Why I stopped buying Fiocchi

[ryle]

These were all out of approx 1000 - 2000 cartridges. There were others that I managed to shoot and a few that went off with little recoil too.

I've long since stopped using them, and found these while having a clear out. I suppose its a reminder to try to be vigilant with what you stick in yer' barrels

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Quality control is apparently non existent there then.   

[sam triple]

Never had a problem, only use these on clays now ! With any mass produced items there will always be a few rogue ones that get thru just look at the car industry , dodgy air bags etc 

bought a slab of Gamebore carts with their “ Gordon system “ after firing a few I couldn’t break my gun , they went back 

Edited Monday at 09:48 by sam triple

[steve1066]

35 minutes ago, ryle said:

These were all out of approx 1000 - 2000 cartridges. There were others that I managed to shoot and a few that went off with little recoil too.

I've long since stopped using them, and found these while having a clear out. I suppose its a reminder to try to be vigilant with what you stick in yer' barrels

I used the same cartridges this weekend and had 2 duds in just 100 cartridges, it’s only 2 out of 100 but surely that percentage is considered high?

 

My apologies, it wasn’t 2 in 100 it was 2 in 25, I only took 1 box the rest were super gems which I had no trouble with.

[Poor Shot]

Looks like they have been poorly handled more than anything. Could have been anywhere from initial distribution through to the RFD being sloppy and dropping pallets against one and other or something. 

I use almost exclusively Fiocchi for my clay shooting and haven't had a single reject over the last 10-15k apart from one F Black which was a little misshapen out of the box. Still worked ok once I had pressed it back into the correct shape with my teeth. 

At this moment, Fiocchi are still, by far, the best cartridge in terms of performance vs cost and availability. Eley are non-existent around my way and what you can buy are being resold through non account holding RFDs so they have twice the margin on them and are very expensive at over £300 per thou for Selects and Blues. Hull are in just a plain rip off territory and Gamebore are almost as bad as Hull with less availability. 

I can pick up a thousand F3's for £290 which offers everything that the Hull Pro One range offers at around £50 per thousand less. I use F Blacks for practice which are around £265-£270 a thousand wad type depending. Nothing else even comes close to that. 

[ryle]

One out of a batch also had a fibre wad stuck halfway down the barrel after the shot. Luckily we noticed the odd noise and checked

[TOPGUN749]

Obviously a manufacturing fault, some crushing in the machinery,or faulty cases to start with ,never come across this myself yet,but have had inconsistent shot loads up to half a gram under the 28 grams,and lots of confetti falling about 20 feet in front from ‘fibre wads’

Edited Monday at 10:44 by TOPGUN749

[Fellside]

36 minutes ago, Poor Shot said:

Looks like they have been poorly handled more than anything. Could have been anywhere from initial distribution through to the RFD being sloppy and dropping pallets against one and other or something. 

I use almost exclusively Fiocchi for my clay shooting and haven't had a single reject over the last 10-15k apart from one F Black which was a little misshapen out of the box. Still worked ok once I had pressed it back into the correct shape with my teeth. 

At this moment, Fiocchi are still, by far, the best cartridge in terms of performance vs cost and availability. Eley are non-existent around my way and what you can buy are being resold through non account holding RFDs so they have twice the margin on them and are very expensive at over £300 per thou for Selects and Blues. Hull are in just a plain rip off territory and Gamebore are almost as bad as Hull with less availability. 

I can pick up a thousand F3's for £290 which offers everything that the Hull Pro One range offers at around £50 per thousand less. I use F Blacks for practice which are around £265-£270 a thousand wad type depending. Nothing else even comes close to that. 

I would agree that Fiocchi are an overall decent purchase. I have used Fblues and moved on to TT2 fibre recently as I’ve stopped using plaswads altogether. Both good - no problems. Never a faulty cartridge out of I don’t know how many thousand. In fact, the fibres are excellent. You mention Hull being a rip off. I like their Pro 20 and Comp X. I appreciate these are at the lower end of their range - but I find them to have great cost/performance. I suppose I place some trust in Hull as I have used their game cartridges exclusively for about 10 years. There you are - my two penneth for what it’s worth. 

[wymberley]

1 hour ago, Poor Shot said:

Still worked ok once I had pressed it back into the correct shape with my teeth.

This piece - called, 'Oh something or other' - immediately sprang to mind, 

[Bigbob]

Have you tried sending them a email with a picture attached ?.

[Poor Shot]

2 minutes ago, wymberley said:

This piece - called, 'Oh something or other' - immediately sprang to mind, 

I don't think I'd be chewing on the primer end.. 🤣 

It was misshapen in the same way the cartridge second from the left in the OPs image was. 

