My first FTF - bad primer

barnfrog

barnfrog

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Friend was shooting some .44 Remington Magnum loads I put together for him and one didn't go off. He put it aside, the rest shot fine. I thought maybe I hadn't seated the primer fully, so when we were shooting together today I had him try it again. No joy. Brought it home and pulled the bullet. Full charge of powder, which I suspected because if it was powder and not the primer it should have been a squib. Carefully pushed out the primer and pried the anvil out to find the compound was basically powder, not a consolidated cake or wafer. Remington 2-1/2. I've shot Winchester and CCI mostly; the only rounds I've loaded with Remington primers have been these .44 Rem Mag for him, and he's shot less than 50 rounds so far so not a big sample size.
 
barnfrog said:
Friend was shooting some .44 Remington Magnum loads I put together for him and one didn't go off. He put it aside, the rest shot fine. I thought maybe I hadn't seated the primer fully, so when we were shooting together today I had him try it again. No joy. Brought it home and pulled the bullet. Full charge of powder, which I suspected because if it was powder and not the primer it should have been a squib. Carefully pushed out the primer and pried the anvil out to find the compound was basically powder, not a consolidated cake or wafer. Remington 2-1/2. I've shot Winchester and CCI mostly; the only rounds I've loaded with Remington primers have been these .44 Rem Mag for him, and he's shot less than 50 rounds so far so not a big sample size.
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I've not loaded the decades that others have, but I've shot my dad's reloads before I picked up the mantle and I've had 1 cci ftf and those are what he and I've loaded most. I've had over a dozen ftf of Remington spp in the 1100 I've loaded. I did discover my tuned ignition systems were contributing, but a half dozen didn't fire in my pistol after several hits.
 
That's pretty scary. I've never had a failure other than some WWI British 303 rounds that a friend got when he bought his Enfield rifle. It came with a wooden crate containing 500 rounds loaded in WWI. After a few hang fires we dumped them in the waste can at the range.
 
Tall said:
That's pretty scary. I've never had a failure other than some WWI British 303 rounds that a friend got when he bought his Enfield rifle. It came with a wooden crate containing 500 rounds loaded in WWI. After a few hang fires we dumped them in the waste can at the range.
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The brass was worth keeping
 
If you hand loading long enough you will eventually run in to a few. I've had 2 duds in close to 50 yrs of hand loading. 1 was due to an anvil missing, the other had no primer compound. The one without the anvil, once I installed one it worked. Primers have such a good reputation we don't inspect for primer compound or anvils. We just use a flip tray to orientate the cups and go.
 
Blue68f100 said:
If you hand loading long enough you will eventually run in to a few. I've had 2 duds in close to 50 yrs of hand loading. 1 was due to an anvil missing, the other had no primer compound. The one without the anvil, once I installed one it worked. Primers have such a good reputation we don't inspect for primer compound or anvils. We just use a flip tray to orientate the cups and go.
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Same here, In a little over 50yrs of reloading, I seen one rifle dud in a 30-30, two in 9mm and that's it.
That's a pretty good record considering how many 10s of thousands of rounds I loaded, maybe more.
They have a pretty good track record for reliability.
 
AJC1 said:
The brass was worth keeping
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This was around 1985. He was able to buy new .303 British ammunition then in any quantity he wanted in order to have pristine brass. This stuff was corroded and bad looking. Maybe today I would pull all the bullets from the pristine looking ones. Back then it was different.
 
Well if your firing pin hit the primer ....the cake/pellet/wafer was crushed ...it would have broken up from the force that should have ignited it ...

If the primer wasn't seated fully ...the strike may not have had sufficient force to ignite it ... .... this is the source of most FTF of reloaded ammo..
 
Ironicaintit said:
I do! It only takes a few extra seconds to ensure they're intact.
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Wouldn't the paper disc between the anvil and the priming compound have hidden any defect in the compound? Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to learn. At the number of rounds I load in a year I can spend a few seconds to look at my primers, but what would I be looking for?

