Flash holes some small -some large 45 acp

[randyrat]

I bought some Winchester 45 acp (used) brass. Noticed the flash holes are larger on some than others. What is this? Are they factory made this way or did someone drill them out?

[KYCaster]

Do the ones with the large flash holes have "Win NT" head stamp?

Jerry

[captain-03]

WIN NT accepts small pistol primers -- all other 45acp accepts large pistol primers ... and Yes, they were made that way ... crazy!!

[randyrat]

NO they are identical to each other in every way, including regular large pistol primer pockets.
I'm talking about the flash holes under the primers. One is large and the other is regular size flash hole. I'm thinking someone drilled these out a bit.

[Houndog]

I've got a bunch of them the same way and think they were made that way. I segregate them by flash hole size, but don't see a bunch of difference in them with the low powered loads I normally shoot. If you are going after the best accuracy, random flash hole sizes certainly can't help

[curator]

The large flash hole cases were "lead-free" loads. Apparently the lead-free primers need a larger hole to fire consistantly. You might want to seperate these from your normal brass if you are shooting for serious accuracy. My experience in loading them is they shoot OK but to a different point of impact compared to my regular loads. Other than that they load and shoot fine.

[eljefe]

I have not seen non toxic in anything but small primer size.

[Shepherd2]

I was given some of the Winchester "non-toxic" cases some years ago. They had a really large flash hole. There was nothing on the headstamp to indicate that the cases were different from any other case. On the Winchester website I found a FAQ about those cases. Basically it said just load them like regular cases, which I proceeded to go.

[randyrat]

Good, at least they weren't tampered with by someone. It will eat away at me if I leave them in the mix. I'd bet they would have at least some affect on accuracy.

[dale2242]

Speer recommends you drill out the flash hole when you use primers to shoot their plastic bullets for practice. This may be what is going on in this case.....dale

[Crash_Corrigan]

Some time back I ordered 500 experienced .45 ACP cases from Midway along with 3 ammo cans. One ammo can was heavily rusted and about 50 of the 500 cartridge cases were marked Winchester NT and had small primer cavities though the holes were big.

Midway when contacted did their usual excellent customer service thing and sent me another 500 cases and two ammo cans for my trouble and apoligized.

This is why I pay a few pennies more but I continue to deal with Midway. The only time I got flack from them was over a Lee 6 Banger mold in .45 Colt. It was a mold designed to throw a 255 gr slug but was less than satisfactory in performance. Two cavities threw really big boolits and two others were on spec and two others were kinda small. I ran 500 boolits thru it before I realized what was going on. I sent back the mold with samples of the boolits thrown and I got a snitty phone call from one of their customer service people.

I recorded the call and then I asked to speak to a supervisor and this nimrod disconnected me. I called Midway and spoke to a supervisor and I played the recording for him. He immediately apologized to me and made a very nice adjustment. He follow that up with a letter where he informed me that the offending CSR had left Midway to take advantage of other employment opportunities.

Midway has always been the best and that is why most of my discretionary income goes there.