Factory reloaded ammo reliability

05RAV said:
Great results in what sense? Reliability? Sure they are reliable. However, in the accuracy department they are rather mediocre. Some time ago I purchased 1,000 9mm Luger WASP re-loads and they do not measure up in accuracy in my three 9 mm Luger cal pistols to the PMC Bronze or the Blazer Brass brand ammunition. Since all three quite diverse pistols do not like them that tells me that they are not accurate rounds.
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Yes, reliability and consistency. With another brand, I have experienced both a split case (before loading into the gun), some set back bullets and a couple bunny farts. Nothing like this in WASP. As for consistency I have chronoe'd them and found them more consistent than the other remanufactured stuff I have used - not by a wide margin, but better rather than worse. I have not chronoe'd the factory loads you have referenced.

The qualifier is that I have not used the 9mm offerings - only major 40 and 45.

Maybe..... nevermind. :)

Rob!
 
I have a theory (based on the pic).

I just started to reload .40. I started with some new 1F Federal brass and did the plunk test in my KKM .40 barrel.

I prepped the brass by pushing it through a Lee bulge buster setup. Next, I sized and deprimed with a Hornady carbide die. 7gr of Power Pistol/165gr Campro. I seated to 1.13? and crimped to .42something (same as factory rounds).

Guess what? The plunk test failed. My theory is that the full length sizer leaves a tiny bulge at the bottom (or perhaps the seating/crimping process did). I had to run the 5 rounds I loaded through the bulge buster again to correct.

Now, I have a nice supply of polished ?F brass. I loaded ~10 pieces of Federal and none of them needed the extra step to remove the bulge - all passed the plunk test. I can only conclude that the new Federal/AE brass is thinner and/or weaker than older Federal, Winchester & Remington brass and should never be reloaded.

Anyone who says you shouldn't sort brass by headstamp is full if it. I found this out loading 44 mag with 5 different brands of brass. RP and Imperial brass is .001 thinner than Win, Norma and Federal. I had to re-size and skip the expander phase to get enough neck tension so the bullets would not spin once loaded and crimped.

I will be pulling the bullets on those 5 rounds and tossing all the brass.
 
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