Note on Primers

[ReloaderFred]

I have a small booklet from about 1937 entitled, "Western Ammunition Handbook". I found in reading it a statement on primer failure rates that I thought some of the modern reloaders may find interesting. Here it is:

"By specializing in all types of sporting ammunition for both game and target shooting, the ballistic engineers of the Western Cartridge Company have set new standards which have resulted in greatly improved performance. At a time when the standard of the industry for primers permitted one misfire in 500, they raised their own standard to one misfire in 10,000. One production run went to 121,000 primers before a single misfire occurred."

These days, people complain when they get one primer failure out of thousands and thousands of primers. Those failures are usually attributed to seating problems in the long run, but not always.

I've loaded well over 800,000 rounds of ammunition and I can only remember having two truly bad primers. One had no primer pellet, and the other had no anvil. That's a failure rate that any company should be proud of, even though I've used an assortment of primers from all the domestic manufacturers over the years, and recently primers from Brazil and the Czech Republic. The quality control in the modern manufacture of primers is really, really good, to say the least.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[rcmodel]

I started reloading in 1962.
And I have never had a bad primer.

Except that one time in 1969 when I got a pop and a puff of smoke out of the ejection port on one of Uncle SAMs M-16's.

But the primer was fine.
And worked as designed.

Turned out, the LC 68 case without a flash hole was the problem!!

rc

 

[ReloaderFred]

Primers just work, RC. We've come to expect that over the years, but I guess it wasn't always so. My reloading experience began in 1963, and I've always been amazed at how well primers work.

I have a .444 Marlin case without a flash hole that I bought awhile back. I bought 500 new cases, and the last one in the bag of bulk brass was the bad one. I size all my new rifle brass, and the press came to a sudden stop when I hit that last case.

Fred

 

[Schwing]

I hear a lot about bad batches of primers too but have yet to see it. The only primer failures I have ever had were self inflicted in the form of shallow seated primers.

 

[Stev32k]

I've also used just about every brand of primer made and never had one fail. I have shallow seated one a few times and had to fire it a second time to make it go off, but that was my fault. When primers were in short supply a couple of years ago I bought what ever I could find; Wolf, Tulammo, S&B, Magtech, etc and never had a problem with any of them.

I did have a Federal small pistol primer detonate when reloading. It didn't cause any damage and I was not hurt but it did scare the crap out of me. Never did determine why it went off and Federal would not respond to emails and was very evasive and defensive when I called them. So now I try to avoid Federal unless there is nothing else available.

 

[Hangingrock]

Primers have been a non issue with CCI and Winchester, but had a problem with a certain lot of Federal small pistol primers that were marginally over sized thus felt more resistance to seating.

 

[higgite]

I have only loaded about 7000 9mm rounds in my young reloading career and have had one truly bad primer. When it didn't fire, I figured I hadn't fully seated it. So, after waiting to see if it was a hang fire, I struck it 3 more times with no bang. When I got home, I pulled the bullet, dumped the powder and decapped it. The primer came out in 2 pieces, cup and anvil, and both were clean as a whistle. No priming compound to be found, burnt or otherwise. I only load for my own range fodder, so I can live with a 1 in 7000 failure rate, which might even wind up being 1 in a million one of these days.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

I did have a Federal small pistol primer detonate when reloading. It didn't cause any damage and I was not hurt but it did scare the crap out of me. Never did determine why it went off and Federal would not respond to emails and was very evasive and defensive when I called them. So now I try to avoid Federal unless there is nothing else available.

Federal handgun primers are very sensitive, probably the most sensitive sold. If you were used to loading CCI you might have been to rough on the Federal primers and set one off although that is very hard to do.

 

[chris in va]

I've had bad luck with Wolf. Didn't matter how hard they were seated, I still got one in 30 or so that wouldn't light.

Never had an issue with CCI, so I stick with those. I was tempted to try S&B but skeptical.

 

[gahunter12]

I have never had an issue with CCI, or Federal going bang. I have loaded well over 140,000 rounds since I started reloading in 2007. The ONLY failure of any type was on Federal LMRP. I had 2 blow pin holes on back to back 7mm RM rounds @ minimum charge. I sent them back to Federal, and they replaced them. So far the replacements have been great!

 

[mdi]

I reloaded my first round (.38 Special) in 1969. Since that time I haven't found a bad primer. Lucky? Mebbe, but it's amazing how many primers are produced with so few failures, billions I'm sure...

 

[243winxb]

Defective primer

These at least fired, but had other problems. http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=795913 I had one CCI400 primer, about 2 years ago, that took 4 strikes to fire. Not bad for about 40 years of reloading.

 

[Rule3]

Good thread.

It's "always the equipment" never the operator.

Kinda like Golf, tennis, bowling, fishing etc.