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Bad primers?
mike992
Member Posts: 62 ✭✭
I am reloading for a Colt Official Police .38 and a
M28 S&W Highway Patrolman 357.
I bought a brick of magnum small pistol Win. primers and a brick
of Std. Remington small pistol primers for loading.
The Remington primers snapped on a cylinder full of 38s all 6 times in the Colt.
The Rems will go off if hit by the hammer a second time.
The Winchesters gave me no trouble until today.
In the 357, the Winchesters in .38 cases (1-2 times reloaded) go off fine, but not in the 357 (fired once) cases.
Both pistols have never failed with factory ammo. The Colt doesnt strike the primers all that hard but the S&W hits them HARD.
I bought these primers from seperate places and it just seems strange. I have reloaded for several years now and this is the first time this happened.
Interestingly the Rem primers also get used for my Colt SAA 32-20 which has an EXTREMELY light action job, but it has not failed with those primers for over 150 loads? It just doesnt make sense, especially since the S&W 357 hits the cases so hard and the Colt SAA has little hammer tension. Any suggestions would be appreciated Thanks.
M28 S&W Highway Patrolman 357.
I bought a brick of magnum small pistol Win. primers and a brick
of Std. Remington small pistol primers for loading.
The Remington primers snapped on a cylinder full of 38s all 6 times in the Colt.
The Rems will go off if hit by the hammer a second time.
The Winchesters gave me no trouble until today.
In the 357, the Winchesters in .38 cases (1-2 times reloaded) go off fine, but not in the 357 (fired once) cases.
Both pistols have never failed with factory ammo. The Colt doesnt strike the primers all that hard but the S&W hits them HARD.
I bought these primers from seperate places and it just seems strange. I have reloaded for several years now and this is the first time this happened.
Interestingly the Rem primers also get used for my Colt SAA 32-20 which has an EXTREMELY light action job, but it has not failed with those primers for over 150 loads? It just doesnt make sense, especially since the S&W 357 hits the cases so hard and the Colt SAA has little hammer tension. Any suggestions would be appreciated Thanks.
Comments
Don't store your primers anywhere near oil - if your reloading rig is in the garage, store them elsewhere. If you store oiled guns in a safe, store the primers and ammo elsewhere.
Safest place in the house=sock drawer!!! NO OIL!
It is harder to kill a primer than you think.
Yeah but 1 in a 100? Should I reload that case with a new primer and see if it just happens to that case?
That will work if you screw the decapping pin all the way down so you know you are doing no sizing on the case as you deprime. Be careful; that primer is now rather sensitive. Does it fire if you try to fire it for the second time?
The next primer that fires in THAT case does not mean the problems we suspect are not present. The primer hit is light enough to fail ONLY 1% of the time. So you would have to so a statistical analysis to determine if it was that case causing the problem.
I would look for a busted or hanging spring, junk and gunk in the bolt binding the spring or pin or cases with tons of headspace caused by shoving the shoulder back way too far during resizing..
Do you take the compression off of the main spring?
I have a ruger m77 that did this. i suspected the primes as well. but only because the rifle was band new. i worked with the gunshop i bought it from and we decided that it had a bad sprg. Ruger first replaced the sprg. this decreased the number of times that it wouldn't go BOOM. but didn't fix it 100%. then they took the whole gun back and reworked the saftey. since then it has gone BOOM everytime since.
I was told cci primers have the hardest primer cup of all. and a weak main sprg will not have enough inertia to crush it sufficiatly enough to ignite.