What is the big difference between Black Hills Red Box and Blue Box? Ok, so Blue Box is "remanufactured", but what exactly does that mean?

As I understand it, it is just once-fired brass being inspected and reused right? Well if that is so, and everything else is as if it were produced for the first time, how can that harm accuracy?

I hear people mention "well you can use Red Box for National Match / sub MOA paper punching but reserve the Blue Box for tactical/field applications due to accuracy".

I just don't get that. If everything is the same except for the brass, how can accuracy be affected? It should either fire or fail.

If anyone knows the actual procedures the ammo goes through, whether it is inspected less, put through a different manufacturing process that may reduce the quality, etc., please enlighten me. I've been thinking about it and am curious.

- rem

Well, if you use once fired brass from the same lot, then accuracy should be the same as new brass.

the problems with re-manufactured ammo is that most of the time, they get 223 brass that could have been fired in a maching gun with large headsapce, that could effect the thickness of the case web.  yes the brass should be inspected but a bad piece gets though every once in awhile.  While the different headstamps will be from different lots of ammo, small differences in case capacity could cause accurcy to suffer from shot to shot.  However, unless you are shooting a tweaked out match rifle, the differenecs are basically a non issue.

I have not heard people saying that one use the red box for field applications.  If I were shooting a match, I think that I would want to have ammo that is the most consistant, IE the red box.  I would strongly recomend that if you were using the ammo for self defense that you use the red box ammo for the reaqson stated above.

Hope this answered your question.

As was stated the Red Box uses different brass than Blue Box and its more consistant. Red Box has a sealed primer which is good for duty/field use and Blue Box does not.

Newly manufactured ammunition uses ALL new components, including the case.  Remanufactured ammunition uses cases that have been fired before.

There are some good things about using once-fired cases, such as the fact that most case failures (that aren't obvious before firing) happen to new cases.  (Those that should be obvious include bad necks and shoulders, and cases with obvious rings near the head or visible cracks in the case body.)

Bad things about using once-fired cases include the possibility that your cases are not only ONCE fired...

In any case, a good remanufacturer will have a very reputable source for once-fired cases, inspect every case, and use at least as critical a QC process as a new manufacturer does.  Depending on the intended use, the remanufacturer may use a primer and/or neck sealer, though in most cases the metal-to-metal joint at the neck and in the primer pocket is more than adequate.

I'd stick with known names like Black Hills for remanufactured ammo.  "Bob's Ammo and Storm Door Company" is probably not the kind of firm you'd want to trust.