I used to love 9mm and 45 ACP Federal pistol brass. It was nice and soft, on the long side, and durable. A few years ago Federal bought new machinery and began to knock out this new ugly crap. Not only is this brass dimensionally different, it is unattractive.
The old brass had what appeared to be a beadblasted flat perfectly crafted casehead. The 45 brass said "FEDERAL" and the 9mm brass "FC". Then, I started seeing this new "dot FC dot" crap. the casehead was concave, shiny, and wrinkled. The casehead was .002" larger in diameter. My loads shot poorly with this brass. So I had to scramble and buy up all of the old style brass I could find.
So I picked up some brass at the range and found a good number of FC cases. I found some dotFCdot, but also some FCdot, and a bunch of straight FC.
Imagine the disappointment, however, when I tumbled them clean and found the straight FC brass was made on Federal's new machinery. The horror!
Federal sucks. At least Winchester still has good brass made on traditional machinery and there are billions of cases just waiting to be picked up.
The old brass had what appeared to be a beadblasted flat perfectly crafted casehead. The 45 brass said "FEDERAL" and the 9mm brass "FC". Then, I started seeing this new "dot FC dot" crap. the casehead was concave, shiny, and wrinkled. The casehead was .002" larger in diameter. My loads shot poorly with this brass. So I had to scramble and buy up all of the old style brass I could find.
So I picked up some brass at the range and found a good number of FC cases. I found some dotFCdot, but also some FCdot, and a bunch of straight FC.
Imagine the disappointment, however, when I tumbled them clean and found the straight FC brass was made on Federal's new machinery. The horror!
Federal sucks. At least Winchester still has good brass made on traditional machinery and there are billions of cases just waiting to be picked up.