Remanufactured Ammo DRS Dallas: Primer Blowout

[quatin]

Today I was at the range shooting a bolt action .223. I was using off the shelf 55gr rounds that's labeled "Remanufactured by D.R.S Dallas,TX". I've run about 100 rounds through it without problems, however today after going through about 30 rounds the bolt suddenly refused to open. The recoil didn't feel much different, but there was smoke coming out the throat (a bit more than usual), which made me think that one of the rounds in the magazine was cooking off. The bolt was then just stuck, it wouldn't pull open. I eventually had to take it to the range master and he had to use a small mallet and knock the bolt open bit by bit. We found that the round had blew out the primer into the bolt and the anvil (it's what he called it) and the primer fell out after we pulled the round off the extractor. His explanation was that it was a hot load and blew out the primer. We wiped the bolt and I shot one Remington factory load to make sure the bolt still worked. I then packed up for the day puzzled.

What exactly does remanufactured mean? Is it that they took spent casings and reloaded them again? Does regular factory rounds like Remington use new casings instead? And even if they were, shouldn't the remanufactured ammo still have the same tolerances as the factory rounds? I just purchased 200 rounds of this DRS remanufactured stuff and I was just wondering if I should still shoot it. I didn't feel a heavier recoil and the "hot load" round shot about 3 inches to the left of the previous shot (but vertically even). Is it maybe every single round from DRS are much hotter and the primer wasn't just seated very well on that particular one? Either way, the guy said that even a hot round won't hurt the barrel much since it's just .223 and I had a stainless steel bull barrel.

 

[griz]

Remanufactured is a fancy term for "handloaded by sombody else". Some of it is as good as factory stuff except it has used brass. Some is made in a sloppy fashion and should not be trusted. A reputable manufactuer should be licenced and insured. I would talk to who ever sold it to you and see if you can get your money back.

Forgot to add:
I know nothing about DRS, I'm just cautious.

 

[Jim Watson]

"Remanufactured" is just a word used to let them charge more for commercially reloaded ammunition. Brass is used and the load is probably something with cheap powder and bullets. Tolerances and quality control are not usually as close as new factory loads.

So they slipped up and overloaded one (at least.)

Don't let the "range master" kid you. (Did you buy the ammunition from him?) A round developing excessive pressure can do damage to a rifle other than to the barrel. In fact, I have seen cases where the rifle was demolished and the barrel was the only part reusable. A round blowing primers can break the extractor or/and ejector, and even deform the bolt face. Or lock the gun up so tight that the bolt handle breaks off when hammered open.

I wouldn't shoot any more of that stuff.

 

[quatin]

Don't let the "range master" kid you. (Did you buy the ammunition from him?)

No I bought the ammo from a monthly gun show that rolls into town. But does my evaluation of the situation make sense? The hot load didn't shoot high, I was shooting at 100 yards and it shot on target about 3 inches left from my previous shot. The recoil also felt the same. Are all of these rounds loaded hot?

 

[EddieCoyle]

If you have any more, throw them out and don't buy from that guy again. Just because it didn't shoot high doesn't mean it wasn't over pressure. Something was very very wrong with the round you fired. It could've been any number of things. Toss 'em and consider it a lesson learned. Either spend more for factory ammo, or save money by reloading your own.

As another poster said, remaufactured is another term for "someone else's reloads". Let me take that a step further. Remanufactured ammo is another term for "someone else's reloads that were made on a machine run by someone making minimum wage that knew he wasn't going to be shooting them". Whew!

The only "dangerous" ammo experience I ever had was with "remanufactured" ammo. I had a very weird sounding .45 ACP round that missed the target and failed to eject. The reason it failed to eject is because there was a crushed and charred .32 ACP case in the port with it. All I can figure is that a .32 case was stuck in the .45. When it was decapped, the decapping pin went right through both flash holes, then the belling die crushed the .32 case, the charge was dumped in, and the .45 bullet was seated. When I fired it, everything came loose. That was the last time I ever bought remanufactured ammo.

 

[Jim Watson]

I bought the ammo from a monthly gun show that rolls into town

Even worse. There are few worse places to buy cheap ammunition than at a gun show.

