Seeing as how I am in MA, it is very hard to find good defensive ammo since almost all online retailers don’t ship here and most of our gun stores have a pretty small selection.
My defensive load for my AR is .223 69gr SMK loads from Black Hills (remanufactured), not factory fresh.
I know Black Hills is a top notch brand, but would you trust reloaded ammo for defensive use? At least from some initial research I’ve done, Black Hills uses the same components in their remanufactured line as their factory line, with the exception of the brass. Any concerns?
Yes it is. Match bullets have very thin jackets so a cannelure adds very little to their ability to fragment.
Black Hills also makes a 68gr load using a Hornady OTM that has very similar terminal performance, but also has a cannelure (at least the ones I have). You might want to take a look at that load, and see if it shoots well in your rifle.
You can use Blue Box for practice, and use red box for the real stuff (after verifying function of course). I have seen a few failures to fire with Blue Box, but never with Red Box ammo.
Crimp in auto pistol cartridges does not have anything to do with setback in a manner which many think. The proper bullet tension is set with the sizing die. The crimp flattens the case against the bullet shank.
Isn’t the concern with using re-manufactured Black Hills ammo for social purposes that of increased probability, however slight, of catastrophic case separation of a case previously fired through an M249 SAW with improper head space?
This is not nearly as likely with virgin brass.
Found it! OP, you might want to take a road trip for something new.
Originally Posted By cckw:
the thing about blue box is that some of it has been through a SAW. machine guns are very hard on Brass. Every now and then someone will post a broken piece of brass from black Hills Blue box or Ultramax and think they found a defective production run or something. This is still a statistically rare thing but If it happens you are done in a self defense situation.
I am a Blackhills fan, I have a case of red box 75 and multiple cases of blue. I use the blue for target and hunting and have the red for SHTF. i also have cheaper ammo for goofing off.
The brass that breaks in half in the chamber gives no visual clues before firing.
Originally Posted By Molon:
+1
Does anyone really want to worry about this happening during a self-defense shooting? (see pic below) When a case separates like this, the upper half of the case usually stays lodged in the chamber and when the next round tries to chamber, the weapon locks up; hard. Self defense ammunition is virgin brass ammunition – period.
From the same thread:
Originally Posted By DocGKR:
We have shot many thousands of trouble free rounds of BH 5.56 mm red box, white box, and tan box in 1/7 twist weapons with barrels ranging from 10.5" to 20". Black Hills is currently the premier manufacturer of high performance 5.56 mm ammunition for U.S. military SOF units. Black Hills ammunition has demonstrated a superb record in OCONUS combat since the onset of the GWOT in late 2001 and has been some of the best performing 5.56 mm ammunition in our laboratory testing. Likewise, we’ve shot significant amounts of BH in other calibers including 6.8 mm, 7.62x51mm, .300 Win Mag, and .338 Lap Mag. Their ammo has never given us any problems.
Blue box is reloaded ammo for training–by definition, it is not going to exhibit the same quality as factory loaded new premium ammo…
Otherwise, I would not hesitate to use BH reman for defensive purposes. BH reman has consistently demonstrated better performance by many measures than the new product of others. I retain a good supply of it with favored bullets as contingency ammo.
BH is good stuff, with that said I reserve blue box for training/competition only. I’ve had three casings split in half as pictured above in the last 7K of blue box I’ve used. Everytime it was a reloaded used .mil Lake City casing that had likely been fired through a M249.
Excellent point. This isn’t unique to SAW fired brass. I’ve had it happen on regular AR fired brass… some even once fired.
It won’t hurt anything at all… but it will take your weapon out of the fight until the case neck is removed. Somtimes the round that gets jammed into the case neck will clear it.
The other concern is that BH didn’t used to trim that brass. And it was terribly out of trim spec. Not sure if the ammo is still this way, but I checked several loads in the past and they were all out of spec.
BH must have a very aggressive expander ball in their equipment, because they get an ass load of stretch on their brass.
All hype aside, how much “defense” ammo do you need? I’m just saying that if it costs xxx per box then you may have to suck it up and spend the money for something good since you shouldn’t be using it to plink with.
You may want to contact these guys who are in Massachussetts.
Hey, don’t shoot the messenger – I just pointed out the numbers. A 0.042857143% chance of catastrophic failure would be perfectly acceptable to me. That’s more safe than driving my car every day.
