Review: Farrar Ballistics 38 SPC

[Erick]

Bought 1000 rds ammo to support a nice handgunning weekend and was really looking forward to shooting it.
Came in 10 packs of 100 rds each inside a box.

But sadly Locked up my cylinder almost every time.  :negative:

Tried it again on another revolver this weekend while opening a different bag hoping for a better result, this was when shooting with a friend at his house, this locked up this other revolver as well. …
cylinder would not turn once again after shot 1!

- That Saturday evening I then hand selected out the most questionable looking rounds (pressure lines in brass, dents in brass) .
This removed about 20% of rounds of the next 2 bags. Again next morning I was still unable to shoot a single 6 shot drum… revolver locked up halfway thru the trigger pull.
an expanded case was clearly obstructing the turn of the cylinder.
Likely IMO cause , using too many times reloaded brass.

Company owner says its “the guns fault” says GP100s are “unreliable ” and the dents i spotted in some rounds are FEDEx fault ..  :wacko:
This all that despite the fact that my GP has shot 100 s of trouble free rounds the previous weekend and then locking up with this ammo and his ammo only.

My buddies ancient 38 SPC Ammo functioned perfect afterwards as did my newer Fiocchi 125gr.

I was unable to complete even a single drill with this ammo.

This Ammo is badly faulty.. I have never experienced something like this before and to think I almost cached it..  :wacko:
Verdict.. not even nearly good enough to be training Ammo even by my low standards for training ammo.

Sad the guy would not take it back, he responded to my email on this and to a previous request for tracking number quickly + well after business hours which impressed me so I really wanted to like this ammo.

But it is simply unusable Ammo.
Since the company is not taking it back I will give the remaining 960+ rounds to a buddy to pull bullets and powder for reloading.

[DMCakhunter]

Thanks for the warning and am sorry for your bad luck.

[brat]

Appreciate the heads up on this company. At least your buddy can benefit. Maybe he'll give you some reloads in return.

[Erick]

Actually haven't found the right reloader yet.
Another friend suggested a decent reloader should be able to fix the rounds .

[JohnyMac]

I am very disappointed Erick in the lack of customer service you received from Farrar Ballistics. In this day and age, businesses should understand that they may not know whom they are dealing with. In your case the Keymaster of a forum with 12,000 plus members and links to several others.

I suspect you want to pull the bullets (Save) pour the powder out (save), resize the casing and reassemble each bloody cartridge. 

To our more experienced reloading folks, what are your suggestions for Erick?

[Nemo]

Do some testing. 

Mike out the projectiles.

10 rounds with same powder, primer and brass but new projectile.

10 rounds with resized brass but all else same.

10 rounds with new primer, same all else.

10 rounds new powder, same all else.

Fire and see what works and what does not.

Once you identify the issue trash that and reload the rest.

Should quickly identify the issue.  I would suspect the problem lies in a crap powder or IMHO, more likely crap primer.

Nemo

[Erick]

Update.

my reloading buddy told me that "some primers are seated high and not flush or below so the primer is catching/dragging as the cylinder indexes"

its too dangerous to reseat primers on loaded rounds so he will look for the problem kids and take those fully apart and then reassemble

[JohnyMac]

Interesting. Have you told Farrar yet?

[Erick]

No.

I felt if they were really interested they would have wnated to look at the ammo themselves. 

I feel no ill will towards the guy, its obviously a small business and he answer customer emails at 9pm which gives him some kudos
But in the end he was unwilling to back up product.

[Nemo]

Once you get details and review make sure you shoot a link to here to them there.  Based on what you have experienced, I won't be buying anything from them.

Nemo