Sgt Rock Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 Since my return to IPSC and to reloading in general, I have run across this constant source of irratation. Amerc brass. I have'nt made it a point to sort through all my range brass everytime I come home, I just dump it all into a bucket and tumble as required. As I am loading new rounds I usually seperate the very old off colored stuff into a practice only pile and trash any other cracked casing I find. I don't seperate the brass anymore by individual headstampings. Hence, the burr in my butt of late. After I reload, I chamber check all my brass, seems like every other batch an Amerc case finds its way into the lot. As many of you know the brass seems to be thicker and will not chamber into many barrels. Where does this crap come from? I am almost tempted to start sorting thru all the brass in order to eliminate this junk before the loading even starts. How much of this junk do you all run into? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singlestack Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 I got some in my .45 brass too. I had to sit down and sort through every bit of it to make it go away. I look when I pick up brass now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 I thought I was the only one! This topic belongs in the Hate forum. That Amerc stuff is evil. I had to adopt the same methods you and SS have mentioned to weed it out. -jhgtyre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlos Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 I sort at the end of a run - I load everything into the 100 round plastic boxes and give the headstamps a once-over before deciding what goes to a local match, what goes in the "practice" box, and what goes to major matches. Amerc is total crap; some FC 99 has heavy military crimps; S&B works, though the primer pockets are tight. Everything else seems fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheldon Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 The first piece of AMERC brass that went through my Dillon 650 was VERY noticeable. It felt like something was being forced big time. It goes through the press o.k. until it gets to the crimp stage. It takes a lot of pressure to push that thick brass into the crimp die and it always leaves a bright ring around the brass along side the bullet. I took the time to go through the rest of my cases to just throw out all the AMERC I could find. I then came to this site and did a quick search on 'AMERC' and saw I wasn't the only one to have problems with this stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted April 12, 2002 Share Posted April 12, 2002 I posted this a long time ago, but the rumor mill has it that A Merc's claim to "fame" is that they produce headstampless ammunition for the US to use in covert ops. Meaning: it usually gets stuffed into a submachine gun and only has to work once. Hence the quality. E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warpspeed Posted April 16, 2002 Share Posted April 16, 2002 Does it come in all calibers or just military? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Og Posted January 26, 2003 Share Posted January 26, 2003 I just ran across some A-merc that not only do you have to hook a cheater bar to you're favorite dillon to break these things loose from the flaring/powder die but the primers were literally falling out of them when they fell into the ammo bin. I have run into the same problems with the different brands of brass mentioned previously by the other posts but one that hasn't been mentioned is the shallow primer pockets on the WCCxx match brass. I have found that this head stamp is the major contributor to most of the high primers that I find. Og Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dick W Holliday Posted January 30, 2003 Share Posted January 30, 2003 the sidewalls on the stuff is so thick that when you seat some cast bullets it not going to chamber......i went to the indoor range last night and the floor was covered with 40 brass and i figure i'll lhave one sooner than later so i started picking up the brass.......i happend to glance at the headstamp and saw Amerc so i left it lay......Dick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newguy Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Okay, time to air dirty laundry. When I first started shooting/reloading I had no mentor or anyone to talk about it with. Bought a Baer and Kimber but they had problems. Just wouldn't chamber all the time. I left them with a smith and paid a lot of money for some tweaking, but the guns just wouldn't run right --they jammed in most matches. What was the problem? Limpwrisitng? Too tight chamber? Nope, it was the A-Merc crap mixed in with my brass. It took me months (and constant smith visits) to figure out the problem. My reaction to A-Merc is VISCERAL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a-44978 Posted June 28, 2003 Share Posted June 28, 2003 i'll take it all! After changing to the lee resizing die and the lee factory crimp die i have very few fail the case guage and even those fit my chamber nicely My first year i shot a glock with no mods to my 650 and was having fat rounds(consistantly A-MERC)so i threw out all A-merc brass i ran accross and now i'm sorry. Now i shoot a 2011 with a Schumann match barrel and i'm a man-whore when it comes to brass,i have even run .357sig casses through to see what would happen and i lost em in the grass somewhere in stage 3(spent casses).Ive run 30k through my Dillon,5k after a few mods and all i run into now is an occasional pause because a case misses the mouth of the stage one die. Oh and one more great find,Franklin Armory makes a primer tube filler gizmo for $50 and some change at midway.I can fill15 tubes in 20 mins! I wish i had all the A-merc i threw away now Happy loading Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 1, 2003 Share Posted July 1, 2003 After reading this terrifying thread, I went back thru my recently reloaded brass from very recent firings thru the Kimber and scanned for A-Merc headstamps. Actually saw one here'n there but, frankly, have had NO "incidents" with it in interrupting my shooting, nor has my gunsmith mentioned it as an evil-and-don't-want-it-in-my-reloader kinda thing. (The only stuff he objected to was S&B... which we've made adjustments to overcome and it fires AND reloads now just fine.