Thanks for the encouragement..... I'm not freaking out, but my little "engineer trouble shooter" motor is chugging along. This is actually the kind of techno geek problem that makes reloading fun for me.
Falability is what what makes us human.
And the humility to admit we're fallible is what enables us to avoid "blind stupidity".
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The evidence is right there, take it for what its worth. That primer has fired and is flattened. It looks like a fired case got by and was loaded. Either that or somehow a fired primer got mixed in with the good ones and got loaded into that case
So last night I measure cases I FL sized (from a box of my reloads), I measure some spent brass, that I know I fired from my rifle, and I measured the offending case.
The resized brass measured .3540" to .3545" in diameter
The fired brass measured .3560" in diameter
and ....... drum roll .........
The "dud" case measured .3540"
So I've been scratching my head and this is my new conclusion...
Every now and again, my Safety Prime (which I never could seem to get perfectly aligned) will fail to drop the primer squarely in the seating cup and the primer will eject onto the carpeted floor. The reason I hate it when this happens is that I won't continue until I find the dropped primer.
This happened about a month ago (during which time I was set up to reload .223 for several weeks) and I recall being surprised to find two primers on the floor.
So I suspect that I must have previously dropped a primer, and retrieved an unknown spent primer (likely spilled from the collection tube, which gets knocked off occasionally), popped it in the cup and marched onward to the beat of the drummer.
This would explain having a fired primer (very possibly de-primed from range pick up brass, and hence not flattened like those I have loaded) winding up in a sized and properly charged case.
To be totally honest .... Other than making sure I load the correct primers into the Safety Prime and making sure they are seated all the way, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to them.
Corrective action...
1. spend some more time trying to get the safety prime lined up.
2. vacuum up around my reloading area.
3. put a hose clamp on the primer collection tube.
4. carefully look at any primer that escapes from my controlled environment.
5. pay more attention to the primers during my final inspection (I focus to much on COAL and if the primers have been seating without any problems I haven't paid allot of attention to them).
Oh well! Looks like I'm not going to be getting any "customer satisfaction" coupons from Winchester.