"Factory" Remanufactured ammo. Yes? No?

jmr40 said:

I buy most of my handgun and 223 ammo from www.georgia-arms.com. I can't say about all companies, but these guys are top notch. I'm close enough to drive straight to the factory or buy from a table at a gun show. Might not be worth it to pay shipping.

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just wanted to say, I love your signature jmr40.

to the OP, I know you didn't want to debate the merits of .40S&W but from my perspective as a noob to the world of firearms....its pretty damn hard to ignore the fact that 99% of the handgun kabooms I've heard about are .40 cal guns. Reloads or not, how can this be a coincidence??? From my understanding, a lot of guns chambered in .40S&W were actually designed/engineered for 9mm then simply retrofitted to offer .40 cal. This seems like a good reason to not use .40S&W reloads.

anyways lots of good information in this thread. I'm actually located in Georgia and will be looking into Georgia Arms for my next ammo purchases.

I'm not a fan due to some limited personal and professional experience with "factory" remanufactured ammo. I've only bought factory remanufactured/reloaded ammo on a couple of occasions. Different calibers from different manufacturers. One, .38 Super, loaded way too hot, the other,.44 Magnum, way too light. OK, very small sample. My police department had been using factory reloaded ammo for training for years. It had been giving malfunctions in some of our guns,IE, cases not properly resized causing failure to fully chamber,etc. Finally, one officer had one of the famous Glock KA-Booms. We switched to new factory Federal, Remington and Winchester ball ammo for training. Problems solved.

OK, one more example. Another "factory" manufacturer of new and reloaded ammo, whose ammo is now carried in some major retail outlets by the way, wanted us to start using their ammo. They gave us some factory reloads to evaluate. It damaged the barrel in a Dept. owned gun. Never even replaced our barrel. Probably not the best way to recruit a new customer......ymmv

BTW, I certainly don't doubt the reports of those who have had good luck with factory remanufactured ammo. Just that my humble experience with it has not been positive.

The only thing anyone legally needs to reload and sell ammo is a manufacturer's FFL.

Insurance, quality control, quality machines, good sources of brass, good quality powder, all optional. A commercial reloader might have automated equipment equal to that of a top factory, or they may have a bunch of monkeys with Lee Loaders and get their powder from the guy who sweeps the floor at St. Marks.

And if a reload blows up my gun, I might find that the reloader moved without forwarding address. The problem is that I don't know.

So I long ago adopted the rule that I never use any reloads other than my own - that way if something goes wrong I know whose fanny to kick.

Jim

Guess you never bought Black Hills back in the day then?

If that was addressed to me, the answer is no; I did buy some remanufactured ammo at different times in the past, which is why I adopted my "own reloads only" policy. I saw crooked and crushed primers, bent cases, crushed brass, discolored and salvaged bullets, wadcutters with bullets seated backward, rounds with no powder, different bullets in a box, etc, And they came out of boxes with a company name, not Zip-Loc bags. I'll stick with my policy.

Jim

If you must shoot remanufactured ammo get yourself a reloading press and do it yourself. I've seen too many bad cases of ammo to trust remanufactured.

Hornady HTP bullets aren't all that expensive. Federal American Eagle is also a good bargain. I can't count how many thousands of these I've shot with never a problem.

I know several uspsa shooter who use freedom remans with no issues. great company.

I have used remanufactured ammunition and while I did not have any issues with it I prefer factory new. The prices are too similar for me to chance having issues with the remanufactured ammo.

I've used HSM bulk ammo for years. 158gr SWC. It's my carry ammo. never had a FTF.

v-fib

Black Hills makes pretty good stuff.

I have shot many rounds of Freedom Munitions handgun rounds. I've had one problem: one 9mm round had the bullet come off when I unloaded to make safe and dumped the powder into the frame. Otherwise, no problems. Their rounds shoot cleaner and better than some cheap factory brands I've tried (Aguila, PMC).

That said their ammo is loaded weak. When I replaced the recoil spring in the Beretta 92fs with a Wolff standard 13lbs, the slide will occasionally not recoil enough to feed another round of their 115gr ammo. The same issue occurred with a HK P9S. For those guns I use Fiocchi. I had a friend chronograph the Freedom vs Fiocchi out of the Beretta and the Freedom was over 100fps slower.

Bad ammo

I was using remanufactured ammo in .38 Special with good results until a squib lodged the bullet into the forcing cone and locked the gun up.

Later one, it did the same thing with another revolver. I now only use factory ammo.

Jim