ammo when I get a new gun just to test it and get the scope on paper. That way if something is wrong I can honestly say that I didn't use handloads. And I'll have some brass to reload. But I have some guns that have never seen a factory load. I do have some factory stuff set aside for "just in case".

I do the same. More for the brass if in a cartridge that is new to me but yeah - get it on paper and work the hand loads from there

Vince..I hear there are plenty of primers at good prices in Perth at present time..... maybe do some ringing around..... or just open your safe LOL.

Elvis wrote:

Vince..I hear there are plenty of primers at good prices in Perth at present time..... maybe do some ringing around..... or just open your safe LOL.

It would be great to find them in Perth mate, but the cost of shipping a few thousand over here would be astronomical because of the DG status of primers.