Today I went to the range with my new-to-me Smith model 10 with 80 rounds I had loaded earlier this summer. Out of that box of 80, I had fifteen duds. Almost every cylinder had at least one failure to fire; one cylinder had three. Very frustrating.
View attachment 148148
As far as details, these were loaded with 4.0gr Universal under a 158gr LSWC using mixed brass. Primers were pushed in as hard as I could with the primer system attached to my Lee Turret.
Here are some photos of a small sample of rounds that fired perfectly.
View attachment 148150
Here are photos of some of the 15 rounds that failed to ignite. You cans see nicely centered firing pin strikes. Note: some of these have deeper firing pin marks because I tried to fire them 2 of 3 times.
View attachment 148147
View attachment 148149
Frustrated, I emailed Wolf. My email read:
Sir or Madam:
Today I went to the range with a box of 80 rounds of .38 Special I had loaded a few weeks ago. The rounds consisted of mixed brass, 4.0gr Universal, a 158gr LSWC bullet, and a Wolf Small Pistol Primer, lot Number 5-10 with a red dot above the number. Primers were seated deeply and firmly with my Lee primer system on my Lee turret press.
Out of my 80 rounds, I had 15 failure to fire out of my Smith & Wesson model 10. I have had some failure to fire out of my guns before, but only one or two per 100. This was a significantly larger number and, quite frankly, unacceptable.
It's not a gun issue. My box of factory-fresh Winchester White Box target ammo fired perfectly - fifty for fifty.
I do not believe it a storage issue, either. The primers had been stored in my garage inside a sealed can with dessicant. My garage is not climate controlled. I have not had issues with other makers' primers stored in this manner - in fact, I have a couple sleeves of primers from a major American manufacturer dated 2008 that still fire perfectly when I ran them through my .357 Magnum two weeks ago.
Do you have any suggestions as to what I might to to resolve my problem with these Wolf primers? As you can imagine, it's frustrating enough to have one or two failure to fires per box of 100; it's aggrevating to have 15 out of 80 fail to fire.
I will look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Q
View attachment 148148
As far as details, these were loaded with 4.0gr Universal under a 158gr LSWC using mixed brass. Primers were pushed in as hard as I could with the primer system attached to my Lee Turret.
Here are some photos of a small sample of rounds that fired perfectly.
View attachment 148150
Here are photos of some of the 15 rounds that failed to ignite. You cans see nicely centered firing pin strikes. Note: some of these have deeper firing pin marks because I tried to fire them 2 of 3 times.
View attachment 148147
View attachment 148149
Frustrated, I emailed Wolf. My email read:
Sir or Madam:
Today I went to the range with a box of 80 rounds of .38 Special I had loaded a few weeks ago. The rounds consisted of mixed brass, 4.0gr Universal, a 158gr LSWC bullet, and a Wolf Small Pistol Primer, lot Number 5-10 with a red dot above the number. Primers were seated deeply and firmly with my Lee primer system on my Lee turret press.
Out of my 80 rounds, I had 15 failure to fire out of my Smith & Wesson model 10. I have had some failure to fire out of my guns before, but only one or two per 100. This was a significantly larger number and, quite frankly, unacceptable.
It's not a gun issue. My box of factory-fresh Winchester White Box target ammo fired perfectly - fifty for fifty.
I do not believe it a storage issue, either. The primers had been stored in my garage inside a sealed can with dessicant. My garage is not climate controlled. I have not had issues with other makers' primers stored in this manner - in fact, I have a couple sleeves of primers from a major American manufacturer dated 2008 that still fire perfectly when I ran them through my .357 Magnum two weeks ago.
Do you have any suggestions as to what I might to to resolve my problem with these Wolf primers? As you can imagine, it's frustrating enough to have one or two failure to fires per box of 100; it's aggrevating to have 15 out of 80 fail to fire.
I will look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Q
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