ClickClickD'oh
Member
If you haven't encountered it before, Monarch Ammunition is a house brand for Academy Sports. This particular version of Monarch is Russian manufactured. In the past, I have extensively used their brass line, mostly 9mm, for practice ammunition because it is cheap and decently reliable. I have now however found the exception to the rule:
This is their steel line of .45 acp. I had purchased four boxes of this ammunition on sale at the local Academy last month. When I took it to the range last week, it failed so extensively that I advised some friends on Facebook to never buy it. I was lucky to get through a full magazine without a failure. Most failures were a failure of the gun to fully return to battery. I know that in many cases this can be a sign that the springs need replacing, but that is usually coupled with brass being thrown a country mile. These cases were piling up on my boots. To me, that tends to indicate slow slide velocity. This ammunition repeatedly failed in by my Sig 220 and a 1911.
Then we have this:
The light colored flecks are unburned powder inside the slide. I have another picture of unburned powder inside the chamber. Yes, you read that right. Unburned powder inside the chamber. The only way I can figure that gets in there is if it falls out of the case during extraction. So, not only are we not getting enough ignition to reliably cycle the action, but we are also fouling the chamber making it harder for the next round to be seated. At that point I was willing to publicly declare this ammunition to be encapsulated turd sandwiches, but I still had an unused box laying around and got curious last night. So, I pulled out my micrometer to measure the cartridges to see if the were physically in spec. It turns out, they are. 100% SAAMI spec externally. So, that eliminated the possibility of the failures being attributed to poorly sized ammunition. Then I got out my impact puller to check what was inside the cartridge. I pulled two cartridges randomly from the box. The first one had 5.2 grains of powder inside. The second had 5.9 grains. Now, since I don't know exactly what this powder is (light gray color, cut rod shape), it's impossible to say if 5.2 is light loaded or 5.9 is an overcharged, but it is safe to say that one of those number is out of spec. So, there's your problem... powder that burns inconsistently and throw weights that are inconsistent.
Garbage ammunition.
On a side note, I did find something else interesting when I pulled the bullets:
There appears to be a small metal disc either set into or laid on the back of the lead portion of the bullet. This caused some curiosity so I got out a magnet. These bullets are very strongly magnetic. At first I just intended to test the disc on the back to see if it was steel, but the whole projectile sticks to a magnet. I'm going to go with copper washed steel jacketed.
This is their steel line of .45 acp. I had purchased four boxes of this ammunition on sale at the local Academy last month. When I took it to the range last week, it failed so extensively that I advised some friends on Facebook to never buy it. I was lucky to get through a full magazine without a failure. Most failures were a failure of the gun to fully return to battery. I know that in many cases this can be a sign that the springs need replacing, but that is usually coupled with brass being thrown a country mile. These cases were piling up on my boots. To me, that tends to indicate slow slide velocity. This ammunition repeatedly failed in by my Sig 220 and a 1911.
Then we have this:
The light colored flecks are unburned powder inside the slide. I have another picture of unburned powder inside the chamber. Yes, you read that right. Unburned powder inside the chamber. The only way I can figure that gets in there is if it falls out of the case during extraction. So, not only are we not getting enough ignition to reliably cycle the action, but we are also fouling the chamber making it harder for the next round to be seated. At that point I was willing to publicly declare this ammunition to be encapsulated turd sandwiches, but I still had an unused box laying around and got curious last night. So, I pulled out my micrometer to measure the cartridges to see if the were physically in spec. It turns out, they are. 100% SAAMI spec externally. So, that eliminated the possibility of the failures being attributed to poorly sized ammunition. Then I got out my impact puller to check what was inside the cartridge. I pulled two cartridges randomly from the box. The first one had 5.2 grains of powder inside. The second had 5.9 grains. Now, since I don't know exactly what this powder is (light gray color, cut rod shape), it's impossible to say if 5.2 is light loaded or 5.9 is an overcharged, but it is safe to say that one of those number is out of spec. So, there's your problem... powder that burns inconsistently and throw weights that are inconsistent.
Garbage ammunition.
On a side note, I did find something else interesting when I pulled the bullets:
There appears to be a small metal disc either set into or laid on the back of the lead portion of the bullet. This caused some curiosity so I got out a magnet. These bullets are very strongly magnetic. At first I just intended to test the disc on the back to see if it was steel, but the whole projectile sticks to a magnet. I'm going to go with copper washed steel jacketed.