Why would .223 bullets be "pulled"

bushmaster1313

bushmaster1313

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I was looking up .223 ammo online and came across someone selling 1000 "pulled" .223 bullets. He says they were pulled by a "professional ammunition dismantler."

Why would someone "pull" .223 bullets?

Why is ammunition dismantled?
 
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Just a guess here but perhaps a ammunition manufacturer has a batch of ammo that has some sort of problem and recycles the bullets to recoup some of the loss. Or perhaps military ammo that was ordered to be destroyed?
 
My bet would be on ammo that passed some official expiration date, but that's just a WAG too.
 
I once had an AR-15 that wouldn't shoot the lighter bullets for beans. I pulled them down and reloaded with a heavier bullet. (Could see just shooting them up to listen to the noise...)
 
A lot of ammo is pulled by the government when it reaches a certain date. A friend of mine, hoping to save money, bought a couple of thousand pulled .224 bullets for reloading. After setting up his seating die with one round (not my idea of a good method) he loaded about 100 rounds. When he checked them for OAL he found that a lot of them were either too short or too long. The too long was a real problem for his AR15 mags. Most surplus pulled bullets are done in large batches and the bullets can be from different manufacturers. The problem was the ogive was different from manufacturer to manufacturer and because of how his seating die worked, it seated the pulled bullets to different lengths. The seating die was indexing off the ogive and not the end of the bullet. He got it sorted out by using a comparator but he spent a lot of time measuring each bullet and segregating them by the comparator measurement. His conclusion was the time spent on the project wasn't worth the savings.
 
De-mil. DOD cannot sell ammo as surplus by law (thanks Klinton), so it must be broken down into components.
 
I've bought .30 caliber pulldown bullets from Welcome to Bartlett Reloaders - Jeff Bartlett in the past. They work fine for making up standard ball ammo. They might occasionally have small marks on them from being pulled, but that's just cosmetic and they shoot just fine.

I seem to recall getting some pulldown 62 grain M855 (green tip) bullets and having good results with them.
 
There was a 5.56 NATO tracer round that didn't meet specs in the late 70's-early 80's. The components were pulled and sold as surplus. That powder was what became known a Thunderbird T-33 (very similar to H-335). Perhaps it was the all time best Bench Rest powder, of which IMR 8208 tries hard to copy. There were tons of that powder originally, but it is all gone now. Also in the early 80's, I used to buy pulled 8mm bullets real cheep and reload 8x57 Mauser for less that half the cost of using Hornady bullets. I assumed the military ammo had deteriorated to the point that there were too many misfires. Surplus smokeless powder makes good fertilizer for crops or lawns. Ivan
 
A common practice for users of AR15s in match competition has been
to pull the 55gr FMJ bullets from military ammo and seat a Sierra or
other 52 gr HP over the original powder charge. This is a safe
procedure because of the lighter weight of the HP. Accuracy is greatly
improved over the original ammo. A quick simple way to get match
ammo without going to the trouble of handloading. If my memory is
correct the NRA booklet on the AR15 was the first place I read about
this practice. I have done this myself to get a few rounds of ammo
for varmint shooting that would be more effective than FMJ even
though the match HPs are not true varmint bullets.
 
Pulled bullets

A few years ago I was looking for some pulled SS109 bullets. I found a reloading company that had dumped a pallet full on their driveway. The bullets had been scooped back up, and thrown into boxes. They were mixed with stones, dirt, grass blades, etc. I separated them with a magnet {steel cores}, washed them off, and ended up with a lifetime supply of very inexpensive bullets.

They were very anxious to get rid of them. I think if they had thought of using a magnet to separate them from the stones that they would not have been nearly as anxious.

Best wishes,
Tom
 
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