Can’t get myself to buy “seconds” bullets

[fatelvis]

This may sound strange, especially since I am by no means a rich man, but I can’t get myself to buy blemished or “factory seconds” bullets. Even when I am loading for informal target shooting, and not competition, I like to know that when I miss, or score of nine instead of 10 or X, it was me, and not a sub-par bullet. I guess it falls under the “if you’re gonna do it, do it right” methodology.
Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

[Lefty Trigger]

Shooting competition I would have to think twice for using them but we have a good shooter in our club and he swears by them "blems". He had a whole batch of .338 blems and the only thing I could see wrong was water spots on them, he said weight was within .01gr for about 25 or so he weighed.
I have also found defects in top notch bullets as well, so....

 

[mike06]

I buy a lot from Shooters Pro Shop they have Nosler Blems and 2nds. I just buy the blems in boxes of 100. Mostly 175 RDF and Custom Comps in 30 cal. So far they have been good. I check them with a Redding Comparitar all measure within .002 or less weight sorting with a GemPro 250 scale I get 2 to 3 groups that are within a 1/10th with a few stragalers. The hunting bullets blems about the same. Hope this helps. PS I do not shoot competition.

 

[Park ranger]

I got burnt buying blems for service rifle. Never again!!!

 

[jimmymac]

Ive bought firsts that were seconds.

 

[JFrank]

I no longer weigh Bullets, rather measure BBTO or bearing surface.
I don't believe I would waste money on seconds unless it for just plinking with a 223

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Perfect practice makes perfect.

 

[JayHHI6818]

I buy a lot of Nosler blem bullets and I shoot IHMA silhouette with them.
Shot this 200 yd group with XP100 chambered in 6.5 BR with Nolser’s 140 gr custom competition blem bullet. Flyer was caused by a father and son rat a tat tat blasting next to me 10 benches and they used bench next to me and we were only people there.

Shot this 100 yd group with Savage 6 BR rifle with Nosler 105 gr custom competition blems

 

[MagnumManiac]

Blemished bullets are far superior to “seconds”.

I bought several hundred seconds from an Australian company many years ago, still have some actually, they are a .25 cal 75gr HP that shot very well to start with, then no holes on target at all.
Had a mate spot for me, on several shots, he could see the bullets tumbling with the sun glinting off them, other occasions there was a blue streak about 30yrds out then a big ‘puff’ of blue/grey another 20yrds or so out.
The meplats and ogives varied so much with these bullets that I just set the seating die and seated them all to that position regardless of the actual length seeing as the mag box had heaps of room. The first batch shot quite well, the second not so good, the third batch was the blowing up batch and the rest of the bags shot around MoA at 100, good enough for taking foxes etc.
I had 10 bags of 250 bullets in total, I bought them in batches of total weight, not bullet number. The only bag that blew up was the third bag and the ogive lengths were all over the place.
The other thing I noticed with these bullets was the depth of the hollow point cavity varied by more than .100” in most batches, although the weights were very close to 75gr. The cavities were also ‘caked’ with some sort of solid lube-like substance to varying degrees, some full some partially and some with very little.
I was shooting these out of my 25-06 at just a smidge over 3700fps,
I contacted the guy that made them and he said that there were 2 problems with the jackets, firstly, the jackets had drawn thinner on one side, and the meplats and ogives were vastly different due to this, which I already figured out. He also said the slug of lead may or may not have huge voids in it due to the thinner jacket. I think I found this out when the bullets were tearing apart in flight.
He said it was the first run with new tooling and he didn’t want to go the expense of removing the lead and then melting the jackets or lead for re-use.

I will buy blemished bullets, have several dozen boxes of Nosler blems in BT, AB and PT, all shoot just like the shiny one’s do.

I will never buy seconds again, sure, they were cheap, but they were NASTY too.

Cheers.

 

[tomswede]

Got a couple of thousand 77gr 223 bullets sold as seconds by Powder Valley a whole back. Not sure why they were labeled seconds, as far as I could tell they were Sierras and shot great. I just wish I had gotten more.

 

[nmkid]

I have no qualms buying blemished bullets. Lately, that's all I've been shooting.

 

[mikeinct]

I've never had a batch of bad BLEMS...never used seconds...Weight sort & measure them..The half price stuff can be pretty good...mike in Ct

 

[DRNewcomb]

The only irregulars I've ever bought were a few thousand FMJ 55 gn .223 bullets that mostly had a rounded lump of lead protruding out of the base. More like rejects than 2nd or blems. Of course they're only for shooting at tin cans and zombies. Might be OK for a "shoot and scoot" match.

Knew a guy who shot Mexican match pulls at 100 yard reduced NMC matches and did OK. Some of these bullets were really ugly with scratches and dents where they were grabbed with a pair of pliers. At 100 yards it didn't matter all that much.

 

[Mulligan]

I don’t have any info about any other company’s blems other than Sierra’s.
Sierra had a deal several years ago where they would sell blems to youth shooting programs at a fantastic discount. The blems were off colored or otherwise had appearance issues.
The youngsters from the marksman club here in the valley won a lot of compitions with those blems!!!! Under the tutelage of Matt Healey they showed strong at Camp Perry most years, dont kid yourself, those “blems” were on the line everywhere they went.

I cannot speak to what other companies call blems, however I would not hesitate to buy blems from Sierra.

CW

 

[Larryh128]

Ive bought firsts that were seconds.

+1

 

[farmerjohn]

+1 , especially for prairie dogs..

 

[Milo 2.0]

This may sound strange, especially since I am by no means a rich man, but I can’t get myself to buy blemished or “factory seconds” bullets. Even when I am loading for informal target shooting, and not competition, I like to know that when I miss, or score of nine instead of 10 or X, it was me, and not a sub-par bullet. I guess it falls under the “if you’re gonna do it, do it right” methodology.
Am I the only one who feels this way?

I've never bought 2nd's or blems, if I shot prairie dogs, or AR's more I probably would try some. I'm in your camp though, once a trust gets broken, on my end, things do not end well.
A friend had a 6XC built, he bought 1K blems of a bullet that came out that had a bad reputation even on the good ones, and 1K 105 hybrids. Being I had an XC, I helped him in load dev, 200 rds into the blems, I finally said this is not working. We switched to the hybrids and everything fell into place like clockwork, somethings are just not worth messing with. Life's too short to do stupid crap, I spent my 20's, 30's, and most of my 40's proving it.

 

[NorCalMikie]

Can’t get myself to buy “seconds” bullets ??
Cool. That means there's more for the rest of us.

 

[jackson1]

Back a few years ago, when components were hard to come by, I purchases quite a few pounds of Sierra blemished bullets. As my shooting tastes became more refined and components became easier to get, I have moved away from blem bullets. Can't say I didn't liked them, but I reached a point of trying to obtain the best possible accuracy. Last purchase were some light weight 6mm for my PPC with plastic tips. Most of the tips were deformed or totally missing. Used them for fire forming. I believe it depends on your needs. They can or cannot be a good alternative. Like others have said, they could be a great prairie dog option.

 

[Fotheringill]

Blems are one thing, seconds are another.
If true blems only, there should only be slight discoloration here and there. I have no problem with them. Seconds could be God knows why they didn't pass QC.