JimKirk said:
Well if your firing pin hit the primer ....the cake/pellet/wafer was crushed ...it would have broken up from the force that should have ignited it ...

If the primer wasn't seated fully ...the strike may not have had sufficient force to ignite it ... .... this is the source of most FTF of reloaded ammo..
Click to expand...
When he initially told me about it my first thought was that the primer might not have been fully seated. Wasn't sure what exactly happens in that case, since I've heard tales of rounds that didn't fire on the first strike but did on the second try.
 
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barnfrog said:
When he initially told me about it my first thought was that the primer might not have been fully seated. Wasn't sure what exactly happens in that case, since I've heard tales of rounds that didn't fire on the first strike but did on the second try.
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If the primer isn't seated all the way, the first strike may not set it off, but it will usually seat it the rest of the way. When struck a second time it usually (but not always) fires.

chris
 
I can't remember a bad primer that wasn't my fault. I mostly use a ram prime but also an RCBS bench prime. In each instance it's easy to glance at the primer anvil, either in the tray when loading the primer tubes or individually when a primer is placed in the ram prime. IIRC I have seen 2 primers without the anvil and one was dislodged when shaking a bunch in the flipping tray. I'm kinda surprised that out of the billions of primers made there is so few duds...
 
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If that first strike shatters the primer disc ...most the time it will not fire ...

Those that first strike seated the primer and it fired the disc was still good ..

I am guessing at how many rounds reloaded ...half million or more and I have had one dud primer ...the other few were caused by my actions
 
barnfrog said:
Friend was shooting some .44 Remington Magnum loads I put together for him and one didn't go off. He put it aside, the rest shot fine. I thought maybe I hadn't seated the primer fully, so when we were shooting together today I had him try it again. No joy. Brought it home and pulled the bullet. Full charge of powder, which I suspected because if it was powder and not the primer it should have been a squib. Carefully pushed out the primer and pried the anvil out to find the compound was basically powder, not a consolidated cake or wafer. Remington 2-1/2. I've shot Winchester and CCI mostly; the only rounds I've loaded with Remington primers have been these .44 Rem Mag for him, and he's shot less than 50 rounds so far so not a big sample size.
Click to expand...

It happens . Early 70's had #3 CCi Pistol primers fail ,same batch . Powder and bullet were in tact ,primer struck #2-3 times NO ignition .
Just happened to be in MY .44 Ruger Super Blackhawk ,which NEVER shot well no matter the shooter or fodder . I had two pistolero's gunsmith shooters attempt to fix it ,Both failed . I peddled the pistol and Never regretted it. Pretty well soured Me on Ruger for decades .

I've had one Winchester LRP fail and it may very well have been MY fault ,as I was lubing the press BEFORE reloading and back then didn't wear gloves , so just saying could have been contamination . Speaking of back then primers were $0.60 0.85 per hundred and a K $6.00- 7.25
So one simply tossed the cartridge in the Range safe bin and on with the show .

In nearing 58 years reloading I've had #4 misfires primer related . NEVER had a High primer which failed to ignite ,had some pierced primers due to setting proud .
and one thing you DON'T want is Proud primers in semi or full auto stuff . Trust ME on that , I've been down the road with Dbl tap out of battery and it's NOT pretty .
 
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In over 40 years of reloading I’ve only had one failure to fire. Most embarrassing moment ever! A shooter at the range asked to shoot my Colt Python and click! It fired the 2nd try. Got home and checked all the remaining rounds and saw 2 or 3 with high primers. Changed my priming method and tool and none since. I have since checked all primer seating. Like my RCBS bench mounted priming tool for the feel!! Never a problem with Remington, CCI, or Win primers being defective.
 
barnfrog said:
Wouldn't the paper disc between the anvil and the priming compound have hidden any defect in the compound? Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to learn. At the number of rounds I load in a year I can spend a few seconds to look at my primers, but what would I be looking for?
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I did not take that as argumentative.
I don't know about any paper disc.... really all I've ever used is CCI (from 60s era to present) and the priming compound is clearly visible behind the anvil.

