lesson learned...primer pockets

[Webster]

I guess I’m not seeing how a uniformed versus un-uniformed primer pocket makes a difference whether or not a primer will ignite.

Uniformed or not, when I seat primers until I feel a good solid stop, they go off regardless of brass brand.

Agree with your findings. Several years ago I had some misfires and I spent a lot of time adjusting the seating tool to what I thought was perfect. No MF for about 1.5 years. Started having a few more. I found out that after uniforming there was no perfect tool adjustment. If you adjust the tool to get the feel you want with the lever handle touching the body it's impossible to seat a few a little deeper. Doesn't make sense since they are all uniformed to the same depth. Now I adjust the tool so that when almost all of the primers are seated good by feel the handle is about 1/4" from the body. This allows a little more push by feel on a few cases. 1 or 2 primers out of 50 seem to require more a little more push than others. MF disappeared again.

Added later: What must be happening is that the swagged primer pocket is deeper than the uniforming tool cuts on a small number of cases. I never looked after running the tool to see if a cut surface exist. I stop when I don't see chips of brass being removed.

 

[mikld]

Another stupid question; did you try to fire the FTFs a second tine?

 

[Texas10]

You might try measuring the base to shoulder on your new and FTF cases and your fire formed cases.
How much longer are your fired cases?

Edit, that should read FTF and Fire formed cases. DUH! New cases don't yet have the modified shoulder.

 

[Deleted old_dood]

So you never ran the shell holder to the die bottom ? And the guy next to you was running a 223 ACKLEY also ?

huh? I said I was fire forming. It was new 223 brass. A reloading die never touched it before going in the rifle. The guy next to me had a 223, not an Ackley.

The only way I can understand all the skepticism I've seen here is to assume everyone else is using Lapua brass. Like I said, using Lapua, I never had to uniform. Ask yourselves if you had two groups of cases and one group had a problem and the only difference in preparation was that the problem group did not have the primer pockets uniformed, what would you assume? I've been reloading 6br and 223 for about 10 years. during that time, using mostly Lapua, I've had maybe 2 misfires such as these.

 

[Deleted old_dood]

We all know 5.56 is dif than 223 . You say you used a 223ackley for headspace = min 1.5032
Rem 223 is 1.4636 min
I'm using a print book but you should get the idea .
Your brass / cartridge was under size giving excessive clearance in your Ackley chamber .

so I take those misfired rounds home, knock the primer out and do the primer pocket, load them up, and shoot them next week with no issues.

 

[Deleted old_dood]

You might try measuring the base to shoulder on your new and FTF cases and your fire formed cases.
How much longer are your fired cases?

since I'm fire forming, the base to shoulder would be much different.

 

[Ggmac]

huh? I said I was fire forming. It was new 223 brass. A reloading die never touched it before going in the rifle. The guy next to me had a 223, not an Ackley.

The only way I can understand all the skepticism I've seen here is to assume everyone else is using Lapua brass. Like I said, using Lapua, I never had to uniform. Ask yourselves if you had two groups of cases and one group had a problem and the only difference in preparation was that the problem group did not have the primer pockets uniformed, what would you assume? I've been reloading 6br and 223 for about 10 years. during that time, using mostly Lapua, I've had maybe 2 misfires such as these.

Wow 10 yrs ! My question to you . You state nothing looked odd , no protruding primers , etc . You state many changes . You say primer pockets uniformed fixed it .
Well now the questions
If nothing protruding, and you uniformed , what you think cutting or somehow the primer tool installs metal to make the primer higher ? Or you think your seating methods were off and you didn't seat properly to begin with .
2 my headspace measures come from Dave Kiffs book . It clearly shows the Ackley to be LONGER . Since you used the longer gauge to set headspace , you had excessive headspace ?
3 when you reassemble the firing pin assembly you must reset the spring tension . Since your after an easier lift , you assemble it a little on the light side ?
Given all the possibiles you had marginally long headspace with light primer strikes , not , NOT anything to do with primer pockets being worked over .
Oh , 46 yrs of just trying to learn reloading and never have I had so many changes at once ever work out .
One more thing , I'm not being negative, I trying to help a fellow reloader save money and learn .
The savage has 2 different firing pins diam , I'm sure you know that , but the point I want to make is that the head and head retaining pin are also unique and must be switched as a unit .

 

[Damon555]

I use LC brass exclusively in my 223AI.....the rifle just so happens to also be a Savage 12 with a pre-fit barrel.