 

[taliv]

since i've heard some fairly unconventional definitions of "remanufactured" in this thread, let me give it a whirl:

remanufactured is synonymous with reloading
it differs from "handloading" in that a) it could be done by machine and commercially, and b) handloading can be done with 100% new parts whereas reloading and remanufacturing by definition involves some parts (normally the brass) that have been previously used.


remanufactured ammo is normally considerably CHEAPER than ammo made with new components.

and remanufactured does not automatically mean it's crap. Black Hills' blue box remanufactured ammo is fine stuff and I wouldn't hesitate to shoot it, although I can't tell you if BH pays their employees minimum wage.

 

[taliv]

oh, btw, not only would i not shoot any more of that, i'd be contacting DRS and getting my money back.

 

[quatin]

Thx for the tips all.

I won't be buying anymore of this stuff anymore. I can't find any reference to a "DRS Dallas" on the net so I figure it's probably just a small quantity run consisting of couple of guys with certain distributors. I can bring it back to the guy at the gun show next month, but I'm pretty sure he was just a distributor.

Just in case, how do you dispose of live ammo? Also, if I use precision weight scales, could I just measure the weight of each round to look for hot loads? Is safe to weed out hot loads like that?

 

[EddieCoyle]

Just in case, how do you dispose of live ammo? Also, if I use precision weight scales, could I just measure the weight of each round to look for hot loads? Is safe to weed out hot loads like that?

If you can't return them, I'd pull the bullets, fire the primers in my gun, and throw the powder out onto the lawn.

You can weigh the charge, but how can you tell if it's the right powder? If I were to put 50 grains of Winchester powder into a .30-06 case, I'd be just fine with 760; if I used 231 instead, I'd expect my gun to blow up.

 

[taliv]

quatin, it doesn't matter if he's just a distributor.

a) i'm fairly certain he would appreciate knowing he's selling unsafe ammo.
b) if he's a distributor, i'd think he'd know how to contact the mfg
c) if he took your $, he should be the one to give it back. let him get reimb from the mfg.

 

[jmorris]

Dallas Reloading Service
P.O. box 630523
Irving, Texas 75063-0523
214-279-9269
214-556-2565
email: [email protected]
{handgun and 223 Rem ammo remanufacturing}
[Manufacturer:ammunition,reloading supplies]

I can’t find the link; however, someone on ar15.com posted some pics of badly dented cases (20+) mixed in a 1000 round batch purchased from them at a gun show.

 

[quatin]

Dallas Reloading Service
P.O. box 630523
Irving, Texas 75063-0523
214-279-9269
214-556-2565
email: [email protected]
{handgun and 223 Rem ammo remanufacturing}
[Manufacturer:ammunition,reloading supplies]

I can’t find the link; however, someone on ar15.com posted some pics of badly dented cases (20+) mixed in a 1000 round batch purchased from them at a gun show.

Oh wow..what a surprise. The phone numbers don't work and neither does the e-mail address. Never buying this stuff again. I'll try asking the guy next month when the gun show rolls by again to refund my money.

You can weigh the charge, but how can you tell if it's the right powder? If I were to put 50 grains of Winchester powder into a .30-06 case, I'd be just fine with 760; if I used 231 instead, I'd expect my gun to blow up.

I meant to just weigh the whole round with something like a kitchen scale. (not the weight scale, the 1 gram scales) Then compare the weights of the bullets and throw out the ones that weigh too much. I've never reloaded, but from what I've seen you put something like 20 grains of powder for a .223 round. 20 grains = 1.2 grams, so if I have a gram scale, I can theoretically find double charges and even 1.5X charges. Would that work? How much extra powder do you have to put in before the case comes apart like that?

*Just a note I'm not going to try this. I'm just curious. Thx again to everyone who gave advice.

*Edit, on a second note. Should I disassemble my bolt to clean out whatever debris might have gotten in there? After clearing the bad round, I shot off another round to make sure the bolt still worked. When I got back, I dripped powder solvent down the hole for the firing pin and drained it out (found some specks of dirt). I dry fired it a couple of times to make sure. I heard it was a pain in the ass to assembly savage bolts, would it suffice if I just submerge the whole bolt in solvent for a while? Do the parts inside a bolt need to be oiled?

 

[Jim Watson]

It probably would not work.
If "remanufactured" in mixed brass with cheap bullets, the cases and bullets themselves could vary enough in weight to overshadow a powder overload.

It would not take a double charge; 20% would do it for sure, 10% if they were loading a fast powder to the maximum to make a can go farther.

