223bulkbullets.com is a good source of inexpensive bullets if you reload for 223/5.56.

I have tried the pulled bullets too more then a deckade ago. I got them to work but no more. If I cast my own I have no one to blame for inconsistancies then myself. I have had to pull my own reloads too and when i reused my own components I learned that if I turned up the decapping pin I had less problems with pistol fodder. When I reuse bullets often I do not even have to bell the case mouth at all to get a bullet to set to depth. I then run them again with the seating stem yet higher to get a good crimp.

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, and a cheapskate, I keep ordering from these guys.

I got two super-heavy boxes in the mail today. One of the items included was 3,000 180-grain .40/10 HST bullets, pulled of course, that look like this:



All right, so far so good!

Next up were 2,000 165-grain .40/10 FMJ bullets, also pulled. I put a few on the scale and noticed a discrepancy right away, so I went through and weighed them all . . . nine at a time.

Check these five bullets out. Are they the same? Different?



Basically, they all look the same unless you start weighing or looking at them VERY closely. Same old story with these pulled bullets. Here they are side-by-side:



And remember, that photo is zoomed in quite a lot so it makes the differences more visible. These are all .40-caliber, and from left to right: 147-grain, 155-grain, 160-grain, 165-grain and 180-grain. I didn't even know that some of those existed!

I actually only found about 20 "bad" bullets out of the 2,000 total. All of the bullets are actually in great shape, I'm just calling them "bad" because they are the wrong weight.

I'm not complaining. At this point, I know what to expect and it's on me.

I got a just a jacket from them once, but I've been satisfied with what you get for the price. Just have to check everything before you load it.

Another day, another 33-pound box of love from American Reloading in the mail.

I got an email from them recently advertising:



All right, that sounds fun, right? And even if they don't all work, whatever, still cheap bullets. So i ordered 2,000 of the 9mm 115-grain bullets, at 6.8 cents/bullet delivered.

I got the box today, here's the packing slip:



I opened the box, looked inside . . . all right, these are interesting, they have an extra little pad of the "glow-y shit" on the base:



But then as I looked closer, WTF, not this shit again!



Sho nuff, that big one is a 147-grain (actually more like 148 including glow-y shit). So then I was back to my usual tricks with American Reloading bullets, weighing 2000 bullets, five at a time, acting as my own personal American Reloading QC department. In the end, out of 2000, I found five 147-grain bullets:



And in the bottom of the box, a few pieces of glow-y shit that had come off:



Here's a bullet without glow-y shit, you can see a little spot where maybe it was glued on or something:



Ah, American Reloading . . . I love thee, but I fear that someday I will lose my hand because of thee . . . .

Shit, I have 3k coming tomorrow. Fuck it, I'm pretty good about catching different shape bullets. I'm just going to run then out. Plus my adventure into 9mm Major makes me think 9mm is pretty forgiving. I'll let you know if I lose my hand, lol.

FWIW, I was able to spot all five of those before I put them on the scale -- they were noticeably larger than the 115-grain bullets. But, personally I'd want to at least visually examine all of them.

Bear in mind that they also were selling some 124-grain, and some mixed 115- and 124-grain.

Well, I guess this answers the question about how they work . . . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4-LmUOtnY

COOL

What's the point of them glowing?

Are they tracers?

Yeah, the point is that they will glow like tracers do, so you can see them go downrange. But are "tracers" the right word, if they are simply glow-in-the-dark and not flammable?

Or ARE they flammable?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX-xk0J4GR0

Who the hell knows?!