The 223AI LC brass has had zero prep done to it and I've never had a problem.....something else is amiss

 

[Ggmac]

You might try measuring the base to shoulder on your new and FTF cases and your fire formed cases.
How much longer are your fired cases?

I posted the difference in headspace between the Ackley and the 223 .
The Ackley is longer , making the ops headspace LONG .
Long headspace ,coupled with maybe firing pin compression and possible hard cups or improperly seated orig /or bad primers .
A possibility not previously brought up .

 

[Ggmac]

so I take those misfired rounds home, knock the primer out and do the primer pocket, load them up, and shoot them next week with no issues.

Bad primer ! Or something else changed . I know you say light hits but the only true way to determine is to kill some primers , load , now powder or bullet and see the indent !

 

[danny]

got a new Shilen barrel in 223ai for my Savage 12 a while back. I usually use Lapua brass but, for this barrel, I bought 250 LC. The first group of 50 I fireformed was during the winter so I had plenty of time to fully prep the brass (less neck turning) which included uniforming the primer pockets with a K&M uniformer. Those 50, went off without a hitch.

The next group of 30 I did last week. I didn't bother with the primer pocket uniforming since I really never had to do that with Lapua brass. Out of the 30, I had 5 misfires which showed light strikes. Since I had just had my bolt bushed, replaced the FP spring, and added a bolt lift kit, I assumed the problem might be too light FP spring pressure or not enough protrusion. I gave my last two cartridges to the shooter next to me who, fortunately, had a 223. They both misfired. I then realized that the only difference between the first 50 and these, were not doing the primer pockets. My primer tool is one that's adjustable for feeling the primer bottom out yet I never felt anything wrong in inserting the primers in those cases and visual inspection never showed and primers proud of the case bottom.

Long story short, yesterday the five cases that misfired all fired well after uniforming the pockets. Looks like I'll have to do that on all the rest.

My K&M uniformer probably needs a new cutter since I'd have to press it in quite hard to cut to the desired depth. I saw that PMA tool had their small primer uniformer on sale and since it includes a carbide cutter, I decided to give it a try. I'm happy to say that the PMA tool works much better.

I am kind of confused, since uniforming the primer pockets, if anything, should have made them fire less reliably, and your non-uniformed brass should, if anything, have fired more reliably, and possibly even been able to slam off in a semiauto.

Danny

 

[Ggmac]

to the two respondents above...how would you explain the fact that I gave another shooter with a 223 two rounds which both misfired and showed light strikes?

BTW, the priming tool is a 21st Century that I've loaded thousands of rounds with. The primers in question were CCI 450s

another thing. When I got the bolt back after bushing I headspaced the rifle assuming some material may have been removed during that procedure.

Never , I repeat , never shoot anyone else's ammo and don't let anyone else shoot yours . Unless you don't own any possessions worth taking .
Back to well then why did they fire after uniform and reprime, you either pulled the necks up slightly when pulling the expander thru or you replaced the bad primers with good ones .
This is a long road , take notes and keep them . The case length gauge is worth the small invest. Even in plain Jane 223 , Not Ackley .

 

[CharlieNC]

I've seen and experienced misfire problems on Savages, all related to firing pin operation which can suddenly begin to deteriorate. Short protrusion, weak spring, and incorrect spring adjustment cause misfires to various degrees. For peace of mind you may want to double check these aspects since problems arouse after you worked on the bolt. Its easy to overlook spring length adjustment.

 

[Deleted old_dood]

Wow 10 yrs ! My question to you . You state nothing looked odd , no protruding primers , etc . You state many changes . You say primer pockets uniformed fixed it .
Well now the questions
If nothing protruding, and you uniformed , what you think cutting or somehow the primer tool installs metal to make the primer higher ? Or you think your seating methods were off and you didn't seat properly to begin with .
2 my headspace measures come from Dave Kiffs book . It clearly shows the Ackley to be LONGER . Since you used the longer gauge to set headspace , you had excessive headspace ?
3 when you reassemble the firing pin assembly you must reset the spring tension . Since your after an easier lift , you assemble it a little on the light side ?
Given all the possibiles you had marginally long headspace with light primer strikes , not , NOT anything to do with primer pockets being worked over .
Oh , 46 yrs of just trying to learn reloading and never have I had so many changes at once ever work out .
One more thing , I'm not being negative, I trying to help a fellow reloader save money and learn .
The savage has 2 different firing pins diam , I'm sure you know that , but the point I want to make is that the head and head retaining pin are also unique and must be switched as a unit .