It will be a while before I can tell you about the Savage bolt business, I just today ordered a new barrel for mine. Read about them on

http://www.savageshooters.net/SavageForum/index.php

 

[quatin]

Update: If anyone cares .

I called DRS, which is actually Dallas Reloading Supplies (pretty certain it's the right DRS) They said that indeed they sell "remanufactured" .223 rounds, but don't label any of their stuff. However, I'm sure if someone wanted to re-distribute they would put where they got it from.They said if it's a bad batch they'll honor a refund from whomever distributed it. I guess I'll have to wait a month for the gun show to drop by.

Also, I've found more information about DRS. Apparently many AR-15 shooters use it. There's complaint about the occasional deformed case, but most have good things to say about them. I see quite a few who say they've shot thousands of the DRS ammo without problems. By digging through some forums/cached responses, I've found the following:

They supposedly use once fired LC brass from military bases, Hodgdon powder, Winchester primers and bullets.

So it's not super cheap material, it's all domestic. I bought them for $21/100 so certainly costs more than Wolf factory brand.

Also, I think I've found the likely problem. Here's someone else's account:

As I got rid of the last 200 or so rounds, it was running a popped-primer/tied-up-gun for every 50 rounds fired. Many that didn't pop had showed the primers backing out. It didn't look like over pressure either. I think they used fired brass of unknown vintage and the pockets were stretched. No more for me.

This certainly seems more like what I encountered. I didn't feel a heavier recoil, it didn't sound louder and the bullet seemed to hit consistently with the others that didn't break up. I'll be going home to check the other brass for primers backing out. I will be trying to return at least the batch that contained the bad round. It is quite a liability even if it isn't a hot load. Like Jim said, I could break the bolt when trying to force it open after a popped primer. Thanks for the info all who responded.

 

[taliv]

if you can, post a picture of the case head/primer that stuck on you, and a closeup of the bolt-face

 

[WayneConrad]

I do not think that a stretched primer pocket can cause the bolt to have to be hammered open.

 

[ocabj]

The Winchester primer is a problem. Service Rifle AR shooters report primer piercing with Winchester standard small rifle primers in hot loads. The gun will handle the pressure, but not the primer.

That's why I switched to CCI primers in the AR (BR4s for service rifle and regular CCI 400 or 41 for plinking loads). Remington primers are supposedly pretty good, and I would have tried the 7 1/2s, but I couldn't find them in-stock locally.

 

[griz]

Out of curiousity, do you still have the bad case? I am wondering if the headstamp on it matches the other rounds. Usually a change in cases is not enough to blow a primer, but it can certainly increase pessures.

 

[quatin]

I didn't keep the old case and on the way back from the range I was kicking myself for having thrown it away. The case wasn't deformed however, we thought that perhaps the knotch right in front of the rim had expanded causing it to be stuck in the bolt afterwards, but once we removed it the dip was still there. The neck of the round wasn't missing or deformed and there were no cracks. The anvil and the primer just fell out after we hand pried the shell out of the bolt. It seemed like a perfectly good shell, but I know that doesn't mean it wasn't a hot load. Here's a picture of the bolt face that someone requested, I check it out afterwards and made sure it could still fire a round with about the same force (I compared the depth of the dent on the anvils) and I made sure the extractor still worked by cycling some empty shells a couple of times.

[/URL][/IMG]

On a side note, I dug through the batch of rounds that it came from and I was able to pick out 3 rounds that were visibly darker than the rest. These 3 rounds had what can only be described as a bit darker/dirtier brass and the bullets were much more redder than the others. (I'm not crazy, I got someone else to look at them and they agreed ) I can only think that these 3 rounds were older and not from the same run the rest were.

*Edit Oh and I did check the stamp on the back, the lettering were the same, but they have all these circles around it that are at different depths.

*Edit 2 Lol, I don't know if this matters, but about the primer piercing. I keep all my old cases (just not that one 'Doh!) and I just checked all the anvils from that day (30-40 rounds). They didn't seem to be going thru, there's a good dent on them and the anvil didn't look like it was coming up from the sides or cracking in the middle.

 

[toecutter]

-1 on winchester primers

Over the last few years I've noticed a sharp decline in the quality of .223 ammunition available on the market. Lately, almost every brand of factory ammunition out there has had some severe problems with primer's dumping out the back. (This is factory ammo exclusively). By far any winchester white box, or even commercial has been specifically noted for this issue.

