Mismatched Projectiles;

[XCALIBRE]

Have a bit of a Doozy here so was wondering if anyone else has found the following?
Keen to give the Bergers a go I bought 5 boxes of 6.5 X 140 grn. all different to each other.
eg. VLD Hybryds, LR VLD Match, B/T's etc. The contents of 3 boxes were perfect in weight, length, Ogive etc. but two boxes had a few wildcats in amongst them! Different shape, Ogive length, bullet length and weight! Not the kind of thing one would expect of quality control from factory sealed Bergers recently placed on the Australian market. Would like to know if anyone else has come across this problem yet? One to look out for!

[AlanF]

Which ones were bad (batch nos?). BTW I'm only aware of 4 different Berger 140s?? (being yellow box VLD, Hybrid, LR BT, and orange box VLD).

[BATattack]

That's not good! considering the tolerances and pressures that some run its a fairly serious safety concern on top of potential accuracy issues.

[XCALIBRE]

Alan,
Berger have listed the following in 6.5X140 grn.
Boat Tail , Length; 1.376
LR Boat tail hollowpoint, " 1.412
Match Hunting VLD. " 1.412
" Target Boat tail, " 1.376
" " " " Longrange " 1.412
" " VLD, " 1.421
" VLD, " 1.421
Short Boat tail, " 1.377
Target Hybrid, " 1.426
Litz VLD " 1.421

As you can see there is a great variance, especially when they throw in a few 130 grns. and mismatched Ogive lengths.
Bob.

[Fergus Bailey]

I have had one completely different caliber bullet in a box of Bergers. From memory it was a 6mm in a box of 30 cal projectiles. That was over 5 years ago, probably closer to 10.

[AlanF]

Well that's interesting XCalibre, but it must be very unusual, because nearly all F-Class shooters use Bergers, and many use nothing else. If problems were common then (a) we'd hear more about it and (b) shooters would be voting with their choice of brand, and the use of other brands would increase - I get the impression the opposite is happening. Even in TR and F-Std, Berger has been rapidly increasing its market share recently. I personally have fired over 9000 Bergers over the last 7 years, and don't remember ever finding two projectiles from the same batch that measured base to ogive differently by more than 2 or 3 thou, have never found strays (as I did once with Lapua Scenar), and have never seen the need to weight sort. I now trust them sufficiently that I just sample new batches e.g. I might weigh and measure base to ogive 50 projectiles from a consignment of 500.

I'm saying this because it would be wrong to give any new shooters the impression that Bergers have a general problem. By all accounts there are no better projectiles out there.

Alan

[XCALIBRE]

I agree with you whole heartedly, I wish it hadn't happened but it did. I am a wildcatter and have been for many years so I study things very closely. In fact I have machined down brand new Lapua cases and found major discrepancies in web thickness that can make a joke out of weighing cases for volume.
But that is not the case in this issue. It comes back to factory quality control for this to pop it's head up! Not saying this is a major issue but it is heads up from this little black duck from now on. By the way, when you mentioned Lapua odd ones out, I forwarded back to Lapua two progectiles one being 6mm.. the other 6.5 mm. that had been partially turned inside out during manufacture. Batch numbers were supplied. They in turn recognized the danger to chambering that had been presented and went far out of their way to recall all where possible. Custer can back me up on that. I am not a mug, I work with facts.
Berger put out a great quality product, just hope they keep doing so. I will leave it at that.
Bob.

[Steve N]

I recently had one 7mm 180gr VLD that measured 40 thou longer with a comparitor and put it aside and usually measure all oal's when seating and haven't found any others. I don't bother culling the few I find with a slightly misshapen tip but probably should.
Steve

[Norm]

I recently had one 7mm 180gr VLD that measured 40 thou longer with a comparitor and put it aside and usually measure all oal's when seating and haven't found any others. I don't bother culling the few I find with a slightly misshapen tip but probably should.
Steve

Interesting that you don't like a longer tip but are happy to have a misshapen tip. That sure isn't a family trait!