Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

I know of one so far, let's see if more show up.

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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby Buckeye45 » Sat Aug 19, 2017 7:17 am

I spoke with a rep last week about this. He told me that all current 450 production is the "Black". The custom stuff in the tan box is exactly the same, but like stated, is just old stock. Dealers are just trying to move old product. Who wouldn't want that jazzy neat black box.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby trob_205 » Mon Dec 18, 2017 8:37 pm

Hornady told our store that Black and Custom are utilizing the same bullet, COAL, and velocities - but they are using different powders. They are producing both as the store recently got in some new lot run custom boxes. This all came to be when a customer that shoots a bowman build tried the Black and said it didn’t shoot as good as his original tan box stuff. Once he got his hands on Custom again he claims the gun definitely likes the Custom over black.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby Hoot » Mon Dec 18, 2017 9:40 pm

Ammunition, regardless of the components it uses, will vary somewhat from one manufacturing lot to the next. There's no avoiding it. Where minute of deer is concerned, these differences are not significant for the most part. In BR shooting, where tenths of an MOA matters, they are quite identifiable. That's why BR shooters try several of a maufacturer's lots to see which one their rifle likes and then they buy a case or two of the best performer. Manufacturing machinery that spits out hundreds of finished rounds per minute are less consistent from one round to the next, than your single stage press is. Reloaders pay much more attention (hopefully) to detail than mass production enterprises because as Henry Ford said, "Time is Money". The slower they run the machinery, the higher quality the resultant ammo is. There's a "Devil's Bargain" being struck on almost every production line. Real "Match Grade" ammo is produced on slower running lines. That's why it costs more. We don't have a lot of choice where the 450b is concerned.
Furthermore, velocity is not the end all predictor of performance. I can load .308 to the same velocity across 5 or 6 types of powder, all else being the same and I guarantee you that my rifle will have a distinct preference for one or two powders out of the group. If Hornady is using two different powders to yield 450b ammunition that shoots the same velocity, likewise, different 450b rifle barrel brands, lengths, heavy or lightweight, 24 or 16 twist, will prefer one over the other.

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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby plant_one » Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:06 am

i'm not buying the different powders thing.

having talked with hornady guys in the testing lab, when they relabel a package like this - they keep the recipe the same. why change a proven thing that works just for a wrapper on a box?

every single product in the black line already had functional versions of it in another line, with a different label on it.

if the powders were different, how the heck did they manage to get exactly the same balistic results from them?

this is from the 250 ftx black
https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifl ... x-black#!/
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this is from custom - although the barrel length info is suspect - this is a common typo issue on their new website, and i think 24" is the default value for that field in the database and i've caught it on several other loads (300blk - screenshot) that they've never published 24" data for.
https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifl ... -gr-ftx#!/
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if you look at the 223 75gr bthp, same thing - although with the match box instead of the custom

match
https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifl ... p-match#!/
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black
https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifl ... h-black#!/
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i could have copy/pasted those data into the charts.

the lot numbers between the black and the custom will necessarily be different, but the 450 bushmaster was origionally designed as an AR15 caliber. they already had a powder that was reliable, produced the proper ammount of gas volume to cycle an ar, was dependable (consistant), gave them the velocity they were looking for at the pressure they were looking for. why fix what aint broken?



the fact that different lots of ammo have different levels of consistency or are just a little more/less consistent than the last is no shock. like hoot said, i'm comfortable that its more about how fast the presses were running and calibrated that day/lot, etc.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby Thom28 » Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:52 am

I took a Black Box and Tan Box out to experiment with when I first got my No.1 with 20" barrel and 1 in 10 twist.

Both the Black and Tan had the same point of impact and groups were very similar. When I did this experiment I did not have a chronograph, so all I could go by was the POI and group size. Both rifles were shot at 100 yards.

As plant_one stated, why would you change a proven winner? I agree that it has more to do with lot manufacturing as Hoot stated.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby trob_205 » Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:12 pm

I understand lot to lot differences. Same applies to powder. If both are still in current production SOMETHING has to be different. It just doesn’t systematically or economically make sense to print different labels and make different packaging for the exact same item. Only exception I see to this would be like the zombie ammo. That was a marketing scheme to drum up sales and to take advantage of a current fad or craze. My personal thought is that they had both powders already for the 450 and the expansion of the Black ammo line allowed them to take advantage of both powders. Especially if they knew the different powders might perform differently from barrel length and twist to another. The customer that had the issue at our store is a trusted source for us and is a good shooter himself. We don’t necessarily take everything every customer says to heart or read too much into something, but this guy was credible enough for the particular employee to dig a bit deeper.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby plant_one » Wed Dec 20, 2017 9:23 am

hornady's doen it more than once


the ZMAX offerings were the same way - same product, different colored tip, different label.

its a marketing thing.


zombies, and zombie apocolypse prepping, were all the cool rage a few years ago, now the tactical thing is the hot number (can you say rem's 870DM?) - look just how flooded the market is with AR-15s is right now....


why wouldnt the marketing department come up with a cool sthick to sell more ammo? thats waht their job is.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby Avenger10 » Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:34 am

trob_205 wrote:It just doesn’t systematically or economically make sense to print different labels and make different packaging for the exact same item.


It absolutely does make economic sense. That is a marketing 101 strategy, and the Marketing engineers at Hornady know this very well. I myself am a manufacturing engineer with 30+ years in the business. I can tell you for certainty companies multi brand the exact same thing on a regular basis. I am under NDA's and cannot disclose who or what but I have seen it with my own eyes. Labels cost pennies to make, new products cost 100's of thousands of dollars especially when SAAMI is involved.

Plant_one is absolutely right. Black 450 and custom 450 are identical. If someone feels they are experiencing a different in performance it is either a negative predisposition toward the data or a variance between lot numbers. It is not because there is a difference in the two lines of 450 from Hornady.

My comments here only apply to the 450 line of ammo.

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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby trob_205 » Sat Dec 23, 2017 8:31 pm

Alright decided just find out for myself, and after some research, on what mixed responses were handed out by Hornady themselves. So while at work today I decided to do a side by side comparison and pulled the bullet on a round of each. Right off the bat with having a box of each to look at we could tell the primers appeared different. Went and inspected all the boxes of head we had and it showed across the board that they appeared different. After pulling the bullet and inspecting the inside of the case it was even more apparent that the primers appeared different based on the color of the back side of the primer. We pulled out some primers off the shelf and our best guess was custom looked like a Remington primer and black looked like a Winchester primer. Not saying that what used but based on looks that’s what our guesses were. As far as powders went it appeared to be the same and charges weighed the same at 42 grains of whatever they use.
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Notice the color on the back side of primer
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Powder color difference is my camera for the most part. Powders looked very similar to the naked eye.
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Re: Hornady Custon Ammo vs. Hornady Black

Postby trob_205 » Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:33 pm

Image

Custom Primer on left Black on the right. Have only ever used CCI BR and Fed GM primers so I’m not sure exactly what each are without having any others to compare it too. Anyone else have any input?
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