TN Lone Wolf

Occasionally, I'll get emails from Midway informing me they have "factory second" bullets in stock for 50% off the regular price. These bullets are evidently either factory rejects or were made while calibrating the machinery.

Have any of you used them? Do they perform as well as regular bullets?

jeepkid

I've used them. Usually they are Hornady bullets that have the incorrect colored tips.

They seem to shoot just fine.

super_hunt54

yup I use them, same as Jeep I usually get Hornady seconds. Never used any for hunting but they would probably be fine. Never had an issue with accuracy with any of them. They are USUALLY off on weight by a bit which is why they are "seconds". I think Jeep gets the SST seconds. I get the Interlock seconds which are hard to find most times. When I do run across them I usually get a few hundred.

Nomercy448

The picture on the webpage have grey tips, but that's just photography, sometimes with a photoshopped cannelure too. Most often, you can line them up with what they are pretty easily, just by looking at the profiles and weights. Not all of the Midway Factory Second brand bullets are Hornadys, but most of them are.

I have been using Hornady Factory seconds for several years, thousands and thousands of bullets, probably over half of what I've fired in the last decade. Most of mine, I pick up straight from the Factory in Grand Island, which are much lower priced than for what Midway sells them.

For "Set up" and "appearance" failure codes (Hornady lingo - marked on the boxes), I have never had any variance in weight worse than any of their standard retail products. I've also never seen any difference in down range performance. One box of 500grn DGS's I purchased under "appearance" had a few odd colored spots, but for the rest of the "appearance" codes, I haven't even been able to tell what "appears" wrong. For Set up, I can't see anything, EVER, which is wrong with them - the "set up" code reflects the first few hundred or thousand bullets off of the presses when they fire up a new run.

For "bad tips," the difference was clear - one set of interlock's I bought were so visibly fubar'd, it was clear why the weights were off and of course, down range, they didn't print the same.

I have not intentionally purchased, and have not shot yet, any of them labeled "won't group, won't shoot."


The bad news:

When you buy them from Midway, you have no way to select which failure class you're buying. When you buy from the factory in Grand Island, you can pick through whatever they have available and avoid the "won't group/won't shoot" or the "bad tips".

On a whim, I ordered a few hundred of the 30cal 200grn or 208grn ELD Factory Seconds a few months ago from Midway, one of the boxes was "won't group/won't shoot," the other two were Appearance (maybe one App, one Set up, have to go look).

I have not yet taken the time to see if the "won't group/won't shoot" bullets actually print any differently, but I do know the "bad tips" were really bad, so the BC down range would have made a difference. I set the box aside, maybe someday when I wanna make a batch of blasting ammo I'll roll them in, but for now, I just set them aside. Getting 2 out of 3 boxes usable at the price they run isn't a bad deal, still cheaper than factory first prices. I'd have been pretty upset if all 3 boxes were "won't group/won't shoot," or if I had only ordered one box and the ONE box would have been that.

Since I make it to Grand Island quite a bit, I just buy them there. Cheaper than Midway anyway, and no shipping cost.

If you already have a few thousand bullets around you don't normally shoot, then getting the worst of these would just add to your pile of "bullets I might shoot someday." If you really need to know they'll be just as good as factory firsts, but maybe not as pretty, then these aren't the bullet for you.

BTW - if you ever have a chance to go tour their factory at Grand Island, it's worth the time. They're all very friendly there, and seeing how many bullets they crank out there is amazing, considering most of the machines are over 70yrs old, refurbished from contracted munitions plants. As an engineer who has spent my life developing/commercializing processes, watching vintage machinery like that crank out as many bullets an hour as they do brings a smile to my face.

super_hunt54

I should clarify something I said in mine. The ONLY seconds I have ever gotten were .308 for my .30-06's. Several hundred and pretty much all of them were off on weight (175gr average with some being as low as 172). That's why I assumed they were seconds. I never actually noticed any "appearance" differences in the ones I got. But as I said previously, It is rare to find them in the Interlock. Usually you see the seconds in the 150gr FMJ's and HPBT's. I use them whenever I am working on breathing and trigger control. They fly close enough to my higher end rounds for 800 at a 16" gong to be "good enough" at a MUCH cheaper price. Makes the wife happier that way

Nomercy448

Sorry fellas, I lied. I just cracked into my supply house, the Hornady Factory Seconds I bought from Midway were three boxes of 200grn ELD-X's. Two boxes were "bad noses", one box is "won't group/won't shoot."

So 3 out of 3 boxes are failure codes I would not have purchased if I were buying directly from Hornady's factory.

Nomercy448

I dug out a box of each type and each failure code I have on hand right now, not counting those loaded into rounds, of course. I have a lot more of these in inventory, but these represent the different calibers and failure codes I have on hand. (Kinda realized I don't have any in 6, 6.5, or 6.8mm, which is weird - and I have apparently ran out of the factory second 325grn FTX 45cal bullet).

I included the 3 boxes I bought from Midway even though two are duplicates - you can see they're in the same boxes, but Midway sticks their own label over the top, which I peeled off and stuck to the top of the boxes.

20cal 40grn V-max - Set up
22cal 55grn V-max - Set up
22cal 75grn A-max - Set up & Appearance
7mm 154grn Interlock - Set up
7mm 162grn ELD-M - Appearance
7mm 162grn ELD-X - Appearance
7mm 175grn ELD-X - Appearance
30cal 165grn Interlock - Appearance
30cal 200grn ELD-X - Bad noses
30cal 200grn ELD-X - Won't group/shoot
33cal 200grn SST - Set up
45cal 500grn DGS - Appearance



I don't have a box with the "damaged tips" code right now, but the ones I bought in the past were Interlocks & HPBT's which were really fubar'd. Since the code is different, I opened up the "bad noses" boxes this morning to see what the difference might be, and as far as my eye can tell, it just means the tips are the wrong color, not sure whether that means they forgot to add the heat resistant component to the polymer or something else? The original Marketing materials all showed translucent tips, but all of my current manufacture ELD's are all opaque. Can't imagine they would have pitched all of the initial production runs just because they changed to opaque. ALTHOUGH - I could speculate they did make that change on purpose, since you can see little air bubbles OF DIFFERENT SIZES in the original translucent ELD's, so maybe they made them solid to stop guys like me from questioning how much that little bubble irregularity makes for down range accuracy. Can't see it, can't question it.

On the left is a factory first, new production 200grn ELD, with an opaque tip. On the right, you see the Factory Second 200grn ELD with the translucent tip. If you can see the difference in the two, lemme know what it is!

Big Uncle

Where is the factory in Grande Island? I usually spend three or four nights there each year in a hotel while traveling through.

Nomercy448

South side of old potash just west of 281, west of the western store.

TN Lone Wolf

Thanks for all the information, guys.