FYI, bad Winchester brass and Power Point ammo for 300 Win Mag

M

mimile

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Hello everyone,

I recently acquired a Mod 70 300 Win Mag. I bought some 150 grains Power Point to sight in my rifle. I always sight in my rifle with factory loads from the manufacturer of the rifle if possible. The accuracy with these factory loads in a Win made rifle were below the acceptable, at 2.5-3 moa. Furthermore, from a box of 20 cartridges, 1 would not chamber in my rifle...
I unprimed the cases, full-length sized them, and weighed them. The weight was all over the place with more than 8 grains spread for 20 shot cartridges.

I also ordered 100 Win unprimed cases. I had to throw 10 in the garbage for case body or shoulder irreparable damage. 9 cases were below 2.61 in length. I had to resize all of the cases as the neck did not look good. Around 70 had a weight of 234+/- 1 grain.

I have a lot of respect for Winchester and their history in cartridge development but i don't know why they can not produce better quality ammunition and components consistently. My 150 grains PP shoots 0.5 moa in my 270 Win every day....

Federal Blue box was way more accurate and consistent. Needless to say, Lapua brass was perfect.
 
"one would not chamber" - if any consolation, I had same last summer with Weatherby. Was a Weatherby Mark V rifle in 7mm Weatherby Mag. I bought 4 x boxes of Weatherby brand brass for reloading. Total cost for 4 boxes (80 brass) after taxes and shipping was $234.99 - I ordered it in October 2020. I loaded first box of 20 as a pressure series - one of the factory Weatherby brass would not chamber into the Weatherby Mark V rifle - the other 19 did. I was pretty choked that would happen with $2.94 each brass. We had bought several boxes of factory Weatherby ammo - $8 per shot - all fed fine, that we have fired. Would about have a conniption if that ammo fails to feed!! I did not think that I would have to FL size brand new factory Weatherby brass before reloading it, but I guess that I do! It would have helped, I guess, to run each unloaded brass through that rifle before reloading, but I did not think that was necessary with that brand - apparently I was wrong.
 
Potashminer,
This tells a lot about how things are done these days. It seems that some manufacturers are producing massively and skipping quality control. I can understand that if we were considering cheap ammo, but here we are taking about Winchester and Weatherby (quality). Even the inexpensive PRVI/PPU is a much better quality, IMHO.
 
You did buy what is probably the absolute cheapest ammunition you could have for the rifle, the results are disappointing but not surprising. You know Winchester rifles are made in Japan right? And that Winchester ammunition is often not made by Winchester? Your thig about using ammo same as gun manufacturer is just nonsense, you are as well off with anything.
 
"how things done these days" - for clarity - the Weatherby brass was mailed to me by a Canadian Retailer in October 2020, so the brass had to have been produced sometime before that - is not in past few months of 2021. I can not tell on the boxes exactly when the brass was made.
 
I've heard a lot of negative things about both Remington and Winchester ammo in terms of quality control. It seems components aren't too high on the list either. I ordered a bag of PPU brass for my 7.62X39 Howa. I ran everything through the resizing die, trimmed all the cases to a consistent length, and I still had to pitch a few cases since the primer pockets were slightly off center. I tried my primer pocket chamfering tool and the cases still didn't sit right in the priming tool. I don't know if there's any mass produced brass that won't give you problems. I did get 50 cases of Starline brass for my .44 Russian and the cases lengths were inconsistent but not by too much. Still, I hadn't expected to have to trim-to-length brand new quality factory brass at all.
 
Others are mentioning a 30% rejection rate. Besides checking weight, consistent neck thickness is important. I'm going by John Barness (sp) the writer said here. Others have said, red bag bad, blue bag good.
 
Old Winchester brass in the blue/white bags was good brass, the black/red bag stuff is garbage and should be avoided.
 