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richard franklin Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 my friend owns a reloading company this brass is his worst nightmare it will stop his machines dead ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSEMARTIN Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 I read this thread and decided to see what would happen if I tried some A-merc brass I found mixed in with my other brass. It locked up my 550. When I managed to clear the machine, I noticed the depriming pin was bent. Unbelievable! Because of this thread, I hand sorted over 5,000 9mm rounds. Thanks for the heads up. You've saved me a lot of irritation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 All those with bins of A-Merc brass they've sorted out, ship it to A-44978. and may you continue to have good luck with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 Again, I've not had any trouble with it. BUT: Last night we finally set up the Square Deal at my place (Yay!! It's up and runnin'!!) and my 'smith was there tweaking it and all, and we DID discuss brass... I noticed one AMERC casing in my cleaned pile and we talked about that, too, but 1.) He'd never had any trouble with it, and 2.) I ran one thru the SDB and nothing (bad) happened at all. However, with all these freaky posts about it here, I might just separate it out and be cautious. BSTS. (better safe than sorry). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a-44978 Posted August 25, 2003 Share Posted August 25, 2003 I wish i had all the a-merc i threw away.After changing to a lee decapp,resize die and the lee factory crimp die i can even run357sig casses through(i load .40) If it passes the case guage, don't look back,use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSEMARTIN Posted September 1, 2003 Share Posted September 1, 2003 I went to the range a few days ago. About half way through shooting, I had a round chamber. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. When I checked my pistol, I noticed the slide wasn't all of the way forward. When I tried to clear the chamber, I couldn't rack the slide back. It was a small nightmare getting the pistol cleared. Finally, I got the round out- the head stamp read "A-merc". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a-44978 Posted September 1, 2003 Share Posted September 1, 2003 All those with bins of A-Merc brass they've sorted out, ship it to A-44978. and may you continue to have good luck with it. i wish i had a shipping answer,but i'm lucky enough to have friends at ranges (training,qualifying,etc) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSEMARTIN Posted September 3, 2003 Share Posted September 3, 2003 Several months ago, I purchased 5K rounds of 9mm "range" brass off of e-bay. I am so thankful I stumbled into this thread, because the A-merc brass has been such a pain in the you know what. My original plan was to just load it and go about my business. Because of this A-merc stuff, I spent hours hand sorting everything. However, I do appreciate those that identified a problem to me before I discovered it for myself- I sure didn't enjoy seeing it lock up my machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Hayden Posted September 5, 2003 Share Posted September 5, 2003 I came to this same conclusion at the range. I wish I had seen this forum then, I thought I was really screwing up. With new loads for 45, this brass is consitantly shorter than the rest (I bought a bucket of brass), so it didn't bell the case well with the powder drop and the number of cases that had primers fall out was ridicuols. I would send it to someone, but I've helped us all by throwing it out. I felt bad wasting 500 rounds of brass, but I have to think there as a 10-15% failure rate (primers falling out, sticking in the chamber, failure to feed, etc), this brass isn't going to bother anyone else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFD Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 A short history lesson concerning AMERC crapola: When the garbage first came out, most cases would split after the first firing. It appears the cases were made mega-thick to prevent that. I don't sort until I'm finished loading either. However the AMERC crap is easy to spot when resizing. Lots of effort equals AMERC. I'll pull it before I waste a primer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IPSCDRL Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 I have had similar problems with it in .45 ACP. A friend was shooting this stuff at practice and when I went to pick it up he told me that the manufacturer does not recommend it be reloaded. Well, being the cheap Polack that I am, I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a try. It runs through my SDB press just fine however it will not drop into the case gauge. Heck, I’ve reloaded some steel Wolf cases and not had problems like this! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rimshot Posted October 24, 2003 Share Posted October 24, 2003 Cool Handle! I used to love reading Sgt. Rock stories. rimshot Blue Collar Shooter Magazine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newguy Posted October 28, 2003 Share Posted October 28, 2003 I bought 4k .40 brass containing a lot of AMERC brass. Since I had problems with it in .45 ACP I was cautious. Anyway, I decided to experiment to see if was different in the .40. Well, I reloaded some rounds (and then more) w/ MG bullets and surprisingly they all drop into the case gauge. (I'm not using a Lee resizer). Maybe they got their act together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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