For a while I was able to get winchester small rifle primers cheap, however I was continuing to have primers jump out of the case. Since I switched over to CCI 400's this has become a non issue. For now, I've burned up the rest of my stock in WSR primers and I'm using CCI-400's exclusively. Problems have evaporated.

I don't know what it is, (my guess is lack of annealing) but the last few lots of WSR primers blows (literally).

 

[WayneConrad]

I hate to interrupt, but... I am concerned that we keep discussing primers and primer pockets as a possible cause.

Did y'all miss the part where the bolt had to be hammered open?

Is that not a pretty good sign of overpressure?

Look, I've only been reloading for a year, not the lifetime of some of you. I could have this all wrong... but... how in the world can an undersized primer or oversized primer pocket cause the bolt to have to be hammered open?

quatin, I get the feeling that you are looking for any excuse that this ammo is actually safe to fire. I can't blame you... ammo is expensive, and in your case, you can't take it back to the store.

I think it is a mistake for us to give you that excuse. When the bolt has to be hammered open, and the primer falls out, that's two symptoms that can be caused by overpressure. You're mystified that there wasn't more noise, or a change in the point of impact, but you've already had as good as a sign from above that the round was overcharged.

 

[quatin]

Oh, I'm not going to fire this batch of ammo, I've already contacted DSR who said they'll honor a refund from the distributor and I've contacted the gun show who'll try to work with me to find who I bought this from so I can see if he'll refund it.

I'm just sort of curious as to what happened. $21 of ammo is not worth ruining a $600 gun . I'm new to shooting so I'm trying to hit the ground runnin'.

I'm definetly not counting out a hot load, but how does a hot load lock the bolt? I looked at the bolt when I got home and the bolt head is locked, but there's a second head behind it that swivels to allow the bolt to open. I can't figure out what you could do to the bolt face to lock up the second head behind it. I can see how a round can get stuck in the extractor, but what would make the bolt lock up like that? (I probably could've figured this out yesterday, but I was unable to get the hex screw out of the bolt to disassemble)

 

[Deanimator]

Another possible cause of a blown primer, which I've not seen mentioned is excessive case length.

When I first started loading rifle rounds after having loaded a lot of pistol ammo without problem, I didn't know to trim the brass. When you resize bottlenecked rifle cases, they grow in length. If you don't trim them, they'll eventually get long enough so that when you chamber a round, the chamber will start to crimp the case mouth into the bullet, greatly increasing pressures. This happened to me in a #4MkII Enfield with my own handloads. The primer fell right out of the primer pocket and into the action.

It would be very easy for an untrimmed case to be loaded. Without measuring it or running it through the trimmer, there's no obvious sign that it's overlength, especially when you're loading in commercial quantities.

It's too bad the case was thrown away, because a quick check with a caliper would instantly tell you if it was overlength.

Let me throw in with the other people who have discouraged the use of gunshow reloads. Here in NE Ohio, gunshow reloads seem to have two criteria and two only, namely "loud" and "bright". Accuracy seems to be a subordinate consideration, if it's a consideration at all. I'd recommend that you learn to reload your own ammunition, especially if you're using a bolt gun. You will be astonished by the difference in consistency and accuracy, especially if you trickle all of your powder charges and carefully set the bullet seating depth using a Stoney Point gauge.

 

[quatin]

Yeah, thanks for the advice all. I picked this stuff up along with 4-5 other brands from the table since someone recommended me to pick up as many different types of ammo as I can when getting a new gun to see which shoots better.

Also, I called the guys who manage Saxet, they were nice about it and I described who I bought it from and they relayed a message to him. Not an hour later I got a call from the dealer and he was upfront and said I could just take it back to them at the next gun show and trade it in for a refund or more ammo. Both guys asked about what happened and wanted to know if anything was damaged. So I guess this will at least end well. I'm still curious as to how the bolt locked up, but I guess I may figure it out when I manage to disassemble the bolt.

In the mean time, have to go and get more ammo.

I'd recommend that you learn to reload your own ammunition, especially if you're using a bolt gun.

I would reload, but I only manage to shoot about 30-40 rounds a week and it's .223. I've thought about reloading, but I've not justified it for 40 rounds a week. Also, I'm thinking about getting another rifle in a larger caliber that would be worth reloading for. For this week, I'm eyeing another Savage 12 in .300 wsm . I don't have room to setup a large press, but is there something like the lee classic loader that's easily swapped for different calibers?