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17 Hornet brass

Has anyone shot any of the American Eagle 17 Hornet ammo or the Winchester ammo and reloaded any of that brass???

Wonder if it's all the same or if the American Eagle (aka Federal) or Winchester brass is better, worse, or about the same as the Hornady stuff. Thoughts???
 
I have a box of American Eagle stuff. Shot it up and reloaded it.. works just fine

Since you have some experience with the AE ammo/brass, do you think this brass is better, worse, or the same, as the Hornady stuff?

FWIW, I just got off the phone with Federal Ammunition and their American Eagle 17 Hornet ammo is being made by Hornady and uses the same Hornady brass.
 
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Since you have some experience with the AE ammo/brass, do you think this brass is better, worse, or the same, as the Hornady stuff?

FWIW, I just got off the phone with Federal Ammunition and their American Eagle 17 Hornet ammo is being made by Hornady and uses the same Hornady brass.


So far I see no difference
 
FWIW, I just got off the phone with Federal Ammunition and their American Eagle 17 Hornet ammo is being made by Hornady and uses the same Hornady brass.

Thanks for doing the legwork and tracking this down. Honestly, it is what I suspected otherwise why wouldn't they sell it as their own brass.
 
Thanks for doing the legwork and tracking this down. Honestly, it is what I suspected otherwise why wouldn't they sell it as their own brass.

I'd be surprised if the Winchest 17 Hornet ammo wasn't using the same Hornady brass as well. I know with the 17 WSM rimfire cartridge, even if the box says American Eagle or Hornady on it, all of the 17 WSM ammo is made by Winchester. It seems these three tend to work together on things.
 
I currently have a collection (250'ish) of 17HH factory ammo brass that I have reloaded several times, using the Federal F205M primers, and they have worked a treat. However, I recently bought a new box of 17HH 25gr, part number 83006. I was about eight rounds into the box when one of the rounds vented out of the primer pocket and damaged the ejector in my Savage M25. I removed the brass with a cleaning rod, cleaned it and tried to re-prime it. But the primer simply drops out. So the brass pocket is oversized.
The damage to the bolt ejector was disappointing. And I really don't want to have to get that fixed again. But I'm not confident in the rest of the rounds in this box. Its strange because the other seven cases re-primed just fine. It just appears to be this one case so far. On closer inspection of the rest of the rounds, the primers appear to be compressed when installed, creating an odd ring between the primer and the pocket wall.
Maybe this was just a one off situation. But I would be keen to hear if anyone else has experienced the primers failing to hold with there current production of factory ammo?
I have emailed Hornady to see if this is a known batch production issue, we will have to see what they come back with. I will stick with using my reloaded rounds for now.
Other than this particular issue, the 17HH is a great round.
 
I currently have a collection (250'ish) of 17HH factory ammo brass that I have reloaded several times, using the Federal F205M primers, and they have worked a treat. However, I recently bought a new box of 17HH 25gr, part number 83006. I was about eight rounds into the box when one of the rounds vented out of the primer pocket and damaged the ejector in my Savage M25. I removed the brass with a cleaning rod, cleaned it and tried to re-prime it. But the primer simply drops out. So the brass pocket is oversized.
The damage to the bolt ejector was disappointing. And I really don't want to have to get that fixed again. But I'm not confident in the rest of the rounds in this box. Its strange because the other seven cases re-primed just fine. It just appears to be this one case so far. On closer inspection of the rest of the rounds, the primers appear to be compressed when installed, creating an odd ring between the primer and the pocket wall.
Maybe this was just a one off situation. But I would be keen to hear if anyone else has experienced the primers failing to hold with there current production of factory ammo?
I have emailed Hornady to see if this is a known batch production issue, we will have to see what they come back with. I will stick with using my reloaded rounds for now.
Other than this particular issue, the 17HH is a great round.


It is not an oversized pocket. It is a VERY hot load. I called them a couple of years ago, and was told I needed to clean my barrel. Probably 1 of 8 had leaking primers. I have probably bought 15-20 boxes total by now and 200 factory reloading brass and have never seen a swaged primer. I know they got a bad batch of brass from their supplier that they had to swage, and if you bought from THAT lot it was swaged. I have mine set up for a .063 rim and it is snug, but as crappy and horrid and terrible and poor quality and worthless and unusable and .......... as the brass is OTHER than the factory hp ammo I am on my 3-4 reloading on some of it and it looks to keep going shooting 1/2-5/8" groups and smoking Pdogs. TERRIBLE brass. I did pick up 500pc of RWS brass that I might reform, so I have a chance to shoot groups in the .2's all day long with however, so I can decide which eyeball I can shoot instead of just shooting their heads.
 
Has anyone shot any of the American Eagle 17 Hornet ammo or the Winchester ammo and reloaded any of that brass???

Wonder if it's all the same or if the American Eagle (aka Federal) or Winchester brass is better, worse, or about the same as the Hornady stuff. Thoughts???
Yup .. Someone gave me a box that was left in a rental. Was just fine
 
Had no issues with Hornady Ammo. Now reloaded a few times. CFE Black, 12.8g for 3600fps with 20g Hornady pills and accurate for 300 yd bunnies. Savage rifle/Leupold 4.5/14x56
 
One thing I have found on my Hornady 17 Hornet brass is some number of primer pockets are unusually deep. I didn't notice this in the beginning of working with the 17 hornet because I was using a Redding primer pocket brush to clean the crude out of the primer pocket. I bought a Sinclair primer pocket reamer made for my 6BR Lapua cases and so started using it. Low and behold in the last 2 groups of shells that I prepped I started seeing where the it was not reaching the bottom of the pocket. In fact it was even hitting the crude. Last night I fired 120 and when I went to do the primer pockets, I found 21 in this condition. That makes about 40 I have found so far but have about 200 more cases to shoot and then do case prep on to find out how many are in my stash. Since I bought both factory ammo and raw cases I have no idea where they came from. Once I have culled them out I will recycle the brass but just interested in how many I have.

This could be a reason for some unexplained flyers. If the firing pin is falling maybe even .003 further could be a factor. I guess I will have to load some of these up and do a test.

David
 
Hornady brass, across the board, is far from great brass. In the little 17 HH we don't have a lot of options and since it's not a real long distance shooter, I can live with Hornady's mediocre 17 Hornet brass, but I have found, this stuff definitely varies a fair amount from one run/batch to the next. I did some brass testing with some new unfired brass I purchased within the year and compared it to some new brass from loaded Hornady ammo where I pulled the bullets and there was definitely a sizable difference in case volume. Having done that, going forward, I'll be keeping my brass separated when I go to reload it.
 
All I can say is do not buy Hornaday ammo in hopes of getting some brass. Hornaday factory ammo has a crimp in the primer pocket..

Never have seen a crimp in any I found. But even if it did I would decrimp it with the small primer tool/swage from RCBS, like I do with Military 5.56 ammo.
 
Just for info, On more than one cartridge, over the years that did have a crimp I either use the RCBS kit (lr/sr) or the old tried and true Wilson hand turned crimp cutter tool. One or the other has never failed even on the small 4.3x30 cases, which have a very heavy crimp on them for use in those little sub machine guns..
 

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