Bad Ammo Report- Independence Ammo

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Sidewinder6

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Got a case of 9mm Independence from a dealer who fell through on another deal for me and owed me money, so I took it in trade.

Yesterday, I am practicing at the range with a G19 at 15 yards. Half way through the clip I get a 'click'. Oh oh. I wait a couple secs, drop the clip and pull back the slide. Out pops a casing and it dumps powder on the table (its an indoor range). I bring the slide forward and remove it to inspect the barrel and la de da, the round pops out in my hand. Miffed about this, I give the barrel a good inspection and reassemble the weapon saving the bad round off to the side.

Reload clip, start the whole practice thing all over again and half way through the next clip, this time not 'click' but 'CLICK'.

OK, now Im pissed. Only after I drop the clip, the slide wants to fight with me about letting me see the chamber. I get the slide back and the case ejects and powder all over the place again. I see the case is bulged accounting for the resistance in pulling back the slide and there is a firing pin mark on the primer but off center in the edge of the primer. The inside of the casing is not black and the powder is dumped all over the place so I know it didnt burn. At least all of it didnt.

I remove the slide to inspect the barrel and this time a round is stuck just inside the barrel past the chamber. !@$*&^!#$#@!!!. Took a cleaning rod and tapped the round back out into my hand. Luckily force was not required and after brushing the barrel and inspecting, saw there was not any damage.

OK, I am done with that box except for the photos for this post. I have a couple of other boxes from this case left, so I carefully am blowing it off. One clip at a time. The next box fired and cycled the weapon but failed to slide lock after the last round was fired. This was repeated over and over.

Now I have a couple boxes left and I am dumping them before I ruin my weapon or worse. My last association with Independence Ammo is to post this warning to shooters about this stuff. Be VERY Careful.
 

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Your Glock takes "clips"? where do you get a conversion for a Glock that you can use stripper clips for? :what: or does it still use factory "magazines"?

seriously, though, thanks muchly for the heads up... a local store just started carrying this ammo at a cheap price... and I WAS thinking of getting some... now I think I'll pass...

ALSO, that firing pin dent on the edge of the primer... that (if the round was chambered) looks almost like something was wrong with the GUN, not an ammo problem... like the barrel wasn't seated correctly, or the slide wasn't closed totally, and the gun fired "out of battery"... but I could be wrong... I sure ain't a Glock armorer...
 
I've been through a case of Independence .45 ACP before without problems...

I could be totally off here, but it seems to me like the powder is completely failing to burn, but the primer is still good, thus giving it just enough pressure to pop the bullet out of the case but not enough to get very far into the barrel.

A bad lot of powder from the factory maybe? I don't recall offhand, but does Independence use factory brass or not? Could be something left in some of the cases that ruined the powder?
 
Independence ammo

Hemicuda, you are correct--and Sidewinder, you are lucky you do not have a much more severe incident when your gun was not fully in battery.

The reason the gun did no go into battery was likely the case was not properly resized and has a bulge at the rim.:uhoh: Typical of poorly reloaded ammo.

If you are going to buy this type of product, at least get a set of gauges and any round that will not fully enter the gauge:scrutiny: , do not shoot. If the round looks bad, it likely is;) .

There are few bargains in ammo
 
Had the same thing happen with a box of Remington 115 grain. Pop, pulled back the slide , out comes the brass, inspection of chamber showed unburned powder all over. Yep, the bullet was stuck in the barrel, barely. A light push and it popped right out. Never happened before and hasn't happen since. I was shooting a Browning High Power. BTW the case was not deformed in anyway. I figured a caseing got by the reloading machine with out being crimped and the force of the slide slamming home threw the bullet and most of the powder into the barrel and chamber.
 
Magazines. I was typing fast. :)

I agree I think the weapon may not have been in full battery and if this is the case it may have been much worse, hence my post.
 
I remember a while back I had a box of Winchester 357 ammo. I was shooting it in my revolver and then all of a sudden the cylinder wouldn't rotate! Turns out the bullets were moving forward out of the casing as I shot. The whole box was like that. Probably just a bad batch or something but I won't buy their 357 ammo again.
 
I doubt that the pictured off-center strike would fire a primer, and that case certainly did not have a fired primer or it would not be so clean. As a rule, a fired primer will drive a bullet out farther and harder even if the powder does not go off.

I believe that what happened was that the bullet has the wrong ogive, with the result that it was pushed into the leade of the rifling, but would not go in far enough to allow the gun to go fully into battery. That resulted in the off-center and light firing pin strike that did not even fire the primer. When you attempted to extract the round, the case pulled away from the bullet, leaving it still stuck in the barrel leade.

This would still indicate poor ammo quality control, but I would also look seriously at the leade and maybe contact Glock. The gun should not be that sensitive to bullet shape, IMHO.

Jim
 
I've shot a few boxes of their .45s without incident. The gunshop called the Independence brand "Federal" as if they were a low cost "whitebox" offering from Federal ctg company. The address on the box relates to CCI/ Speer. This was confusing but seems to derive from all of them being under the ownership, or whatever ,of Alliant Technosystems.

