Dirty Ammo

thegazelle

thegazelle

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Visited the range today and focused on shooting mostly my 9mm PCC. I brought a variety of ammo of different brands and different grains, some of which just to use up some of my old ammo. Shot maybe 300-320 rounds.

I noticed, when I was cleaning my area up (both bench and floor around where I shot - I was pretty much by myself) that the ammo seemed to be in various degrees of "dirtiness". The Winchester white box 115gr ammo seemed to consistently look like it just came out of a BBQ for which the operator forgot to turn down the heat. Pretty black. The Federal 124gr was slightly better. The Magtech 147gr looked like it wasn't worse for wear and the S&B 124gr came out fairly clean with some carbon marks, but nowhere as bad as the Winchester.

I am asking because I am curious what is contributed to such a disparity of spent brass appearance, especially the Winchesters. Is it because the Winchester was the oldest? (circa 2013) Do brass quality differ? Is this a consequence of cheap white box ammo? The Winchester white box .223s don't seem to have such a difference from the other brands of .223s that I have used in the past.

I am also asking because I am considering collecting enough of my brass shot so in the future I may either consider reloading, OR I may just sell it (not sure if anyone will buy the pretty dirty Winchester, unless there was a way to clean that off).
 
I had some 185gr, 45 auto WWB, we used to call them Hollywood bullets , the muzzle flash was a 2 second fireball that completely blanked out your field of vision ,
and was very dirty
 
Several years ago I purchased some South African 9mm imported by Bell Distributors. I fired a couple of boxes, and when I picked up my brass I couldn't believe how perfectly clean the brass was. It literally looked like someone had dropped a box of virgin brass on the floor!

On the other end of the spectrum, I tried out some 12 gauge shells imported from Poland (also imported by Bell Distributors) and I honestly thought they were loaded with blackpowder. After half a box it gummed up my semi auto Remington 11-87 so bad it wouldn't cycle.
 
Magtech and S&B are probably the cleanest available. I find that after shooting this ammo cleaning my gun is quite easy. I have to agree WWB is a dirty girl. I stopped using it at my in door range. Lots of smoke. On a side note the absolute dirtiest ammo when it works is Maxxtech.
 
nitroxace said:
Magtech and S&B are probably the cleanest available. I find that after shooting this ammo cleaning my gun is quite easy. I have to agree WWB is a dirty girl. I stopped using it at my in door range. Lots of smoke. On a side note the absolute dirtiest ammo when it works is Maxxtech.
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I am just using up the WWB at this point. Typically I would use the Federal Syntech rounds. They are a LOT cleaner - I have brass I collected when I shot those compared to anything else, and they are like night and day. The slight increase of the cost of this ammo is worth it for less frequent cleaning.
 
thegazelle said:
I am just using up the WWB at this point. Typically I would use the Federal Syntech rounds. They are a LOT cleaner - I have brass I collected when I shot those compared to anything else, and they are like night and day. The slight increase of the cost of this ammo is worth it for less frequent cleaning.
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You are correct. I totally forgot about Syntech. Its a little more expensive but it is a cleaner ammo. You definitely get what you pay for.
 
nitroxace said:
You are correct. I totally forgot about Syntech. Its a little more expensive but it is a cleaner ammo. You definitely get what you pay for.
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My daughter seems to like it from a purely aesthetics point of view - "I will shoot the red lipstick" she says. I used to think that the colours represented the grains but I don't think they do. The red one seems to be both 115 and 124 gr while purple one is 147 gr. But I think red is "range" and purple is "training match".

A box of Syntech 124 gr. a few months ago could have been had for as little as $18.99 for a box of 50 (assuming you buy case of 500) - they were $19.99 or $20.99 otherwise. I just recently checked and a single box is sold for $25.99 whereas a case of 500 averages out to $23.99 per box. Still not the $18.99 bargooon though.
 
So what's the prob with dirty ammo?

I've got enough of my version of Ed's Red made up to last me the rest of my life, no matter how long I live.

And it only set me back the cost of a couple boxes of white box@ $11.95/50rds.
 
thegazelle said:
Visited the range today and focused on shooting mostly my 9mm PCC. I brought a variety of ammo of different brands and different grains, some of which just to use up some of my old ammo. Shot maybe 300-320 rounds.

I noticed, when I was cleaning my area up (both bench and floor around where I shot - I was pretty much by myself) that the ammo seemed to be in various degrees of "dirtiness". The Winchester white box 115gr ammo seemed to consistently look like it just came out of a BBQ for which the operator forgot to turn down the heat. Pretty black. The Federal 124gr was slightly better. The Magtech 147gr looked like it wasn't worse for wear and the S&B 124gr came out fairly clean with some carbon marks, but nowhere as bad as the Winchester.

I am asking because I am curious what is contributed to such a disparity of spent brass appearance, especially the Winchesters. Is it because the Winchester was the oldest? (circa 2013) Do brass quality differ? Is this a consequence of cheap white box ammo? The Winchester white box .223s don't seem to have such a difference from the other brands of .223s that I have used in the past.

I am also asking because I am considering collecting enough of my brass shot so in the future I may either consider reloading, OR I may just sell it (not sure if anyone will buy the pretty dirty Winchester, unless there was a way to clean that off).
Click to expand...

I deprime with lee depriming die ,run them through a tumbler with walnut mix from princess auto ,discard some, reload the rest . 9mm and 40 sw, 223 , some I save for buddys
 
scout3006 said:
Several years ago I purchased some South African 9mm imported by Bell Distributors. I fired a couple of boxes, and when I picked up my brass I couldn't believe how perfectly clean the brass was. It literally looked like someone had dropped a box of virgin brass on the floor!

On the other end of the spectrum, I tried out some 12 gauge shells imported from Poland (also imported by Bell Distributors) and I honestly thought they were loaded with blackpowder. After half a box it gummed up my semi auto Remington 11-87 so bad it wouldn't cycle.
Click to expand...

Do you remember the name of these shells? I have a few boxes from Poland, wonder if they are the same
 
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