Sierra Bullets. Seconds?

[little_scrapper]

I just found out I have access to Sierra Bullets Outlet Store. Anyone ever use the Seconds and if so ever had any issues? I am hearing the seconds are just fine and are like 1/4 the price or retail.

 

[spife7980]

I haven’t Sierra second but I use Nosler blems all the time and they work great for me.

If you’re at the outlet you could see before you buy at least. Maybe they’d let you take a pocket scale and some calipers to them before you buy

 

[TheOfficeT-Rex]

Maybe they’d let you take a pocket scale and some calipers to them before you buy

? I'm imagining someone sitting on sierra's floor with calipers and a beam scale picking through a pile of seconds!

Most are seconds because of cosmetic reasons.

 

[Steel head]

I'm currently shooting Hornandy seconds.
Totally happy with them.

I'd love to find some 6.5 142 seconds.

 

[MangoFett]

If you're the type to load and shoot then seconds are fine, if you sort your bullets I'd say stay away. I've only don't it once with 175gr 30cal bullets and the range of bto and weight was really high. Maybe it's just a one off, afterall I only did it once but that was my experience.

 

[bobke]

My experience with a healthy volume of Nosler seconds over last 5-6 years is that sorting by ogival variance yields more consistent results than weight sorting. Sort ‘em, and they are quite workable, but unless you have spare bench time and you’re willing to slightly modify loads to suit variations in BTO ( have observed .024 variance in Nosler ABLR seconds), and can amass some volume in consistent BTO’s to avoid constant shifting of loads, it’s your decision to go down this path. Can’t speak to Sierra, but would look at ogival variation in the lot size you might purchase to know what you’ll be working with.

 

[Jrb572]

They are just fine. I shoot several thousand of them over the years. I've never tried to weight sort them. But I'm not shooting benchrest either. Works great on steel.

 

[mcfred]

Sierra have a price sheet so you can compare the ¢/bullet to the high quality, commercial stuff, just don't forget to add about 7.5% for the local sales tax. I'd avoid the plastic tipped stuff for LR. I ended up with a lot of mis-shaped tips. Copper ogives were alright, but the plastic tips themselves were pretty bad in .204" and .224" Blitzking flavors, in my limited experience. I use those for cheap varmint blasting inside 300 yards, so as long as they explode on impact the BC isn't very important. Just remember that the cull rate might put you right back at commercial lot prices plus the time to sort out the trash.

If you have a lot of time to sort things, then the full copper jacketed HPBT kind are much more uniform than plastic tipped stuff. Sometimes you get the over-run bin, sometimes you get the tooling setup bin. One thing is you can ask to see what you're about to buy so if it just looks like it's too much of a PITA to sort, then you can pass on it.

I'm not ripping on Sierra. For the record I didn't bother sorting about 15lb of .224" 69gr Matchking and they shot great, well enough that I'm down to my last 250ct that i've been using in the local steel matches (average match yardage is 450-550).

Here's the worst of some .204" 40gr and a couple .284" 175gr HPBTs One's fine, the other has a messed up meplat:

Good luck.

 

[Bonjourjr]

I used to use Sierra seconds for service rifle. Both the 77smk and 80smk. They worked great for me. I have used 168smk and 175smk for my ar10 blaster and they worked great for the distances and I shot at

 

[Hunt]

I echo Mcfred's experience. Same issues he's seen. For plinking, fine. For hunting and long range, there's cheaper options when considering the expected results.