[gamestalker]

A while back my Son bought a new 700 chambered in 7mm rem. mag.. My Son picked up several random boxes of Winchester factory just because he wanted to take it out and shoot it without delay, and he knew the brass is always welcomed for that cartridge. Scope mounted up and out to our shooting spot we go only to discover most of the factory stuff wouldn't chamber, and the couple of rounds that did chamber were real tight were ceasing the bolt up solid after firing them. I had to use a mallet to free the bolt up, and a dowel to extract the brass. Initially thinking the problem may be the rifle, I tried chambering the ones that wouldn't in his 700 in both of mine and they absolutely would not chamber in any of the three 7 mags..
I took the brass and unfired rounds back to the bench and started measuring brass, and pulling bullets. All of the cartridges were out of round at the mouths and the bullets as well. Some were obviosly so out of spec they wouldn't chamber. Two of the boxes were 150 gr. and one was a 175 gr. bullet, but all boxes had the same issue, just some were obviously so bad they wouldn't chamber.
After pulling the remaining bullets which was most of the 60 rounds I ran the brass through my FL die and all was fine.
This was not top shelf factory, but given the fact that it is a well known ammunition manufacturer, and this was probably the only exposure to factory ammunition I've personally had in a quite a few years, making the odds pretty bad considering. I then logged onto a site that displayed factory recalls for Winchester and other common manufacturer's and was shocked at the number of recalls in just about every cartridge made.

[armoredman]

Winchester took the bad primer I sent back, and dissapeared it - "What primer?" they said. Had a round of WinClean disintigrate on ejection, gouging my safety glasses. Sent the rest of the box in, they said "What ammo?" I don't buy any more components or loaded ammo from them.

[mortomr]

Wow, never even thought not being able to chamber a round would be a reason.

[GLOOB]

Wow, never even thought not being able to chamber a round would be a reason.
Happened to me with a single round of UMC 45ACP. My gun locked solid, slightly OOB. Couldn't open the slide with bare hands. When I extracted it, the mouth had a little piece broken and folded over, doubling the brass thickness at that point. Apparently, they're not using a Lee FCD over there, at Remington. :)

[gamestalker]

Actually, I started reloading long before experiencing any problems to that extent. I was mearly establishing just one more reason why I still reload.
Last year my Son bought 8 boxes of Winchester Universal 12 ga. 2 3/4" dove loads instead of loading some up on the Mec. All of those shells he tried to use wouldn't eject and were jammed in the chamber to the extent we had to use a wooden dowel to knock them out. After the first few were tried through several of our 870's without any luck, we used the shot and powder in the Mec. The powder was one solid clump, almost as hard as a rock and must have been pushing the pressures up a tad. I had to empty the powder into a large glass mixing bowel and then used a tablespoon to break it up into a normal state. The reloads worked perfect, and considering the cost of those Winchester Universals being on sale at the time, reloading with the shot and powder still worked out to be a pretty decent choice, both functionally and economically speaking.

[rfwobbly]

I thought this was going to be a thread about "Miss July" on your Dillon calendar.


:neener: