Gibsons $1.65

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hdwhit

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As many of you know, I started reloading when I was a teenager. Shortly after I got married, I developed a neurological condition that left me unable to reload for a couple of decades. When I resumed, I had to deal with cases, powder and primers that had been in various stages of the process at the time I became handicapped.

The sudden stop provided a sort of "living laboratory" for the effects of handling and storage of all reloading components. I have previously posted about brass and powder so I will not repeat them here. But, I was concerned about whether or not twenty-something year old primers stored in a garage in North Texas would be any good. Since primers were comparatively cheap and were readily available, I decided to buy new primers for use as I returned to reloading.

But once I was back into the swing of things, I decided to try out the primers that I had left over from my "former life". My CCI small rifle primers all had a Gibson's sticker on them which tells me they had to have been bought no later than May 1983 (when I graduated from college for the second time). I loaded 48 rounds of LC74 & LC80 5.56x45 brass with these geriatric primers. The load was 20.8 grains of IMR 4198 under a 45 grain Speer soft point bullet. Every one of them performed flawlessly. A further 42 rounds of mixed brass was also loaded using 19.5 grains of IMR 4198 and 55 grain FMJ bullets. These also performed flawlessly.

I had been apprehensive about using 30+ year old primers for fear of getting a squib due to incomplete firing, but 90 rounds loaded with these old primers all functioned without a problem, so I will continue to use the remaining 800 primers that I had leftover from my mis-spent youth.
 
Excellent! Come to think of it, I have some surplus 7.62x25 that's from the mid-50s and it still shoots fine. When those engineers figured out primers, they really figured it out.
 
Glad to hear your on the mend. If a primer goes boo bang it isn't going to be the primers fault if you get a squid.
 
in North Texas...Gibson's...

There wasn't much to Frisco back then, get them in Plano?

But yeah 30 years isn't that old unless your young. I have primers that are older and still work.
 
I still have primers older the 40 yrs and still work just fine. The Gibson near me when I started was in Richardson. I have some powder from them still, don't recall the price but it was around $2.49 /lb.
 
Thanks for your "real life" report. Good to hear you are back at your bench!
 
I inherited some primers from back in the late 40's that spent decades tucked in the rafters of an unheated workshop here in northern Maine. All went off without a hitch. They worked far better than the partial case of sweaty dynamite my grandfather left up there next to them though. :uhoh:
 
I inherited some primers from back in the late 40's that spent decades tucked in the rafters of an unheated workshop here in northern Maine. All went off without a hitch. They worked far better than the partial case of sweaty dynamite my grandfather left up there next to them though. :uhoh:
:what:
 
Got the local explosives guys to come out and blow it up in the pit out in the back 40 once we discovered what was in the crate. We had been going in and out of the workshop for a few years slamming the door and working with a hammer on the anvil and such in there with no ill effects. The explosive guys said it was really not as bad as one might think.
 
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