I'm not taking your comments as negative and appreciate your interest in this topic. I just thought I'd do a little experiment with several unfired cases from the batch of LC I have. I butted the depth end of my

Wow 10 yrs ! My question to you . You state nothing looked odd , no protruding primers , etc . You state many changes . You say primer pockets uniformed fixed it .
Well now the questions
If nothing protruding, and you uniformed , what you think cutting or somehow the primer tool installs metal to make the primer higher ? Or you think your seating methods were off and you didn't seat properly to begin with .
2 my headspace measures come from Dave Kiffs book . It clearly shows the Ackley to be LONGER . Since you used the longer gauge to set headspace , you had excessive headspace ?
3 when you reassemble the firing pin assembly you must reset the spring tension . Since your after an easier lift , you assemble it a little on the light side ?
Given all the possibiles you had marginally long headspace with light primer strikes , not , NOT anything to do with primer pockets being worked over .
Oh , 46 yrs of just trying to learn reloading and never have I had so many changes at once ever work out .
One more thing , I'm not being negative, I trying to help a fellow reloader save money and learn .
The savage has 2 different firing pins diam , I'm sure you know that , but the point I want to make is that the head and head retaining pin are also unique and must be switched as a unit .

I don't take your replies to be negative and I appreciate your interest in this topic. I thought I'd do a little experiment with a few unfired, unmodified pieces of the LC brass I'm using. With the depth measuring rod on the end of my caliper (Mitutoyo) I measured the depth of the primer pockets with the caliper rod up against the side wall of the pocket. Then I rotated the case 180 degrees and made the same measurement. On some cases, not all, the difference was .003". I truly believe the the primer pocket depth on this lot of brass is not is not consistant. Here's a photo of the tool I'm using.

 

[danny]

I'm not taking your comments as negative and appreciate your interest in this topic. I just thought I'd do a little experiment with several unfired cases from the batch of LC I have. I butted the depth end of my

I don't take your replies to be negative and I appreciate your interest in this topic. I thought I'd do a little experiment with a few unfired, unmodified pieces of the LC brass I'm using. With the depth measuring rod on the end of my caliper (Mitutoyo) I measured the depth of the primer pockets with the caliper rod up against the side wall of the pocket. Then I rotated the case 180 degrees and made the same measurement. On some cases, not all, the difference was .003". I truly believe the the primer pocket depth on this lot of brass is not is not consistant. Here's a photo of the tool I'm using.
View attachment 1056956

My money is on the super expensive and settable for primer below flush dimension priming tool as being the fault.

Danny

 

[fyrewall]

I don't think that fussing with primer pockets caused the problem. A previous fireforming event making .223's into .223 AI occurred during the winter and 50 cases fired. Then after that some modifications were done to the bolt like bushing and new spring. During the last session of about a week ago some cases failed to fire. The FTF cases apparently were disassembled, bullets pulled, powder dumped, de-capped, primer pockets fussed with, re-primed, powder charged and finally bullets seated. These fired OK.

Apparently nothing inside the bolt occurred like disassembly and cleaning - every thing worked like firing pin sliding through hole in pin and sleeve normally. Then the funny rounds fired OK. Two different lots of ammo were fired, the 50 during the winter and then 30 recently. The last batch had problems, light strikes and FTF.

My guess is excessive head-space. Possibly when the bullets were reseated the COAL was made longer, ("uniforming the pockets") and the bullets being jammed reduced the head space and the rounds fired.

This is only a guess made from available data, I quickly read the info provided and quite possibly missed something. I also did not have the bolt in hand to check out. It would be a good idea to release the firing pin by de-cocking the bolt and then measure the firing pin protrusion with the tail end of your caliper (every hand-loader has a caliper). Improved chambers should be very slightly shorter than un improved chambers to enable a nice crush fit to enable firing without case stretching.

I don't have a .223 AI but have played around with 6mm AI, .257 AI and 6.5-06 Imp. and have had all of these chambered short for a crush fit for fire-forming.

 

[Deleted old_dood]

I don't think that fussing with primer pockets caused the problem. A previous fireforming event making .223's into .223 AI occurred during the winter and 50 cases fired. Then after that some modifications were done to the bolt like bushing and new spring. During the last session of about a week ago some cases failed to fire. The FTF cases apparently were disassembled, bullets pulled, powder dumped, de-capped, primer pockets fussed with, re-primed, powder charged and finally bullets seated. These fired OK.

