Blazer 9 mm became inconsistent?

[YVK]

Needed to shoot 1911 today for some testing, about 70 rounds total, then went back to my "regular program" with 30, and couldn't get a group at 7 yards shooting 115 gr Blazer. Started to think how 70 rounds with 1911 can undo all the hard work and over 2000 rounds of practice with LEM, but then switched ammo and shot wonderful groups at 7 and 25 with 147 gr Winchester and 124 gr HST. Blazer never been laser, but I don't remember it being so wild. Did I just have a bad run, or the quality has gone down?

[JHC]

This year I've thought 115 gr Blazer to be about equally crappy precision wise as WWB or Fed etc. But I felt that the 124 Blazer was much more consistent ergo accurate. OTOH, the case of 230 grain .45 acp Blazer I shot up was pretty aweful. At least 20 rounds were deeply set back into the case and got tossed in the trash.

[YVK]

Yes, I've had set-back 45 ACP Blazers too, usually not exceeding 10-12 per case. I figured with price difference between Blazer and everything else 45, that wasn't a big deal. I have only seen it with regular Blazer, not Blazer Brass; must be something about aluminum casing.
I'll look into 124 gr Blazer, thanks for the tip.

[ToddG]

I shot some 2011 vintage 115gr Blazer a short while back and it grouped under 4" at 25yd from my G17.

[Wes Peart]

When I was shooting 1911's a lot Blazer .45 shot like absolute shit. Terrible accuracy and this was through a Baer TRS that would put match hardball into an inch at 25 yards. It's usable in 9mm, although strangely Tula 9mm groups much tighter out of my G19. Last time I shot "Slow Fire Marksmanship" I knocked out a 96 and a 95 with the Tula, decided to run some Blazer and it was whistling shots out into the 7 and 8 rings, not near as tight. I'm not the only person to notice it either, it shoots pretty bad out of my shooting partner's M&P 9.

[nalesq]

Needed to shoot 1911 today for some testing, about 70 rounds total, then went back to my "regular program" with 30, and couldn't get a group at 7 yards shooting 115 gr Blazer. Started to think how 70 rounds with 1911 can undo all the hard work and over 2000 rounds of practice with LEM, but then switched ammo and shot wonderful groups at 7 and 25 with 147 gr Winchester and 124 gr HST. Blazer never been laser, but I don't remember it being so wild. Did I just have a bad run, or the quality has gone down?

Sometime last October, I bought for the first time a case of Blazer Brass 9mm 115 gr FMJ. Although it was unusually flashy even compared to other inexpensive bulk training ammo I have used, it seemed to be reasonably accurate. (I am a mediocre marksman, so I consider a slowly-fired ten-shot group within a six-inch circle at 25 yards unsupported with my Beretta 92 to be "reasonably accurate.") Then sometime in December I purchased a second case of Blazer Brass 9mm 115 gr FMJ from the same vendor. I started burning through this second case a few weeks ago. Lately I've been trying to work on firing hand only and support hand only shooting at relatively close range (10 yards and less), with unimpressive results. Kind of frustrated, this past week I decided to take little break from the one handed stuff back to shooting with both hands at longer distances (15-25 yards). It was far worse. In fact, I could not get any kind of pattern resembling an actual group. At 25 yards some rounds impacting as much as a foot away from point of aim, and some didn't even make it on the paper.

I was deeply ashamed. Assuming I must be flinching or something, I did ball and dummy for about an hour (which usually fixes my trigger control issues), to no avail - I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. Then, at the end of my session, wanting to do at least one productive thing, while the target was still at the 25 yard line, I shot my carry ammo (I shoot my actual carry ammo once a year-ish and replace them with fresh rounds), which is Winchester Ranger 147 gr (RA9T). To my shock, I produced a solid 4 inch group (which for me is pretty good at that distance). I then bought some other ammo from the range, and discovered I could still indeed meet my personal "reasonably accurate" standard described earlier.

After I got home, I found an unopened box from my first case of Blazer (of "reasonably accurate" vintage), and compared it to a box from the second case of Blazer where I couldn't even group. I was surprised to note that all the bullets from the second case had much shinier and glossier jackets than the bullets from the first case. It was sort of like the difference in appearance between a newer zinc penny and an old-school copper penny. This makes me surmise that different bullets were used in one case than the other, which somehow must have resulted in grossly diminished accuracy. Next time I go to the range, I am going to shoot the rounds from this last unopened box from the first case of Blazer and compare its performance to that of the ammo from the second, apparently crappier case of Blazer, just to confirm my suspicions.

I am annoyed that there could be such significant variation in apparent quality and performance among different cases from the same supposed make and model of ammo. But I guess this is what comes of buying cheap, and shooting at targets far away enough to notice the difference.

[GJM]

I would try the Blazer 147 TMJ load.

[JHC]

Now many months since my prior post I have a case of 115 grain Blazer that appears more consistent. It appears to be good for at least 3-4" at 25 yards which I'm very satisfied with as a training round. A year ago I never saw better than 6" from it.

[fuse]

Are we talking blazer aluminum or blazer brass

[abu fitna]

I've recently run quite a bit of Blazer aluminum case in 45acp as part of some bulk cheapish range ammo mix. Makes steel case tulammo look precision by comparison, and can be very inconsistent to the point of destroying useful feedback to make distinctions between ammo issue and shooter error near impossible to distinguish (because there are indeed plenty of the latter - why we train, yes?).

Switching to good carry ammo, or training loads matched to carry loads, is night and day difference.

So will still use the cheap stuff, but change the drill types those are used for to work on other components of the skillset. The precision focused drills get better training ammo.

Of course, only accurate weapons systems are interesting, so there is a measure lost when the ammo isn't consistent.

[JHC]

I've recently run quite a bit of Blazer aluminum case in 45acp as part of some bulk cheapish range ammo mix. Makes steel case tulammo look precision by comparison, and can be very inconsistent to the point of destroying useful feedback to make distinctions between ammo issue and shooter error near impossible to distinguish (because there are indeed plenty of the latter - why we train, yes?).

Switching to good carry ammo, or training loads matched to carry loads, is night and day difference.

So will still use the cheap stuff, but change the drill types those are used for to work on other components of the skillset. The precision focused drills get better training ammo.

Of course, only accurate weapons systems are interesting, so there is a measure lost when the ammo isn't consistent.

Yes the case of Blazer .45 I shot up was horrendous. And I threw away about a dozen or 15 rounds from the case that were deeply inset. OTOH the last 500 rounds of plain old Remington UMC .45 ball from the Walmart 250 round value packs have shot lights out; shooting into 2" at 25 yards from a 1911. I didn't expect that.