Dudds?

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Hoopie

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Just got done shooting some reloads in 30-06. Loaded up 5 rounds and when i pulled the trigger on the 3rd one click...nothing happened. Cycled the action and checked out the round. It had a nice deep dimple from the firing pin; i shook it, and there's definitely powder in there. Why does this happen? And what do you do with one? All the rest fired and shot pretty darn well.

Almost forgot. Was shooting 50.0 grains of H335 over a CCI large rifle primer, was about 20 degrees outside if that matters
 
Remove bullet. Dump powder after inspecting it for contamination. Resize and decap case. Inspect primer to determiner if there is an obvious reason for it to fail. Inspect inside case for contamination. Reload and go for it again...
 
about 20 degrees outside if that matters
Yes it matters. Old oil, gunk can slow a firing pin in cold weather.I have seen this in brand new rifles from the factory also. Take bolt apart and clean it, or spray with WD40. Story guns muzzle down in gun racks after cleaning.
 
Another likely cause to check is the primer wasn't fully seated.

It takes all the firing pin energy to finish seating it before it can crush the primer mix against the anvel and set it off.

rc
 
I agree with rcmodel; a high primer won't ignite. To test for this, rechamber the round and 'fire' again; if it ignites, you most likely had a high primer.

WD-40 is a water dispersant; I can think of no practical reason to use WD-40 on or around a firearm.:scrutiny:
 
The best thing I have found for lubing the insides of bolts is Remington Dry-Lube spray.

It won't dry out over time and get hard or sticky, congeal in cold weather, or run out and soak the wood or bore.

It also doesn't attract and hold dirt like any oil will do.

rc
 
http://www.wd40.com/uses-tips/ 2000+ Uses for WD40. When people bring a gun into the shop, a 760 rem pump and you can hardly move the action because they put gun away last season without cleaning and its now a day before opening season of the next year you need a quick fix because the gun smith is busy with more important work. Within 15 minutes the gun is back in action, customer happy, and the repair only cost $25. This has happen a few times in 18 years. Different guns, different people, but all gunk, light rust, dirt. FIXED FAST.
 
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Thumbs up on teflon dry lube. It doesn't cling to dirt like oil or grease and it's fine in -20 degrees because it doesn't thicken like oil or grease. When I get a dud, I try shooting it again. For me, they've always fired on the 2nd hit.
 
The 30-06 is VERY common and I have one of those too in my gun cabinet too. I don't understand everything but; your brass is not in spec (the shoulder of the bottleneck is out of place somehow). I was told to only neck the brass with the die. People in here and 2 gunsmiths told me the above.

As I read in my #12 Speer manual page 87;
Full-length resizing is recommended for any reloaded ammunition used in semiautomatic and pump action rifles. Small base dies are recommended for loading ammunition for Browning Lever Action Rifle. Occasionally, Surplus military 30-06 and 7.62mm NATO (308) brass may need a small base die for the first sizing, even if it is to be used in a bolt action. Surplus brass fired in machine guns may be more swelled than cases fired in a rifle.

Any way...I don't understand why our guns will not work using Remington brass in a full length die like its ment to do. I am using a Redding die.
 
Agree with the shell casing and sizing. Also next question is what kind of primers are you using. What was mentioned already about the primers not being seated all the way. A quick way to find out if that is the problem is by loading up the round again and pull the trigger. If it goes off this time then thats the problem.
 
ambidextrous1 said:
WD-40 is a water dispersant; I can think of no practical reason to use WD-40 on or around a firearm.:(

A full day of hunting in heavy snow followed with a four hour drive back to camp before you can strip down rifle, dry it out, and re lube everything. By the way pull all ammo out of the magazine before you bath the gun in WD40 or kiss those rounds off as duds, trust m. Been there done that.

Back to the OP question; I have found on an occasion the anvil missing from the primer. This has happened to me on one factory load and two reloads.
 
Most of the time a round doesn't go off as others have said its because the primer wasn't seated to the bottom of the primer pocket. Primers must be seated to the bottom of the pocket and the primer given its "set" to ensure proper ignition.

If there's a good dent in the primer and it doesn't go off the force of the firing pin will usually seat it the rest of the way and if fired again the next firing pin hit will set it off.

An overly shortened case or shoulder set back too much wouldn't allow a good primer strike.

Bad primers are really rare. In 35 years of reloading I've used every major brand or primer and several off brands and can only remember one bad primer. That bad primer was in new unloaded .357 mag factory primed brass. It just kind of fizzled and the back side of the primer opened up with a little smoke coming out of the space between the cylinder and recoil shield. I thought it may have been a round without a punched flash hole but it was there after I pulled the bullet and could get a look down the inside of the case.
 
it happens. like the other guys have said, when you tear it down, try to find out if it was something you did, or if it was a faulty primer. i have had 2 cartridges not fire in my life, one was a factory round, and one was mine. i could not find a fault with what i had done, but the primer fell into a bunch that i had already deprimed, and i just didn't fell like digging through all of the other ones to try to find it. so i just wrote it off as a bad primer. when a company makes a million or so of them a day, you are bound to get one ot two a day that will not lite. if you ask anyone on the board here that has any amount of experience, they will also tell you it has happend to them as well. if it is something you did, you need to find out what it was, and correct it. look inside the case with a light, see if there are any grains stuck to the wall, or on the end of the bullet. if there are, ESPECIALLY DOWN IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CASE, that means there was some kind of contaminate in there, and it most likely killed the priming compound. sometime, primers are hard to kill, other times, even the slightest amount of anything will kill them. rest assured, that when you are trying to kill them (to discard them) nothing in the world will disable them, but, when a charging lion is attacking you the dust from a mouse fart three doors down will kill the darn thing !
 