Apparently nothing inside the bolt occurred like disassembly and cleaning - every thing worked like firing pin sliding through hole in pin and sleeve normally. Then the funny rounds fired OK. Two different lots of ammo were fired, the 50 during the winter and then 30 recently. The last batch had problems, light strikes and FTF.

My guess is excessive head-space. Possibly when the bullets were reseated the COAL was made longer, ("uniforming the pockets") and the bullets being jammed reduced the head space and the rounds fired.

This is only a guess made from available data, I quickly read the info provided and quite possibly missed something. I also did not have the bolt in hand to check out. It would be a good idea to release the firing pin by de-cocking the bolt and then measure the firing pin protrusion with the tail end of your caliper (every hand-loader has a caliper). Improved chambers should be very slightly shorter than un improved chambers to enable a nice crush fit to enable firing without case stretching.

I don't have a .223 AI but have played around with 6mm AI, .257 AI and 6.5-06 Imp. and have had all of these chambered short for a crush fit for fire-forming.

before I fired the bad rounds I adjusted FP protrusion during the course of changing the spring. I adjusted it to about .045". When I had 2 misfires, I readjusted to a little over .060" and maximized the compression on the spring. This made no difference. After doing the primer pockets my confidence level was such that I readjusted the protrusion back to where it was before and reduced the compression on the spring. 75 rounds fired normally with identical dimples in the primers.

 

[Ggmac]

I'm not taking your comments as negative and appreciate your interest in this topic. I just thought I'd do a little experiment with several unfired cases from the batch of LC I have. I butted the depth end of my

I don't take your replies to be negative and I appreciate your interest in this topic. I thought I'd do a little experiment with a few unfired, unmodified pieces of the LC brass I'm using. With the depth measuring rod on the end of my caliper (Mitutoyo) I measured the depth of the primer pockets with the caliper rod up against the side wall of the pocket. Then I rotated the case 180 degrees and made the same measurement. On some cases, not all, the difference was .003". I truly believe the the primer pocket depth on this lot of brass is not is not consistant. Here's a photo of the tool I'm using.
View attachment 1056956

I see and understand your argument but , .003 is the thickness ( about ) of the human hair . Your primers have 2 or 3 anvils . Even if by chance the anvil is mated to this slight difference, your firing pin protrusion should have made that a non issue.
Not all new brass has its base 90 deg to its center which could skew the way your measuring , but again your firing pin should have made it go boom . Especially since it would have made it slightly .003 nearer the bolt face . If your argument is that the .003 somehow cushioned the blow , you would have a harder hit or imprint .
The only way to see if your getting marginal hits is to kill a primer , seat as normal in a sized empty case and fire it . Measure or examine your indent .
A fired case usually will show a good hit even if it's getting a light one . Once it goes bang ,the pressure will push it back against bolt face and imprint the primer since the firing pin is still extended till its retracted by lifting the bolt .

 

[Ggmac]

before I fired the bad rounds I adjusted FP protrusion during the course of changing the spring. I adjusted it to about .045". When I had 2 misfires, I readjusted to a little over .060" and maximized the compression on the spring. This made no difference. After doing the primer pockets my confidence level was such that I readjusted the protrusion back to where it was before and reduced the compression on the spring. 75 rounds fired normally with identical dimples in the primers.

Read my previous post on reading firing pin indents and see if I explained it correctly or explained it so it could be understood .
Any time it goes bang it will look like a great hit . The ONLY way to tell is to kill the primer and check after it has not ignited .
Usually I have a better chance of explaining when I can illustrate or have hands on parts to show why .
This is a very important part of understanding the benefits and shortcomings of the completely adjustable firing pin assembly of the savage .
Pm me if you want to discuss privately

 

[Deleted old_dood]

Read my previous post on reading firing pin indents and see if I explained it correctly or explained it so it could be understood .
Any time it goes bang it will look like a great hit . The ONLY way to tell is to kill the primer and check after it has not ignited .
Usually I have a better chance of explaining when I can illustrate or have hands on parts to show why .
This is a very important part of understanding the benefits and shortcomings of the completely adjustable firing pin assembly of the savage .
Pm me if you want to discuss privately

how do you kill a primer? I'd read that soaking in oil would work.