I want to let everyone know what happened at the range today and warn everyone regarding the 36gr High Velocity .22 Ammunition that Armscor produces.

At the last gun show there was a guy selling bricks of Armscor 36gr HV .22 ammunition. I bought a brick to try out as I have no experience with this ammunition. Today at the silhouette side I put about 150 rounds through my Kidd modified 10/22. What I first noticed is that it hits all over the place. It took me literally 2 to 5 times more shots to hit out to 100 yards than when I use some better plinking ammo. But it did function normally with no issues.

I was complaining about how bad this ammo is when my friend asked if he could shoot some of this crappy ammo. He put almost 100 rounds through his Colt's (Walther) 1911 .22 when it went KABOOM. He got sprayed with something but was okay. We found the case and it suffered from case head separation. He stopped shooting the crappy Armscor and put in some known good ammo (CCI Velocitor). And on the 2nd or 3rd shot it failed to fire. It had a very light strike. So I started to watch and every couple of rounds the cartridge would not fully chamber. This was causing the light strikes. But it also caused the KABOOM since the Armscor obviously went off while out of battery. If he pushed on the slide to completely go into battery it fired just fine. I looked down the muzzle (after checking) and saw something down at the chamber end. We didn't have any cleaning equipment so I found a q-tip and tried running it through the chamber. It didn't help. It was obvious the crappy Armscor ammo built up in the chamber not allowing a cartridge to chamber fully.

I told him to take it home and clean the barrel/chamber really well. He scrubbed and scrubbed and finally got the build up out so a round will fully chamber again. He checked it every so often and a round would not fully chamber until after the last scrubbing. I am guessing he put in a good 30-45 minutes on scrubbing this barrel. After he got it all cleaned out he went out to the net and found numerous reports of quality control problems with this ammo. Including this same issue we experienced today. Almost word for word. There were many reports of Kabooms and build up problems in the chamber. There were also reports of the ammo being over charged.

I am warning everyone that bought some of this ammo the possibility of a KABOOM in your semi auto. I imagine it will be okay to shoot in a bolt action and revolvers. But as inaccurate as this ammo is I really don't think it is worth even trying to shoot it up. I would not even try and I suggest everyone who owns this ammo to dispose of it properly. Please feel free to PM/email/call if you have any concerns. You have been warned.

Thanks for the heads up. There is a ton of that stuff up here

a friend gave me a few boxes, and i have noticed that some of my .22s arent chambering properly anymore. slight resistance.
guess ill scrub my barrels and see next weekend.

a friend gave me a few boxes, and i have noticed that some of my .22s arent chambering properly anymore. slight resistance.
guess ill scrub my barrels and see next weekend.

Use a round from some known good ammunition and drop it into the chamber of the dry barrel. If it drops in all the way without you pushing it in and then falls out when the barrel is turned over you have scrubbed the barrel enough to get the buildup out. But if the round does not drop in all the way remove it and keep scrubbing.