Warning flag!

Good thing I read JPFO stuff every day. This jumped off today's page at me:

P.S. Come meet me at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show, Feb. 23-24, 2013, at the Phoenix Fairgrounds, 19th Avenue and McDowell Road. Huge show. They have ammo.

It's those last three words from the quote: "They have ammo". Back a few years ago, I was having a winter break down in the Valley of the Sun, and I got some .380ACP from that gun show. It was reloads, since there was a shortage of factory .380 about then. Long story short, I blew up a Kel-Tec P3AT with one of those reloads, an obviously double-charged round. I was lucky to only get slightly scratched out of the deal. Kel-Tec eventually rebuilt the gun, but grumbled at me for using reloads, which voids their lifetime warranty supposedly. The rest of those reloads, all carefully weighed on a powder scale to try to catch any further double-charges, still sit in a can on my bench.

If you're going to the Crossroads of the West funshow next weekend, by all means visit with Alan, but stay away from "gun-show reloads".

Comments

[Gerry N.]

Ten or so years ago I bought a bag of 500 .38 Spec. wadcutter reloads at the WAC show in Puyallup, WA. The second one I fired felt like I had fired a .357 Mag. I too, took the rest home and weighed 'em. The weight of some rounds was five grains above what it should have been, some were three to five grains below. I took the remaining 498 back to the vendor who didn't want to talk about it. The Sergeant At Arms had some words with him and got my money back. I never saw that vendor at another WAC show again.

That and the handloaded .308 Win. rounds my wife got at a garage sale are the reason I will never again fire another round loaded by someone else. Thirty of the roughly 175 .308 rounds had 53 grains of red dot in them. Turned out the old boy who loaded 'em was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer's at the time. I pulled all the bullets, and used the powder on my wife's roses. They were superb that Summer. I reused the primed cases for 130 gr. cast bullet loads with 10 gr. of Unique. They were fine for that.

Gerry N.