Blemished vs. Regular Boxed Bullets?

[sfdoc2000]

By the way, the total weights never varied more than one grain plus or minus 140 grains And within each bullet type the variance was less than .7 grain.

 

[emp1953]

Hey from Western PA! 1st of all I'd like to thank you all. I have been reloading for years but only a member for a few. But have learned more in the few than all the rest.
I purchased a few boxes of (blemished) bullets. I was skeptical but. After inspecting and weighing I found nothing I would call a blemish. In fact the weights varied less than some regularly priced. Am I missing something?

I've used the Nosler seconds for years. Did a range session with 50 seconds against 50 #1's. shot ten 5 round groups. All were well under 1MOA at 100yds. No outliers. They did not have differing POI.
So took them whitetail hunting. So far over 8 years the seconds have given me 17 one shot bang flops. No lost animals. I could just be one of the lucky ones but I'm not changing what I'm doing.

 

[nickjandrews]

FYI the good old days are over though, and Hdy now sells them all to a middle man. I recently got some 30-30 bullets where the cannelures were all over the place and some weren't even 30 cal bullets lol. So be careful.

Those must be the Horna-day some folks talk about, versus the Hornay-dee bullets most of us have used...

 

[Rich Coyle]

My uncle worked for Nosler. He said Nosler would come out sometimes and say something like, "From here down the conveyor are "blems". Get them off of here and start the next order." I used thousands of "blems" and found maybe half a dozen with deformed tips or discoloration. Killed lots of game with them and shot fantastic groups with them.

 

[.300 Dakota]

I just ordered some .257 cal Nosler Partition "factory overruns". Fancy term for blems. When I get them, I'll check closely for aberrations, but the only thing I can see is that they have a cannelure. Nosler Partitions DON'T have cannelures... Well they do, too. The 170 grain .30 cal designed for .30-.30 does. There are probably more. 120 grain .257 caliber have never that I know of. These are the 120 grainer spitzers, so that's probably the issue. Paid 56 cents each, so they didn't give them away, but much less than they would normally have run. I have a 9 twist Roberts that I'm building, which should make good use of these. Never been crazy about the cannelure, but I've never had it seem to affect accuraacy or hurt that it's there. It will normally just stick up above the mouth a bit. The chamber in this barrel may be short, though, and it may serve its purpose. Will have to see when I get the barrel back from Marty at Twisted Barrel. He was working on it last week.

 

[Starlite]

Hey from Western PA! 1st of all I'd like to thank you all. I have been reloading for years but only a member for a few. But have learned more in the few than all the rest.
I purchased a few boxes of (blemished) bullets. I was skeptical but. After inspecting and weighing I found nothing I would call a blemish. In fact the weights varied less than some regularly priced. Am I missing something?

My blemish boxes were Barnes 6mm. The base to ogive was off (of the projectile) was off more then a few thou. Can't remember off hand. I just made sure I didn't mix them with the regular box.

 

[Starlite]

Those must be the Horna-day some folks talk about, versus the Hornay-dee bullets most of us have used...

I recently found some NOS Hornady labeled as for 6.8 SPC. Their tac drivers in my Savage 270 win

 

[TXTrained]

Hey from Western PA! 1st of all I'd like to thank you all. I have been reloading for years but only a member for a few. But have learned more in the few than all the rest.
I purchased a few boxes of (blemished) bullets. I was skeptical but. After inspecting and weighing I found nothing I would call a blemish. In fact the weights varied less than some regularly priced. Am I missing something?

Not missing much... Just saving yourself some money. They shoot just as good. I've been shooting them for years.

 

[sw282]

lf it weren't for Nosler blems l'd have ''NO'' Noslers at all.

 

[Hugnot]

I have some Nosler 6.5 123 Custom Competition bullets. These are hollow point bullets and the metplats or hollow point openings vary considerably, enough to visually sort. I only use them in my 1896 Swede Mauser. Hope to line up a bunch of them for a photo. I also have some 6.5mm, 130 Hornady ELDM bullets. They look real good but upon measuring diameters they are slightly smaller than first run bullets - .2635, group about 2 inches out of my 6.5-06 that usually gets sub 1 inch with most every bullet. With the primer shortages anf high cost everything & barrel wear the blem bullets are NO GO for me except for sight in to get on paper, like shoot 2-4.

 

[Western4444]

I have a 6.8 Western, could only find blemished 165 Nosler ABLR Bullets. Under 3/4" groups at 200 yards. Have shot them at 1000 and 1200 yards. Could do no better than 10" group at 1000 and 20" group at 1200 yards. I shot the factory 175 Sierra TGK at those yardages and did no better. Have not had a single flyer out of any of the blemishes. I had the same questions you have about these bullets. Hard not to buy when they are half the price.

 

[QuietTexan]

Sometimes you get something nice when you roll the dice - I got 95gn Tipped Core-Lokts as my blem surprise from Midway recently. Not something they sell as a component so factory must have rejected for some reason. I got almost 1k of them, I decided to not use all them for fireforming because they'll make great cheap hunting loads. No real variations I can find poking at a couple of them, defiantly nothing that would stop me using them as 300-and-in whitetail loads in the 243 or the Mongoose.

 

[RUFFIAN R - NY]

I always check my bullets- weight-diameter-etc and keep them isolated by groups- thats 1st-2nd's just a habit from benchrest days.

 

[tony d willIiams]

Blemished bullets are fine, even if in original boxes, in my opinion. We had moved and in the process some boxes were placed in boxes and then misplaced. When found, they worked fine, same as new.

A neighbor, doesn't shoot, was given some boxes of 308s. Tarnished, case and bullets not dented or any physical damage. She gave them to me. During my inspections before a practice trip I pulled out the styrafoam/rounds. Behind it was a tiny note. It had the reloading information on it.

I have trouble trusting reloads that I did not make. A couple I know get their recipes from the "web", have no problems with the recipe(s), because the poster said the recipes are safe.

I took them apart, dumped the powder, disposed of it, reloaded with my tested and true recipe.