Factory ammo – Do they ever use prefired brass?

Ran into something a couple of weeks ago that had me scratching my head. My son’s Tikka T3 Lite SS in 308 was going through an assortment of offerings looking for that magical 165 or 168gr load that would be the perfect down the pipe and honestly, I found out that this rifle just doesn’t care for most factory formulas. However, I had a box of SSA’s (silver state armory) in 168gr. match grade HPBT’s and while the shot group was looking great, about 1 in 4 rounds wouldn’t chamber correctly and the bolt wouldn’t close. A similar offering from PPI did the same thing.

All I could think of was the possibility of pre-expanded or pre-fired brass. Does anyone know if these ammo makers use used brass or put them to some process of expansion before loading them?

This is just a question of curiosity because I resolved the shot group issue by upping to 180gr. bullets. A 5 shot group at 100yds. totally removed a nickel sized bullseye.

Any company using one-fired or re-sized cases would have to say so on the package I think. It could be that they purchase new cases from a fly-by-night company making the cases using less than stringent tolerances.

Tikka’s have very close tolerances in their chambering and it may be that that ammunition has a cartridge or two per box that are just not quite right and poses the problem when they are chambered.

Check to see if primers are completely seated. If they protrude at all on my t3 the bolt won’t close.

Technically, a company using once fired brass shouldn’t make a difference – Provided that they are doing a quality control to insure all aspects are within specs. I think Black Hills offers a reload (or had) and I had great success with them.

As a standard procedure, they all need to be de-primed, resized, trimmed to length, deburred, cleaned, and inspected for flaws.

Manufactured ammo must be within the OAL (Over-All Legnth) specs to meet all manufactures of firearms. In addition to any brass issues, their over all length could be too long. I measure all my loading from the head of the brass to the Ogive of the bullet as all bullet designs vary.

Shooting any ammo that has sloppy craftsmanship is dangerous. I would contact the manufacture and share your experience.

But before doing so, I would run a easy test. Take one of the rounds that wouldn’t allow the bolt to close. Color the entire bullet, brass and primer with a sharpie. Gently place in in the chamber and close the bolt. Carefully apply enough pressure to the bolt to slightly force it – but just enough to scrape the sharpie ink off the trouble spot and eject it. You should see all the p0ressure points. If the OAL to the ogive is too long, you’ll see a ring around the bullet. If the neck is out of shape, you’ll see scratches on the shoulder. If the primer is sticking out or head of the brass has issues, you’ll see deep scratches in the edges of the brass. This info would be very good for the manufacture to diagnose what is wrong.

Thanks for the input guys!

Randy! Man do I wish I would have saved those rounds! I slapped them into my Weatherby and the bolt closed so I just shot them up for the sake of shooting them up. Some were tight but closed without force. I had 5 SSA’s and 6 PPI’s that wouldn’t chamber. That’s a lot!

Perhaps I should still contact them just to let them know what I ran into?