doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Defective factory shells

My lucky week.

12ga Estate 'dove load' loaded in France. Dud. No priming compound.

20ga Gun Club. Chambered half way, wad bent 90 degrees at the crush section. This could have been bad news had someone forcefully chambered and fired it.

Neither would have made it through my reloading QC.

Yet to quote Krieghoff: "Firearms safety requires using only factory loaded ammunition, etc".

If it appears normal, I can't figure out how I would know if a primer was a dud.

If the firing pin hits it hard enough to make a deep impression and there was not even the sound of primer ignition, the primer was a dud.

SRH

It won't look normal in the primer tray. That's the benefit of a flat primer tray like MEC uses vs. a tube. You are more likely to notice a primer without a seal and that in my experience always means no priming pellet.

I found several W209's like that back when they had their problems 15 years ago or so. That problem has been fixed.

I've found more than one pistol primer without an anvil also. I favor single stage reloading for metallics, and that's one of the reasons. The Lee Auto Prime has saved me from loading several duds.

Factory ammo is one of the better consumer products, but anyone can have a bad day.

FYI: I disassembled the Cheddite and punched the primer out.

No priming pellet.

Back in the early 1970s I got a case of the early 28-gauge AA Skeet loads from Bower Wholesale in Los Angeles. The battery cups of the primers were punched off-center leaving a lip that didn't set down in the recess around the primer pocket in the brass case head. With that lip standing proud on the face of the shell head a gun couldn't close on the shells. I took the case back to Bower and they gave me another case that we checked didn't have this problem. They said they would be sending the defective case back to Olin, but I never heard any more about them. Certainly have never had that problem with any other Winchester/Western shotgun shell or primers.

Time was I swore I'd never buy another Remington shell.

Now they are the best in the business.

This is the first bad Remington shell I've had in 20 years, that's a pretty good run ignoring the early Gun Club shells that had that extra hard primer cup. There are guns that simply would not fire those reliably. Again, that's been fixed.

The 28 gauge shooters in my neighborhood are bitching up a storm about the current AA shell splitting the heads, and sometimes being split in the new box. They gotta fix that, and I'm certain they will. Some accountant got his hands too far into the production department and likely got an award for it too!

My hat's off to all the ammo and component makers, they all do an outstanding job.... but.... factory shells better than my reloads? Simply not so.

Good memories, I ordered a pretty fair amount from Bower. If I'm not mistaken, I always worked with 'Frank', a true pleasure. I seem to recall him mentioning that he was moving on way back when, and I sort of drifted away from using Bower.

Sgj, I wouldn't use any component that didn't look like it was supposed to. It's just that I was thinking it could still be a dud and it would've gotten past my qc check. Headspace, shame on those folks, I'd think the new box wouldn't have even fit right in however it got packed up for sale.

I bought ten cases of 28 ga. and .410 in AA Winchester ammo. When we found a couple of .410 brass already split before firing, new in the box, we would open up a box and dump it out and pick out the split shells. There was at least 6-8 in every box. Never ever will I buy AA Winchesters. From now on, Remington only. Sts or Nitro 27. Frank

Recent production?

Hell of it is, the AA 410 is the only one that gives reasonable hull life.

My last batch of new shells was about 4 years ago and they were fine then. No splits.

I love new STS 410 ammo, it's almost too pretty to shoot but it lasts two reloads and the hull won't stay closed.