Commercial ammo tolerances?

[wjh2657]

I have recently started giving my commercial ammo ( .38 Special) a quality check before using it in my guns. I check for overall length, gross weight (in grains) and high primers. I haven't really had any problems to prompt this but since I spend so much time checking my guns (I LTI before each range session and then function check thoroughly after cleaning) that it only made sense to start checking the ammo. As I handloaded for years I know what I am looking for. Mostly I want uniformity within a lot.

Now here is the question: How critical should I be in overall weight? I have noticed weight deviations within a lot in even the best quality ammo of .2-.5 Grains. I have also noticed up to 1.0 grains difference between different lots of same cartridge , is this normal (fluctuation in powder types,brass, bullets etc?)

Average range is 195gr to 210gr total weight.

Edited June 20, 2009 by wjh2657

[Guest FroggyOne2]

yep