$180 brick of 22lr

[FergusonTO35]

Around here the Remington Thunderbolts are referred to respectfully as "Thunderduds".

Thunderduds are the best cheap ammo for my rifles. They group decent and operate my autoloaders. Pistols, fuhgeddaboutit. They must use a slower powder than most, as I get an awful lot of weak rounds when firing them out of a short barrel. I really like the Golden Bullet 40 grain rounds, they are much cleaner and shoot about as good as anything else. Unfortunately they are pretty rare here.

Ugh, I think we about to hit another guns and ammo panic here. Toilet paper hoarding is already starting up again!

[uscra112]

.22LR rifle and pistol ammo are indeed two different kettles of fish. Pistol ammo does indeed use faster powder.

Read an article this morning about a zinc smelter shutting down over supply chain problems. Brass is copper and zinc. No zinc, no brass. No brass, no ammo.

[dtknowles]

Amateurs say Quality control, professionals say Process control. Quality comes from intensive inspection of each and every step in the mfg. process, (there are hundreds, just making .22 ammo), and taking prompt corrective action if something starts to drift off. In my career in the automotive powertrain field, corrective action often started when a dimension spread exceeded just 10% of the Tolerance. Not exceeded the Tolerance by 10%, but exceeded 10% of the Tolerance. If you work that way, you never make a bad part, and final inspection becomes irrelevant. Remington was clearly ignoring this. I know from a statistical study of Thunderbolts that I did about six years ago that they were using bullets taken from multiple swaging machines which differed in average weight by as much a 2 grains! They apparently weren't even bothering to check. Unforgivable! What else were they letting slide?

Let's hope the new owners do better.

Experts know it is truly Quality Control and understand Process Control is just one part of Quality Control. Inspection is another, Source Control is another, another is Training and Certification. Failure investigation, Cause and Corrective Actions. To have high quality everyone in the company needs to understand Quality is Job One and it is everyone's job to make sure you produce a Quality Product. If you or your position cause a defect, halt the line reject the product yourself. Don't leave it to Inspection to catch to defects.

The thing the most hurts the quality of a product is a mindset that says cost, quotas and schedule are more important than Quality.

The idea of a 100% money back guarantee just makes you their final inspector. Great customer service is getting it right the first time.

Tim

[tazman]

I visited a couple of sporting goods store in Iowa City today. They had a lot of ammunition much of which was 22lr.
They also wanted high prices for it.
Thunderbolts for $50 per 500 round box. Most other brands were on hand as well and priced similarly.
Oddly, the Match ammunition wasn't marked up. Apparently, they don't sell enough of the match grade to make it worth their time marking it up the way they do regular ammunition.
I also saw bricks of small rifle primers on hand for $100 per thousand. I still have plenty of those left so they can stay there.
Powder was available. I didn't check the prices because I don't need any.

[Butzbach]

Experts know it is truly Quality Control and understand Process Control is just one part of Quality Control. Inspection is another, Source Control is another, another is Training and Certification. Failure investigation, Cause and Corrective Actions. To have high quality everyone in the company needs to understand Quality is Job One and it is everyone's job to make sure you produce a Quality Product. If you or your position cause a defect, halt the line reject the product yourself. Don't leave it to Inspection to catch to defects.

The thing the most hurts the quality of a product is a mindset that says cost, quotas and schedule are more important than Quality.

The idea of a 100% money back guarantee just makes you their final inspector. Great customer service is getting it right the first time.

Tim

What he said.^

If you rely on inspection for QC your process is not under statistical control. If it is not under statistical control, you don’t really understand your process.

[uscra112]

Just tonight reading a metals industry trade website learned that while the shortage of magnesium (major source = China) for producing aluminum alloys is getting all the attention in the press these days, COPPER inventories are running low as well, allegedly due to the widely reported shipping bottlenecks. That of course will spike brass prices, and/or limit availability in the next few moths/years. Another long term factor re: copper is the mandates for electric cars.

.22 ammo prices are never going to recover to what we remember. Police your brass. Recycle whenever possible. Waste not, want not.

[Baltimoreed]

I stocked up with a bunch of everything after the last draught. I also police up my .22 hulls and other folks brass. Scrap is scrap. The days of cheap anything are over. With the worker shortage companies are over a barrel and WILL have to pay more either in wages or benefits to get workers and ultimately the consumer will be the one who pays. And with the current gang inside the beltway whos standard answer to when asked ‘how you going to pay for that?’ is ‘tax the rich and tax companies’. Well the rich don’t pay taxes as they have an army of accountants to make sure they don’t and anything extra that business pays gets passed on to the consumer, read you and me. Rant over.

[uscra112]

What he said.^

If you rely on inspection for QC your process is not under statistical control. If it is not under statistical control, you don’t really understand your process.

Or in the case of Remington in recent years you understand it but you just don't care. A easy trap to fall into when you can sell all you make regardless, especially when bean counters rule. Another case in point is Boeing, which went from a company of engineers prior to the merger with McDonnell-Douglas to a company ruled from Chicago by politicians and bankers.