Other peoples reloads (shoot or not?)

[27hand]

Not long ago I was gifted a nice Rem.700 in 7mm Mag.
The rifle had roughly 4 boxes of ammo reloaded by either the deceased owner or his father.

It looks like 2 different writing styles outlining the load data on each box is why I think both reloaded some rounds.
Initially, The guy holding the rifle couldn't find the ammo so I bought 3 boxes of 175 gr Remingtons and a box of 150gr Winchesters.

When the ammo turned up in the garage, i took it home and looked at the rounds quickly.

The data from what I think was the father was:

Feb - 96 58gr 760 150 B tip Fed Mag pri. On one box. The other was written up as: 63gr 760 140 gr BT Failsafe

Less neatly hand written on 2 boxes was: 63 of 760 140 Failsafe

Ok. I started doing a close inspection and noticed 24 of the cases were 338 WinMag cases necked to 7mm. 13 had neck splits

20211228_155640 by poofy27, on Flickr

20211228_162658 by poofy27, on Flickr

20211228_152629 by poofy27, on Flickr
I pulled the bullets and weighed the charges which ranged from 62.6 thru 63.7 gr
When I was weighing the charges, I noticed the powder was a mix of ball and stick:

One round was all stick powder but only 43 gr.

2 of the ballistic tips had no powder.

Different primers were used but could have been what was available.

The ones listed as 150 BT were a mix of 140 and 150.

The 338 resized cases had scratches and looked like the resizing was done with dirty or scored dies.




I ended up pulling all the bullets, discarding all the powder, all the .338 brass and some of the 7mm brass.
I resized what appeared to be salvagable and waiting on a Lee case gauge / trimmer.


One box that was neatly labelled had all ball powder. The rest was a mix ( perhaps mixed a leftover stick powder into the 760 ?)


As a personal rule, I don't shoot other peoples reloads.

20211228_163032 by poofy27, on Flickr



Anybody here shoot reloads done by a friend or buy someones reloads?


A friend I was listing ammo for in the classifieds deleted his ad for some reloaded 25.06 after I showed him these pics.

[Walleye Hunter]

I would neither shoot anyone else's reloads nor give mine to someone else to shoot.

[McSull]

No

[STBear]

No

[JoshIronshaft]

I would neither shoot anyone else's reloads nor give mine to someone else to shoot.

This

[ar15jules]

I shoot three peoples reloads. Mine, and two friends.

[knight0334]

I shoot three peoples reloads. Mine, and two friends.

I'm like you, me and two others. ...those two others are uncles that taught me to reload when I was a kid.

[knight0334]

The brass in 27hand's post looks like they didn't anneal the brass, or anneal it enough, before necking it down. Those types of cracks are sign of that, they are crystalline type cracks - which is from working hardened brass(and other metals, especially copper).

[Delkal]

This is an extreme example and goes to show that Alzheimer's and reloading don't go together. Kind of sad.

[imashooter2]

Years ago an associate asked me to clean out his deceased fathers gear. Super generous as he refused any payment for a huge pile of gear.

But included in the swag was an MTM box of .44 Magnum. It contained 45 cartridges and 5 classic head separations with a note that read HOT!

Took me quite some time to pull all the ammo in that haul, but I wasn’t even willing to give it away with a warning.