Thanks for all the replies. I did try to shoot the round again and again nothing. It'll be a few days till i can take it a part but at least now i know what to look for.
 
Don't sweat it too much, one time is maybe a freak event possibly something out of your control.
2nd time is, hmmm interesting.
3rd time, Ok theres definately a problem.
 
Remo-99...After over 22 years of reloading and not having not one failure to fire in all those years If I have just one failure to fire. I sure as hell would want to know why and would investigate to find out.

I don't even want to get to the "Hmmm interesting" phase...:D
 
Bushmaster
I've seen a few reloaders with a single fail to fire and not being able to source a problem, but after a second ftf makes ya think, theres something going wrong.

Anything like improperly stored primers or powder for one, I've seen people show me primer packets that looked like they have been stored underwater for decades, and I was amased that any of the primers fired. ;)
 
The only FTF I'ver ever had or seen, factroy or reloads, were due to poor pin stikes. The reloads all either fired on the second click, indicating the primer may not have been properly seated, OR they fired properly an another firearm.

I and a buddy shot some of my .45ACP stuff in his new Glock last summer. He had maybe a 5% failure rate, including the factory ammo he had. Some fired on the second effort, some didn't. I ran them through my 1911 and all went as planned.

Before his purchase, a quick look at some factory ballistics tables had proved to him that the 9mm he started looking at was/is no more than a .38Spec.+P loaded with light bullets! He IS a fairly good shot so he really didn't feel the need for a huge mag capacity that would let him maybe miss any potential "targets" to death with high speed ammo, nor would he need to use a lot of light bullets in hopes of pounding them to death with something like a small hammer.

I TRIED to get him to look at some 1911s after he setteled on the .45 but the Glock's safety and legend of working with any ammo without jams drug him the wrong way. Well, at least he listened to me about the right cartridge for his new home/self defense pistol. In an hour or so of shooting, he had a couple of stove-pipe jams, factory stuff, not my hard cast SWCs. And none of the dozen VERY expensive "Black Talon" rounds he had bought would feed. Those big, wide open HP bullets hit the feed ramp and just stopped but the ONE I tried in my GI 1911 fed fine.

Ok, ok, it's all just a personal point of view! You use what you wish and be happy with it. I just hope you never really have to defend your life or family with a 9mm OR a .38, fancy +P HP ammo or not! If you do, I hope the goblins are wimpy. Or that you get a .45 first. :)

???? How the smell did I get here from fail to fire duds? Oh, well....
 
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Take bolt apart and clean it, or spray with WD40. Store guns muzzle down in gun racks after cleaning.

WD-40 is the absolute worst thing you could possibly use on any thing firearm related. It starts out as a liquid, then starts to evaporate the solvents in it. They keep evaporating as time passes,(months), then eventually become a sticky varnish like glue. Put it on or inside a bolt for a rifle or semi-auto handgun, it'll slow the firing pin to a crawl.

I worked in a gun shop for 6 years. A labor of love, but NOT of high pay!:banghead: Most guns brought in for failure to fire, were a victim of the owners using WD-40. They'd use it, then a couple of months later, they'd stop working, gummed up. SOOOOoo what did they do?:confused: Yup, spray some more WD-40 in there. Sure the new stuff dissolved the old stuff enough to get it working again. But not for long.

I had to soak those actions in harsh solvents for days sometimes to even start to get them clean. You say, "how did I know they used WD-40"? THERE'S NO MISTAKING THE SMELL OF THAT CRAP!

I had a failure to fire with my then new 8mm mauser. Failed to fire at all! While the outside had been cleaned of the heavy packing grease, the inside of the bolt hadn't. I was a teenager at the time, sighting in my new rifle for deer hunting.(circa 1962) An old timer at the gun club took the bolt apart, using the table to hook the FP and put a dime in to hold it. Packed solid with heavy grease! A rag and a little of the lawnmower gas got it de-greased, I happily got to shoot it and got 'er done!
 
Years ago when wd40 came out a lot of us thought it was an answer to our prayer's. Little did we know that it would gum up the mechanism. It was pretty good at displacing water on guns and distributor caps, but a lot of us found out the hard way especially in cold weather.
 
dont bash WD 40 to bad, it does have its uses! i admit a gun is not one of them but i cant live without it!
 
Don't bash WD-40 as far as causing rust - check out Brownells newsletter regarding a test they did for protecting bare steel, they used 6 or 8 products all the way from motor oil, gun oil cosmoline, BC Seatch, and /wd-40. Check it out for your self here www.brownells.com/aspc/NS/GunTech?NewsletterArchive.asp?p=O&t=1&t=503

It didn't fare to bad, I just wish we could still get RIG yet. I've been using Inhibitor, V80, by Van Patten Industries, in Rockford, Il
 
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