B said:
You did buy what is probably the absolute cheapest ammunition you could have for the rifle, the results are disappointing but not surprising. You know Winchester rifles are made in Japan right? And that Winchester ammunition is often not made by Winchester? Your thig about using ammo same as gun manufacturer is just nonsense, you are as well off with anything.
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For me, Japanese means high quality these days. This goes from watches, to cars and to rifles. In fact, the rifle is Belgian/Portuguese. Amazingly enough, Federal Blue box and PPU are less expensive than Winchester and better. My experience so far has been that factory made ammo works best in the rifles made by the same manufacturer. This has always been the case with Tikka, Sako and Browning. This time, with Winchester, it was not the case.
 
mimile said:
For me, Japanese means high quality these days. This goes from watches, to cars and to rifles. In fact, the rifle is Belgian/Portuguese. Amazingly enough, Federal Blue box and PPU are less expensive than Winchester and better. My experience so far has been that factory made ammo works best in the rifles made by the same manufacturer. This has always been the case with Tikka, Sako and Browning. This time, with Winchester, it was not the case.
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I didn't intend to insult the gun, Japan is typically high on quality and every Miroku gun I have handled seemed well made. Too bad Winchester Olin can't do the same with more of it's products.
 
mimile said:
For me, Japanese means high quality these days. This goes from watches, to cars and to rifles. In fact, the rifle is Belgian/Portuguese. Amazingly enough, Federal Blue box and PPU are less expensive than Winchester and better. My experience so far has been that factory made ammo works best in the rifles made by the same manufacturer. This has always been the case with Tikka, Sako and Browning. This time, with Winchester, it was not the case.
Click to expand...

Browning doesn't make it's own ammunition. Your theory is simply correlation, not causation. - dan
 
mimile said:
My experience so far has been that factory made ammo works best in the rifles made by the same manufacturer.
Click to expand...

B said:
Too bad Winchester Olin can't do the same with more of it's products.
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The problem may be misunderstanding the corporate nature of "Winchester". The original Winchester Arms & Ammunition Company went bankrupt in the Great Depression. The company was liquidated and the assets sold off (to Olin Corp). From 1933 to 1980, Olin operated them as two independent divisions, and any connection between the operations was tenuous. After USRAC bought the Winchester gun plant in 1981, it became been non-existent; the gun manufacturer simply rents the Winchester name from Olin, nothing more.

It will be exactly the same situation with Remington shortly. Two businesses in the same industry with the same name, but nothing else in common.
 
IIRC, Browning and Winchester are both owned by FN Herstal. Still Browning ammunition works perfectly, sub moa, in my Browning rifles, to a point where I feel handloading is not needed. This is not the case for Winchester. I don't want to keep repeating myself but It is disappointing that such a high standing manufacturer does not calibrate their ammo to their rifles.
 
OP - re-read Post #14 - since 1933, the people /organization that make Winchester firearms are NOT the same people / organization making Winchester ammunition - each may as well be Ford and Dodge. Not the same. Even though both are using the same Winchester name. Not likely that you would expect a Dodge starter to fit onto a Ford engine, although maybe some do.
 
No problem, I hope it clarified things. Currently, Olin continues to own the Winchester name, and they apply the brand to the ammunition they make. Then they have an agreement with FN so that FN can use the brand for their guns. But FN doesn't have much production capacity for commercial guns, so they contract manufacturing to Miroku and other factories.
 
B said:
You did buy what is probably the absolute cheapest ammunition you could have for the rifle, the results are disappointing but not surprising. You know Winchester rifles are made in Japan right? And that Winchester ammunition is often not made by Winchester? Your thig about using ammo same as gun manufacturer is just nonsense, you are as well off with anything.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing - Power Point is often the cheapest ammo you can get for hunting calibers around here. That said, I've shot a fair amount (hundreds of rounds, not thousands) and never had an issue. In fact it's my go to choice between that, fed blue box, and Rem corelokt. I do like the Corelokt as well but it's usually more expensive. Personally I won't buy federal blue box unless it's my only option, as I had a box that was backing out primers and one round nearly blew the extractor right off my rifle.
 
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