Has anyone tried Hornady A-Tip factory seconds?
- Thread starter oldnewguy
- Start date
Curious about this as well. I came across some online yesterday. I would suspect that most guys wouldn’t be running them in any serious way. Hornady felt the need to pull them for some reason. If I can’t trust the consistency of any component, it’s a pass for me. That being said, who knows? I could think of a couple uses for them if I was getting them for a price that I couldn’t argue with. I am sure others might feel the same.
I shot a bunch of the 208 Amax seconds from Midway. The only "issues" I found were the tips were discolored. They shot the same as the regular one. I also have a couple hundred of the 155 grain Palmas I got last year. The tips on those ones are not concentric
See if its just discoloration of a polymer tip on the A-max, that works for me all day long. If its non concentric aluminum tips like on the A-tips or wildly inconsistent weights or lengths, that's a pass. The only thing I would use those for personally is probably fire forming and even then, only if I already had them lying around and was not working on load development.
Hopefully I am way out of line though! If others have tried them with success then it looks like we would have some cheaper A-tips to play with. I am looking forward to seeing how people feel about them.
I picked up some 110 and 153 atip seconds like a week ago. The description said may have one or two wrinkles or defects, but visually they all look good. I haven’t found anything visually to indicate any defect. Lengths all seem to be consistent. I haven’t weighed them but I might next week for giggles. Bulk packaged in a little cardboard box and bag. They were still slightly more expensive than the Berger hybrids I’ve been shooting lately (or at least what I paid a while ago).
I did a quick powder ladder with 110s in 6CM with staball at Hodgdon book charges and lengths. 7twist OBW barrel. Accuracy was inadequate but I’ve never shot atips in any form before. YMMV.
I did a quick powder ladder with 110s in 6CM with staball at Hodgdon book charges and lengths. 7twist OBW barrel. Accuracy was inadequate but I’ve never shot atips in any form before. YMMV.
My buddy just picked up 1000 of the 6mm 110 seconds. Said weights were consistent, only had 2-4 tips jacked up out of every hundred. He said it was pretty easy to spot the defects. Bullet jackets also had some discoloration and spots. He just won 1st at a comp with the seconds in his dasher.
Bumping this up since I had some time to kill, and wanted to dummy check myself after my last outing.
I weighed my remaining (85 pieces) 110 Atip Seconds on a fx120i. ES from 109.82 to 110.32 gn. Most between 109-110.5, normalish distro.
Base to Ogive (with SAC comparator) .598 to .604 with outliers up to .607. Evenly distributed in 2k buckets between 598 and 604.
Overall lengths between 1.326 to 1.335, evenly spread.
No obvious correlation with lengths or weights. Not sure how these numbers stack up to non-seconds. No deformed tips or big jacket wrinkles/deformations in my 100ct box, although there are some small jacket dents that look like jostling with other bullets. NBD in my mind. I have some 153s I haven't opened I'll probably play with later this week.
I weighed my remaining (85 pieces) 110 Atip Seconds on a fx120i. ES from 109.82 to 110.32 gn. Most between 109-110.5, normalish distro.
Base to Ogive (with SAC comparator) .598 to .604 with outliers up to .607. Evenly distributed in 2k buckets between 598 and 604.
Overall lengths between 1.326 to 1.335, evenly spread.
No obvious correlation with lengths or weights. Not sure how these numbers stack up to non-seconds. No deformed tips or big jacket wrinkles/deformations in my 100ct box, although there are some small jacket dents that look like jostling with other bullets. NBD in my mind. I have some 153s I haven't opened I'll probably play with later this week.
If you’re on a ~500rd barrel cleaning cycle, that’s about the number of rounds I need for fouling shots after a deep clean.