[Poor Shot]

16 minutes ago, Fellside said:

I would agree that Fiocchi are an overall decent purchase. I have used Fblues and moved on to TT2 fibre recently as I’ve stopped using plaswads altogether. Both good - no problems. Never a faulty cartridge out of I don’t know how many thousand. In fact, the fibres are excellent. You mention Hull being a rip off. I like their Pro 20 and Comp X. I appreciate these are at the lower end of their range - but I find them to have great cost/performance. I suppose I place some trust in Hull as I have used their game cartridges exclusively for about 10 years. There you are - my two penneth for what it’s worth. 

I don't think that Hull are bad cartridges, they are just too expensive considering the performance on offer from the competition. F3s are Fiocchi's answer to the Pro range from Hull and are every bit as good, if not better, than the Pro range. Comp X used to be quite reasonable and I did use them for practice as they were low noise, low recoil and fairly good cartridges but they have since gone up to near £300 a thousand. Laylvale super lights are of the same premise as the Comp X and are available locally for £250-£260 a thousand. It makes no sense to pay all that extra for no real gain. 

I've tried both and I don't think the Pro One cartridges are as good as the F3 range. It may be that I was going through a patch of bad form when I was using them and its a case causation vs correlation. Clay target shooting is as much a mind game and as it is of skill and equipment and the F3s just happen to work for me and are more competitively priced than the Hull cartridges. 

The F3 sporting piston in 8.5, UK 8 shot are exceptional cartridges. A really good, wide pattern with a good immediate spread because of the piston wad and able to take most targets out to 45 yards. 

For your average straw bail or Sunday morning shoots then the Litespeed or TT1s are perfectly adequate unless, like the OP, some gorilla has been throwing them about the place before they purchased them but that could happen to any cartridge at any cost. 

I've used Hull game cartridges in the past and I just couldn't find anything in my use case that needed a Hull High Pheasant over a boggo basic game cartridge from any other manufacturer. I actually think that Eley Pigeon selects take some beating in 85% of game shooting scenarios. If they did them in a 5 shot and the looming lead ban wasn't a thing then I would use them over anything else. 30g of 6 shot in a relatively light recoiling cartridge did the business for me. 

[Fellside]

8 minutes ago, Poor Shot said:

I don't think that Hull are bad cartridges, they are just too expensive considering the performance on offer from the competition. F3s are Fiocchi's answer to the Pro range from Hull and are every bit as good, if not better, than the Pro range. Comp X used to be quite reasonable and I did use them for practice as they were low noise, low recoil and fairly good cartridges but they have since gone up to near £300 a thousand. Laylvale super lights are of the same premise as the Comp X and are available locally for £250-£260 a thousand. It makes no sense to pay all that extra for no real gain. 

I've tried both and I don't think the Pro One cartridges are as good as the F3 range. It may be that I was going through a patch of bad form when I was using them and its a case causation vs correlation. Clay target shooting is as much a mind game and as it is of skill and equipment and the F3s just happen to work for me and are more competitively priced than the Hull cartridges. 

The F3 sporting piston in 8.5, UK 8 shot are exceptional cartridges. A really good, wide pattern with a good immediate spread because of the piston wad and able to take most targets out to 45 yards. 

For your average straw bail or Sunday morning shoots then the Litespeed or TT1s are perfectly adequate unless, like the OP, some gorilla has been throwing them about the place before they purchased them but that could happen to any cartridge at any cost. 

I've used Hull game cartridges in the past and I just couldn't find anything in my use case that needed a Hull High Pheasant over a boggo basic game cartridge from any other manufacturer. I actually think that Eley Pigeon selects take some beating in 85% of game shooting scenarios. If they did them in a 5 shot and the looming lead ban wasn't a thing then I would use them over anything else. 30g of 6 shot in a relatively light recoiling cartridge did the business for me. 

I tried using pigeon cartridges for game shooting once - they were gamebore clear pigeon. I was just curious. They killed the average stuff very well of course. However I mainly shoot on hilly ground and some of the taller birds really need 5s and the pigeon loads weren’t up to the more testing drives. I did end up reaching for my 32 gram 5s on about half of the drives. Re Hull game cart’s I just treat the as ‘boggoe basic’ as you would say. There’s hardly any price difference between the dedicated game loads. I suppose it boils down to trust and consistency as they pattern well from my chosen gun/choke. 
I agree that the comp x are more like practice/fun cart’s than a serious competition load - but surprisingly decent. I think you are being charged too much for them at £300/1000. They aren’t that dear where I live. I’ve been paying circa £260 to £270. Having said that, they are due a price increase any time now….! I have not tried the F3s which you recommend. I will look out for those, thanks, but will only buy them if there is a fibre version. I won’t use a plastic wad these days. That’s enough of a cartridge ramble from me - I’d better get some work done…… 🙂

[ryle]

2 hours ago, Bigbob said:

Have you tried sending them a email with a picture attached ?.

I have not, I've just swapped back to Hull 

Ive shot thousands of hulls over the years and not a one has malfunctioned. Maybe ive been lucky. 