In any case, they are factory loads from a bonifide major company. I once bought five hundred rounds of Remington yellow box .45 ball and found that they had not secured the bullets in the case either with neck tension, asphaltium or crimp. The bullets would push back into the case on loading until I ran them through a taper crimp die. In the last months of PMC, I got hold of a box of 38 wadcutters that delivered me two misfires with very positive firing pin strike. Never did figure that one out. I pulled the bullets and lit off the powder which went "poof". Then pulled the anvil out of one primer, dumped the compound and lit that off successfully too.

First Santa Claus. Then the Easter Bunny. Now factory ammunition.
 
+1 Jim Keenan
Right on the money. Slide slams ogive into rifling and it sticks there. Extact slide, brass comes with it and leaves the bullet and powder in chamber area.
 
I fired 9mm.357 and 45 acp with no prblems
at all,around 500rds total.I really like their
357mag brass for reloading,seems to be
really durable.
 
I had some independence .380 and at least every 5 rounds jammed up in my keltec where umc, wwb, santa barbara, and a couple others I've since forgotten have worked just fine. I wasn't impressed.
 
The local range sells Independance ammo for use in their rental guns.

I've fired 100s of 9mm, 45ACP, 40SW, .38SPL all with zero problems. No failures of any kind.

I think you got a bad lot.
 
I have some of that Independence stuff in .45ACP. I had some failure to feed in my P14-45, and figured it was just being finicky. So I tried it in my USP. It jammed, too. Then I tried it in my XD. It jammed, too. Now I have a few boxes of this stuff that I don't know what to do with. I got it from my late brother's widow. Since they lived on the gulf coast, and the casings look like they have some corrosion, so I figured it was poor storage. But it seems that there are a lot of threads about the stuff popping up here and on other boards.....

I wonder if there is a quick way to clean corrosion off of 200+ rounds of .45ACP...
 
Hmmm

I belted off a ton of Independance 9mm JHP in my 5906, no problems at all, but this was bulk packed loose ammo I was given from an acquaintance from ATK.

I wonder if there is a quick way to clean corrosion off of 200+ rounds of .45ACP...

Tumble it, some one described tumbling live ammo on one of the threads here, as long as you don't go nuts and tumble the snot out of it, it should work fine.
 
Tumble it, some one described tumbling live ammo on one of the threads here, as long as you don't go nuts and tumble the snot out of it, it should work fine.
Hmm.. I did a search and "live" was not an acceptable parameter for some reason, so it only searched for "tumble" and "ammo." LOTS of threads there. I haven't reloaded in years and don't have the equipment anymore, but I do have one of those old rock polishing tumblers. I wonder if some media and about 15-20 rounds at a time in that would work... I may have to give it a try in some secure location - just in case.:eek:
 
Hmmm...

I have had good luck with their 165grn .40 S&W stuff bought at Sportsman's Warehouse. Not one issue of any kind in several hundred rounds through my Beretta 96 or my Sig 229.

That my $0.02, YMMV
 
Most of this bears out my thinking (above). The bullet ogive in combination with the barrel leade would seem to be the problem with both the original complaint and the jamming. If the barrel leade is cut fairly deep, all will be well. If it is shallow, the slide fails to go into battery and the bullet sticks in the barrel. So the ammo will work fine in one gun and fail in another, even of the same make.

Jim
 
For what it is worth, I have put at least 5 thousand rounds (literally) of Independence 115 grain 9mm through personally owned Kimbers, Springfields, and Glocks without any problems whatsoever. I use it for practice and local IDPA competition with great confidence. Perhaps you got a bad lot.

Boarhunter
 
Jim Keenan
Senior Member


I doubt that the pictured off-center strike would fire a primer, and that case certainly did not have a fired primer or it would not be so clean. As a rule, a fired primer will drive a bullet out farther and harder even if the powder does not go off.

I believe that what happened was that the bullet has the wrong ogive, with the result that it was pushed into the leade of the rifling, but would not go in far enough to allow the gun to go fully into battery. That resulted in the off-center and light firing pin strike that did not even fire the primer. When you attempted to extract the round, the case pulled away from the bullet, leaving it still stuck in the barrel leade.

This would still indicate poor ammo quality control, but I would also look seriously at the leade and maybe contact Glock. The gun should not be that sensitive to bullet shape, IMHO.

Jim


+1 Jim. Thanks for your thoughts. I believe you are right on with that assessment.
 
I disagree, but the only way I could tell for sure is to see a closeup of the cartridge case from the side.

Over the years I saw similar problems with both home and factory reloads for the 9 and 40.

Are you sure the ammo was direct from independence? or could it have been other ammo reboxed??
 
Sidewinder6,

it might be a good idea to post the lot #. this could be very dangerous, in that somone who didnt check the barrel could get seriously hurt.

thx for the info by the way.
 
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