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Old 11-04-2015, 09:23 AM
scoobysnacker scoobysnacker is offline
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The ONLY Blazer ammo I am familiar with are their Aluminum cases and I have never bought them due to the fact that they are un-reloadable. If they are NOW making them out of Brass, I am unaware of that.
Yes, they began offering a brass-cased option several years back. I think it was a good business move at the time, because the aluminum-cased rds were well regarded, but a lot of folks (like you) want the brass. At first glance the box looks a lot like PMC Bronze, same color scheme etc. I hadn't seen it locally for several years, seemed to vanish in the first ammo crunch.

I used Blazer Aluminum about a decade back and preferred it over WWB and UMC. At the time, I only had 1 pistol in 9mm, it was before the collecting bug really took hold, and cash was tighter.

About the same time my pistol collecting took off, the previously easily available ammo disappeared from the store shelves. I got a few boxes of PMC from a LGS, and then started to get ammo online. That's how I discovered S&B (Czech like my CZ, so I tried it), then Fiocchi, then PPU. I found these each carried a little extra kick over my older choices in my first pistol (a Norinco in 9mm), and my newer, "better" pistols functioned very well with them.
Quote:
The way it was explained to me is that Europe uses a different set of specifications and does NOT use our SAAMI spec's
There are a bewildering amount of specs listed out there, and the manufacturers don't help by placing numbers on boxes without clarifiying what length barrel their measurements for muzzle velocity were based on.

Here's what I think is going on- I think the various European rounds are all NATO spec. The max NATO load is lower than the top end of the US SAAMI spec, but NATO requires a minimum load too, so the rounds are all pretty uniform, and towards the higher end of the SAAMI scale. It would make sense, as I imagine the primary intent of this ammo is military, and a few companies have decided to tap into the US market as well for profits, since we love to shoot over here. They probably don't make a "range/plinking" load, so while the cases aren't sealed per spec, they are loaded to it.

Here in the States, we don't adhere to that, and so there are a lot of softer loads, like Blazer for example, primarily intended for range usage.

It's made me hesitant, but I guess it should still be plenty good enough to plink with, and that's what I'm doing.
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