Blemished Bullets

Often times places like Midway USA will sell “Blemished bullets” at a discount. When I first started handloading I asked my local shop keeper if I needed X piece of reloading gear. Some things were mentioned with an affirmative, others were met with this: “Look it depends on what you want to do. You can get as geeky as you want in this hobby, or you can just make ammo” I’m more of the latter type. Still Old Painless of the Box O Truth takes a look at what damage to bullets can do to your groups.

VERY interesting article!

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0 Responses to Blemished Bullets

  1. It’s a shame that he didn’t shoot a few of those damaged nose bullets into ballistics gel or something similar. They might still be fairly accurate, but the blunted and snipped noses might really change their performance on a target.

  2. bluesun says:

    How blemished are blemished bullets, though? I bet none of them have a large notch filed in their base. I would have liked him to have had a box of factory rejects to see what they do.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      This is an extreme case, and with the exception of mangling the bullet tail it didn’t really kill the ballistics. So I’d say blemished bullets will work fine for range work.

    • ZerCool says:

      I’ve bought blemished bullets from Midway before; better than 99% of them are purely cosmetic – a bit of the jacketing has discolored or at worst has a fine scratch. Certainly nothing on the level of damage that Old_Painless threw in there. I just give ’em a quick check with the MkI Eyeball and call it good; but then again, anything I load with blems is blasting ammo, not hunting ammo.

      My hunting loads (Interlock 130gr .270) do get carefully checked for any damage. Once they’re loaded, a little bit of “smooshing” on the nose is OK, but again, nothing as dramatic as the link. They kill deer JUST fine. ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. wrm says:

    Dude, you have a shopkeeper with a CLUE.

    Sadly missing in most shops.

    Cultivate him well.

  4. Thomas says:

    Be careful about wrong brass too. I had a NAME company that sells Wildcat Magnum Rifle brass, pretty exclusively as for their product line, that sent me Belted Magnum with the BELTS IN THE WRONG PLACE. I try and keep headspace between .001-.003 and the belts were .018 off the mark as to where they were on the case relative to the case head…Midway refunded my money and chastised the manufacturer for me and sent me usable brass. At three-fifty a round or more to reload using paper puncher bullets, not hunting bullets, I like my bullets to fly where I point them. You can trim case length and size things in a lot of different ways, but if the belt is swaged in the wrong spot…

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