30 Year-Old Primers

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Slamfire

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I do not think primers have a shelf life. For loaded ammunition the powder goes bad first.

I shot 60's vintage CCI pistol primers around the turn of the century and they worked fine.
 
I was cleaning up and found, in one of my old ammo cans, a pristine box of 1,000 Federal Large Pistol primers in 100 primer flats. I'd appreciate your thots as to whether or not they're likely to be in decent shape. They've been stored inside without exposure to temperature extremes.

Thanks,

FH
 
Like fine wine & old whisky.

If stored properly, like it sounds like yours were?

They only get better when they reach 30 years old!

rc
 
I'm still loading from stocks of Winchester primers that I bought over 30 years ago. They were purchased in 1977, to be exact, and they still go bang every time.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
Thanks guys. I've stayed with reasonably fresh components til these. In the same ammo can I found 500 Remington 230 gr. FMJ-RN .45 bullets, 300 200gr JHP Speer bullets and 500 200gr Adams lead SWC cast bullets. I've already tried all of those...they aged perfectly (as, of course, they would) but I was a bit leery of aged primers. I appreciate your thoughts.

FH

PS-the box has an Apr '79 date printed on the leaf.
 
You can always prime a few cases and pop the primers without powder and bullet. This will affirm that they are in fact still good.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
A neighbor gave me a couple thousand primers from the 70's. They spent the last 10 years before I got them in a outdoor storage shed in the humid/hot pinewoods of East Texas.

All were cci and all functioned flawlessly. Actually still working on the last 500 small rifle primers. I've done accuracy tests at 100 yards and no noticeable difference between the old and new.
 
I'm just finishing up a batch of Remington 9 1/2 primers that are at least 30 years old, probably closer to 40. They've worked as well as the brand new ones I had on hand.
 
I will at least experiment with them before assembling 1,000 rounds of which 998 have to be disassembled. Thanks to all for your thoughts and opinions.

Cheers,

FH
 
I loaded a bunch of primers that I had stored in a midwestern storage shed for 8 years, through severe winters and humid summers and they weren't in anything but the original box. These primer's were over 20 years old to begin with, and every single one went bang despite being poorly stored.
Now I store them in an oxygen and moisture deprived air tight container, but only because I'm stocking up just in case it's gets impossible to get them at some point in time.
 
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