S&B Ammo

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I've fired a couple thousand each of 9mm, .40 & .45. Seems to work fine. I've had one failure to fire (a .40); I ran it through the gun again and it fired.

Their shotgun ammo is a different story. Soft shot, bad patterns, etc.
 
I have gone thru several cases of 9mm and .45 in a variety of handguns. No muss, no fuss, great stuff for the price at CTD or Natchez.
 
I've shot hundreds of rounds of their .45s, 9s, .380s and .32s. I continue to do so. Also a decent number of 6.5x55 and 7.62x54Rs.

There were a number of harrowing stories about the 5.56 over on AR15.com, though, so I've avoided that caliber.

Oh! And I do recall reading about a blowup of a USP Tactical .45 over on the HK board within the last 6 months. I am actually carrying S&B in my 1911, though, FWIW.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, I've used a ton of Tok S&B, too!
 
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S&B is great practice ammo. It's not going to win any matches for you, but it's a good solid plinking investment. I've put almost 8000 rounds of S&B downrange with only 2 bad rounds, neither of which was serious (1 FTF, 1 FTE).

In all, I've used:

7.62X25 Tokarev, .380ACP, 9mm, 38SPL, .357Magnum, 40S&W, 45ACP, .223, .308, and 12 Gauge

I've found that it's much cleaner ammo than UMC or Winchester White box, and the cases are great for reloading. I've seen .223 cases reloaded 11 times that are only just starting to show signs of excessive wear.
 
I've fired several thousand rounds of 9mm, 45 and 223 from S&B and have never had bad luck with them. I purchsed some Remmington 22LR and had a 50% failure to fire.
 
I've burned up thousands of rounds of .32ACP, 9mm, 45ACP, and a few hundred of 7.62x39(wish they still made this caliber!), 7.62x25, .38, .357 and 12GA Buckshot. I've never had any problems at all.

All of their ammo seems relatively hot to me, but I have complete confidence in it. All the calibers seem very consistent and accurate.
 
I've shot probably 3,000 rounds of S&B ammo over the past several years, mainly 9mm and .45, but some .357 as well.

It's excellent ammo.

I've also reloaded many of the cases a dozen times or more.

Not sure where Mr. Farnham's bad experiences came from, but I've had NONE of them.
 
Like most people here, I've had very good experiences with S&B .45, shooting several thousand rounds. The .38Sp wadcutter is also nice for new shooters.

However, I personally saw one of the events which may have turned Mr. Farnam away from S&B. It was a weekend rifle class in the spring of 2000. One student had constant failures to feed and fire in his AR15 with a new case of S&B .223. After troubleshooting the rifle, the student realized that the ammo was actually a mix of .222 and .223! Some boxes (all marked .223)had all .223, some boxes had a mix of .222 and .223, and some boxes were completely .222. Needless to say the student had some harsh words for S&B quality control on that day.

Based on their continued performance for me, I have no problem with S&B for practice ammo. Just make sure to check them out as you load up, as we should any ammo.
 
For .45 ball I use it exclusively as it's the cheapest thing going.

Only a few stoppages, not sure if it was the ammo or the gun, maybe like 1 out of 1000 or less.
 
well I have gone through several thousand rounds of 9mm, about a thousand of 45. A couple of boxes of .357

The .357 seems to vary power wise form run to run. SInce it is for a desert eagle, I tend to avoid it. in revolvers, it all shot fine.


AS for rifle, a friend got some 8mm mauser ammo. The cases kept splitting (and this wans't happening to otherammo). IIRC it was the necks.

their pistol ammo seems to be fine, have heard less than stellar thins about heir rifle ammo.
 
rick newland,
I was statoned in Germany in the late 80s and I shot thousands of rounds of 9mm S&B and I never had and problems with it?

SJ,
Speaking of quality control and ammo around 1998 we got a batch of CCI blazer that had a mix of 380 and 9mm. Also the new lead free ammo has destroyed more guns then any other ammo I've seen on the market.

I do know that S&B has had some hard primer problems with their 357SIG ammo. When S&B first came out with 357SIG it worked great. However, the last 1000 rounds I bought have about 4 hard primers per box of 50. This is where I think Farnam was wrong as it would be like me saying avoid S&B because I have a problem with 357SIG even though I've shot thousands of 32acp, 9mm, 45acp, 7.62X39mm, 8mm Mauser, and 303 British without a single problem.
 
Bought 600 rounds of the 32 auto and it worked fine.

300 rounds of .45acp was good too.
 
9mm, .40S&W, and .45ACP

No problems with any of this S&B FMJ ammo
 
Love the .45, 9mm, and .30 carbine S&H - wish I could get some of their .308.

Also wish the red primer sealer didn't leak into my firing pin channel when cleaning... the firing pin hole 'bleeds red' during my occasional deep clean, but never had any problems with reliability, even firing 1,500 rounds without cleaning (.45)
 
I've never had any trouble out of it. It's cleaner than some popular American made brands. Seems a little on the hot side too (in .357) I carry a speedloader of it incase I need the penetration that a FMJ in .357 offers.
 
S&B ammo = excellent

I'm not sure what Farmhams' issue is here but I've used S&B forever.

When I was breaking in a 9mm that wouldn't function reliably with anything I grabbed a box of S&B lo and behold it worked fine.

S&B builds what I call 'spec ammo'

ie what is the base requirement for this round.

I've used 5k round or so of 6.5x55, 7.62x25, .308/7.62x51 and 9mm and I am about to get a couple of cases of .32acp

If the gun won't function with S&B it probably needs gunsmithing ASAP

just my humble opinion.

Farnham blew this one for what ever reason.

r
 
S&B is great stuff and much better than most low-cost plinking/practice ammo.

Some people have complained about hard primers. I have experienced this, but in both cases the guns were somewhat culpable. In one case, an autopistol had a damaged firing pin that still functioned well enough to shoot soft primered ammo, but it wouldn't always shoot S&B. Once fixed, it shot S&B just fine. In another case, a revolver I bought had a bunch of springs lightened to improve the trigger pull and it didn't always shoot S&B reliably. So in both those cases, I don't know if you can really blame the S&B people when there were "issues" with the guns themselves.
 
I use it and love it. It's a great deal. The brass is really good; when I'm running low on brass for reloading, I'll buy a bunch of S&B ammo. My only complaint is that they don't make 10mm.
 
I've fired quite a bit of 62grn green tip ss109 .223 ammo and haven't yet had any problems. I can't really comment on accuracy as I tend to use this stuff for plinking and Black Hills for match ammo.
 
Never had a problem

with S&B and I'm happy to get the brass when fools leave it behind.:D
 
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