Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Somebody's F***ing With My Medicine

Over the weekend, I found a box of Winchester 110gr "Self Defense" rounds (the cheap ones in a white box) that I had laid aside before I moved to my new house. I bought two boxes, shot one up, and set the other in a dry box and forgot about it until I got all my gun stuff out of storage. I opened the box, loaded two speed strips with 5 rounds a piece, then fished out five more to put in the SP101 and had a Harry Plinkett-style mental breakdown. Here's what I saw:





After I recovered, I noticed that the semi-jacketed rounds look very much like some 125gr .38+p rounds I also tend to carry. And they're also from Winchester. If I had a nice electronic scale, I'd like to pull some bullets and see if they are 110gr or 125s that somehow got into the .357 production line. The entire box of these that I shot up all had the nice-looking fully jacketed bullet, which upon closer inspection looks very much like a Hornady XTP. Weird, right? These all came out of an unopened box. Who's f***ing with my medicine?

Two different primers, also. 


It can't be a mix of factory and handloads, either. My .357 loads are indeed Hornady XTP bullets, but I use nickeled Starline cases. I want to use different looking brass for a number of reasons. First, my handloads are very near the SAAMI limit of .357magnum and I want to make sure I inspect these cases for signs of pressure-related failures. Second, I don't want to mix new brass with once-fired, or worn brass because of the pressure. The only possible explanations are that Winchester ran out of money to make good 110gr ammo and switched to some cheesy SJHP midway through this box of ammo, or someone put the wrong bullets in the hopper that day.

Either way, I'm going to shoot a few of these sometime this week (with any luck...) and report back.

1 comment:

James said...

You want to help me milk my cat?