Hello All
While sitting on the couch cleaning out primer pockets of some of my .38 Special brass, I noticed that some of my flash holes are not centered in the primer pocket. This phenomenon only occurs in some of the PMC brass I saved from the time before I reloaded. Does an offcenter flash hole matter?

Zeke,

It probably doesn't matter unless you are shooting long range or competition. They should be fine for practice or "blasting" ammo.

Don

I did a side by side comparison test with 50 rounds of 9mm. What I found that there was a VERY noticeable difference between the rounds that had the primer flash holes uniformed as opposed to the rounds that were loaded with "stock" brass.

All 50 rounds were loaded with a 124g fmj bullet, a WSP primer, (as best I recall) 5.1g of Unique and once fired S&B brass. The only difference was that 25 rounds had the flash hole uniformed with "Midway's" uniforming tool. All rounds were fired in 5 shot groups alternating batches, from 30 feet out. I even had my shooting buddy load my pistol for the last 4 targets so there wouldn't be any effect by me to prefer one batch of ammo over the other.

What I found was that the cartridges that were loaded with the flash holes uniformed had tighter groups 5 out of 5 times! As best I recall the smallest group size difference from the batch with flash hole uniformed to the batch without was well over a inch!

Well, that's what I've found. I now uniform every case that I load. But go and try my little experiment for yourself, just drill out the flash holes with a .085" drill bit on a number of cases then load your with your favorite recipe!

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Abe

If everyone thought like me, I'd be a damn fool to think any differently!

I've found PMC generally to be pretty cheap ammo. I call them Pretty Mediocre Cartridges.

Brass weight and over all uniformity is poor. But it seems to work for plinking reloads.

Has anyone looked into Zeke's question about eccentricity of flashholes? Time to drag out Narramore, I guess.
Regards from Kalifornistan
Ross

Abe: Congratulations for having the credibility to do "double blind" testing. So many people, especially gun writers, introduce variables into ammunition or guns, then test the variables while knowing which variable they're testing. If the "testor" has some preconceived notion of how the variable should affect performance, well, lo and behold, it probably will!