I also only use Hull game cartridges nowadays too. 

I did like the Fiocchi TT1's in 28g though.

[Charliedog]

My lad referees sporting comps and he says without fail, 9 out of 10 cartridge issues are with fiocchi brands.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

4 minutes ago, Charliedog said:

My lad referees sporting comps and he says without fail, 9 out of 10 cartridge issues are with fiocchi brands.

That's interesting, the older Browning guns seem to be guilty as well.

 

Best not to use Fiocchi's through an old Browning then.

Edited Monday at 13:39 by TIGHTCHOKE
An errant d.

[Poor Shot]

18 minutes ago, Charliedog said:

My lad referees sporting comps and he says without fail, 9 out of 10 cartridge issues are with fiocchi brands.

And 9 out of 10 of that 9 out of 10 will be the old Browning bottom barrel firing pin light strike. Whenever someone has a misfire in the squad I'm shooting with, it's nearly always the Fiocchi/ Browning bottom barrel combo that's the issue. 

It used to happen regularly with my 725 Pro Sport and happens at least once in 500 cartridges in my 525 game gun whenever I use that to shoot clays. The firing pins are made of cheese and with the angle at which the pin strikes the primer means they chip away quite quickly and can no longer function reliably with harder or more recessed primers. 

If you were to then put the 'misfired' cartridge into the top it would go off no problem. It was part of the reason I got rid of my 725. I switched to a Beretta and I haven't a single misfire since. 

[ryle]

This is funny as I literally had issues with a few Fiocchi's with my b25 on the bottom barrel ha ha, although once i had it sorted they went off ok. Apparently it was years of grime build up was stopping the pin

[b325]

29 minutes ago, ryle said:

Apparently it was years of grime build up was stopping the pin

This is correct I think. I started to have a few bottom barrel misfires in my 325. (Had about 6 in the last  1500 shots). I've probably put around 80 to 100 thousand shots through it in total.

I bought a new bottom firing pin,  took the old one out and compared the 2. Apart from the surface rust absolutely no damage to the pin. However the amount of crud in the firing pin slot was amazing. I did swap the pin after I cleaned it all out but I'm sure it was not needed.

[steve1066]

1 hour ago, Poor Shot said:

And 9 out of 10 of that 9 out of 10 will be the old Browning bottom barrel firing pin light strike. Whenever someone has a misfire in the squad I'm shooting with, it's nearly always the Fiocchi/ Browning bottom barrel combo that's the issue. 

It used to happen regularly with my 725 Pro Sport and happens at least once in 500 cartridges in my 525 game gun whenever I use that to shoot clays. The firing pins are made of cheese and with the angle at which the pin strikes the primer means they chip away quite quickly and can no longer function reliably with harder or more recessed primers. 

If you were to then put the 'misfired' cartridge into the top it would go off no problem. It was part of the reason I got rid of my 725. I switched to a Beretta and I haven't a single misfire since. 

Interesting that Poor Shot, my duds at the weekend were bottom barrel in a Prosport. Shot thousands of FBlues and not had a problem with bottom barrel or any cartridge to be honest.

[Poor Shot]

10 minutes ago, steve1066 said:

Interesting that Poor Shot, my duds at the weekend were bottom barrel in a Prosport. Shot thousands of FBlues and not had a problem with bottom barrel or any cartridge to be honest.

Have a good look at the head of the bottom firing pin. It likely has some pitting or even a chip out of the tip of the firing pin. 

If you are lucky then you may just have some crud built up into the recess in which the firing pin sits which is impeding the movement of the pin. 

[steve1066]

4 minutes ago, Poor Shot said:

Have a good look at the head of the bottom firing pin. It likely has some pitting or even a chip out of the tip of the firing pin. 

If you are lucky then you may just have some crud built up into the recess in which the firing pin sits which is impeding the movement of the pin. 

Thanks Poor Shot, I shall strip it this week and have a look.

[ryle]

Yes this all sounds like my local gunsmith described. It'd still fire Hull cartridges though but not the Fiocchis.

I nipped out today and gave the mishaped ones to the local police to dispose of along with approx 50 rusty old cartridges (of which I went through and cleaned the best ones up and used)

I'll bet they'll go down as a crime statistic along the lines of "50 Deadly Shotgun Bullets taken off the street by Cheshire Police" ha ha

[grahamch]

Are these loaded in Italy still, used to use a lot without issues but heard some Fiocchi was being loaded at Lyalvale in the UK after the take over.

[Bigbob]

5 hours ago, ryle said:

I have not, I've just swapped back to Hull 

Ive shot thousands of hulls over the years and not a one has malfunctioned. Maybe ive been lucky. 

I also only use Hull game cartridges nowadays too. 

I did like the Fiocchi TT1's in 28g though.

Might of been a offer of free carts or a discount voucher for good customer services