Ammunition reliability

[castle key]

In more than three decades of law enforcement and having fired a metric &*$*&^ ton of qualifying rounds, I have had only a few failures to fire.

This morning at qualifications, I decided to bring out the old SW 36 and put it in service as an off duty. After twenty five rounds with four failures, I stopped using that box of ammunition, figuring that the lot may be bad.

All failures had nice primer strikes.

I was wondering about thoughts on "proofing" a new lot of ammunition. Would it make sense to select a few random rounds to try? What is an acceptable failure rate? Perhaps purchases from multiple vendors to try to vary lot number and then mix up lots?

I really hate having genuine defense stuff loose dependability! This current box is marked "Range Only" now!

Remington .38 SJHP +P 110 gr.

[Hawkmoon]

Acceptable failure rate? For duty/carry ammo?

Need you ask?

I'm having difficulty thinking of alternate ways to spell "Zero."

And ammo should stay good for at least twenty years, under normal storage. Send it back to Remington. I often read stories about old 1911s that are found with a loaded magazine. The gun has been stored in an attic or a barn for fifty years or more, and the ammo still goes Bang.

[castle key]

Certainly an acceptable reliability percentage is ZERO. That is not attainable, which is why so much firearms training focuses on clearing problems.

That returns us to the question of reliability percentage. As zero will not happen, what can you accept?

[just Warren]

As zero will not happen, what can you accept?

A revolver?

[Fly320s]

Acceptable for duty/defense?  Less than 1% failure.  Or as close to zero as possible.

I can't remember the last time I had bad factory ammo.  I think it was some 5.56 with bad primers.  The last bad batch of reloads I had was  9mm I made with Wolf primers.  Those just would not fire sometimes.

As best I can remember, I have never had a bad round with quality defensive ammo.  Quality = American made and top tier manufacturer.



edit for spelling.

[French G.]

Don't know what the testing protocol should be. I used to shoot my carry gun as carried with no prep and put one or two mags through it. Helps that for a lot of that I had a case of gold dots. Now, I shoot my autoloader carry ammo a few times a year. The revolver? Well, stuff has been in there awhile. Like so long I have two types of ammo in it because if I shot one round I replaced it with whatever else I had. So far it has always worked. The only factory center-fire ammo I ever had issue with was one I caused, Cor-bon .380, took it whitewater rafting which turned into swimming. The spare mag that drained and dried out faster was fine, the one in the gun was 50% misfire. So much for the whole modern ammo basically waterproof gunboard wisdom.

[K Frame]

I know you told me that you were firing Remington ammo, but exactly WHAT Remington ammo?

There are huge differences in the lines. The REM-UMC stuff in the buff/yellowish box I simply won't touch.

[MechAg94]

I always had good luck with S&B ammo.  A year or two ago, I had a squib round in a 45 carbine with it.  Went 8" down the barrel so it would likely have exited a pistol barrel.  Anyway, I neglected to try to contact them.  I now regret not doing so.  I would contact Remington and see what they will do for you. 

[HankB]

. . . Perhaps purchases from multiple vendors to try to vary lot number and then mix up lots? . . .

Absolutely not! Ammo from multiple lots means multiple reliability percentages. (For fresh name brand ammo, the percentage should always be pretty close to 100%. But if there's a bad lot in there . . . )

Far better to buy ammo from a single lot and shoot an appreciable percentage of it to verify reliability of that particular lot.

[Brad Johnson]

Four FTFs in a single box of current-production ammo? Very, very unusual.

My first thought would be light strikes, especially given the gun has been out of service for a while. You mentioned there were firing pin strikes on the primers but it's not unheard of for modern ammo to have "tough" primer cups. Did you try an additional strike to see if the round would fire or simply discard them? It's entirely possible there was enough force to dent the primer and give the indication of a strike without imparting enough energy to initiate the reaction.

When I was experimenting with hammer springs in my SP101 I ran into a couple of instances where primers were dented but the round didn't fire. Swapping in the next heavier spring cured the problem even though the difference was very minor (from 10# up to 11#). There was little, if any, visible difference in the fired primer's appearance between the two spring rates.

Brad

[French G.]

I play with hammer and striker springs a lot, but in play guns. Carry guns get left alone or an extra power spring. My 625 was 6lb DA and I preferred not to use the single action as it was exciting. From that you learn different ammo manufacters have primers that vary either in metal thickness or hardness. The 625 was a federal primer only gun, generally the softest you can get. CCI primers laughed at it.