I use an RCBS hand primer. When I dump them (usually 50 at a time) into the tray and get them all wobbled so they're right side up, a quick glance confirms they're all intact. And then as each primer comes up, I tend to look at it again.
Quick observations as a step happens usually costs no time at all
 
In the old days a bad primer was rare ... quality control was important .
Not so Today ... plants run 24/7 and quality Control is iffy at best .
I'm starting to see primers with little or no priming compound myself ....
And there isn't a thing You or I can do except complain long and loud ...
My first thought was primer not fully seated ... nowday's I need to change that first thought to ...
Bad Primer !
Gary
 
Ironicaintit said:
I did not take that as argumentative.
I don't know about any paper disc.... really all I've ever used is CCI (from 60s era to present) and the priming compound is clearly visible behind the anvil.

I use an RCBS hand primer. When I dump them (usually 50 at a time) into the tray and get them all wobbled so they're right side up, a quick glance confirms they're all intact. And then as each primer comes up, I tend to look at it again.
Quick observations as a step happens usually costs no time at all
Click to expand...
Thank you. I will check my primers before seating from now on. These were Remington, and when I did my little forensic dissection there was a reddish-brown (brownish-red?) disc of some sort between the anvil and the primer. I guess not all manufacturers do that?

Prime on a Lee Classic Turret press. The long handle allows me to feel when the primer bottoms out quite nicely. I also run my finger across each one as I take it out of the press to make sure it's not proud of the pocket. I certainly could have missed one, though.
 
barnfrog said:
Thank you. I will check my primers before seating from now on. These were Remington, and when I did my little forensic dissection there was a reddish-brown (brownish-red?) disc of some sort between the anvil and the primer. I guess not all manufacturers do that?
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Okay now I know where we're at.
A boxer style primer is composed of;
-A brass cup
-the priming compound
-a brass anvil

the colored disk you see in there is the priming compound.

check this out:
 
Regarding primer reliability - https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...-and-discussions.778197/page-11#post-12417636

"Based on the SAAMI-specified drop test, statistics will tell you that our [Winchester] primers are 99.9997 percent reliable ... A lead-styphnate primer is probably one of the oldest and most reliable devices on the planet."

Article noted that Black Hills Ammunition (Which uses Winchester primers) who test fires more than 100,000 rounds per year and sells tens of millions of rounds each year, their investigations over the years identified misfires were the result of a defective primer in only a very small number of cases.

"Primers are not perfect — nothing man-made is — but they are very reliable. Statistically, you might encounter a defective primer, if you shoot enough ... 99.9997 percent reliability ... means you might hit a misfire every 300,000 rounds.​
 
LiveLife said:
99.9997 percent reliability ... means you might hit a misfire every 300,000 rounds. (emphasis added)
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Well, no. That’s a misuse of the personal pronoun. What it means is 1:300,000 primers sold might be a FTF. The box/boxes containing said primers might be purchased by a new handloader with fewer than one rounds reloaded or an old one with greater than 600,000 under their belt; the odds are the same. Statistics is artful grifting by cunning linguists, not mathematics.
 
I have a primer, missing it's anvil somewhere on my bench right now. I spotted it flipping primers in my flip tray.
It would have been my next FTF but I caught it before it raised my count. So Logistically is wasn't a FTF for me but it is a bad primer so I suppose my count of bad primers now is 4, with my FTF still at 3.
 
Ironicaintit said:
Okay now I know where we're at.
A boxer style primer is composed of;
-A brass cup
-the priming compound
-a brass anvil

the colored disk you see in there is the priming compound.
Click to expand...

Well, that's not quite what I found in the primer I pulled apart. Under the anvil was the very thin re-brown disc, and under the disc was some tan powdery material. I'll have to take another one apart when I get home tonight and take pictures.
 
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