TooTaxed
Member
At the Fort Benning Rifle and Pistol Club range where I'm Safety Officer, A soldier was shooting up a batch of bargain .223 ammo he had picked up at a gun show...complained the ammo was so variable he couldn't shoot a decent group. Listening to him shoot, there was a noticable sound variation among his shots.
Then, he brought to me a squib load that had failed to fire, though the primer fired. The primer was half backed out of the case, and the case head was blackened by fired primer residue. The case had been forced forward so the grooves of the fluted chamber (H&K rifle) were deeply engraved on the case shoulder, and the rim had torn off where held by the extractor. He had had this happen before, and that time the primer was completely backed out and there was no primer flash hole! Sure enough, upon dislodging the protruding primer with pliers, there was no sign of a flash hole.
I kept one of the empty 50-round cardboard boxes, and it is identified as A-MERC 55gr C3. Interestingly, there is no identification of the distributer, address, date, or place where the ammo was made. The safety blurb is in English, Spanish, and French. A list of manufacturers in our office indicates that it comes from Miami, Florida, though I suspect that may be the importer and not the manufacturer. Case heads are stamped A-MERC 223 REM.
I know the .45 Auto A-MERC fired brass is to be avoided because of its wide variation in quality, but this is the first time I've run across .223 A-MERC ammo.
Avoid this stuff like the plague! If you have some, don't shoot it...salvage the bullets (maybe) and dispose of the rest. If their quality control is poor enough that they load (and sell!) cases without flash holes, heaven knows what they are doing with the powder!
Then, he brought to me a squib load that had failed to fire, though the primer fired. The primer was half backed out of the case, and the case head was blackened by fired primer residue. The case had been forced forward so the grooves of the fluted chamber (H&K rifle) were deeply engraved on the case shoulder, and the rim had torn off where held by the extractor. He had had this happen before, and that time the primer was completely backed out and there was no primer flash hole! Sure enough, upon dislodging the protruding primer with pliers, there was no sign of a flash hole.
I kept one of the empty 50-round cardboard boxes, and it is identified as A-MERC 55gr C3. Interestingly, there is no identification of the distributer, address, date, or place where the ammo was made. The safety blurb is in English, Spanish, and French. A list of manufacturers in our office indicates that it comes from Miami, Florida, though I suspect that may be the importer and not the manufacturer. Case heads are stamped A-MERC 223 REM.
I know the .45 Auto A-MERC fired brass is to be avoided because of its wide variation in quality, but this is the first time I've run across .223 A-MERC ammo.
Avoid this stuff like the plague! If you have some, don't shoot it...salvage the bullets (maybe) and dispose of the rest. If their quality control is poor enough that they load (and sell!) cases without flash holes, heaven knows what they are doing with the powder!
