Expected Shelf life of primers

[Thud]

Till the box is empty

 

[snert]

I'm shooting 1943 carbine rounds, no issues.

I have cartons of FGM that cost $20, if that tells ya much

 

[Buttstock-TX]

As others have mentioned it is hard to say how long if stored in dry conditions at stable normal room temperature. One interesting thing I learned from a gunsmith friend who he was given a large quantity of water damaged primers is he dried them out slowly on an upper shelf in the shop and went on to load and shoot them. He commented they are made wet, so they can be dried again....

 

[CT10ring]

i've been shooting 10 year old CCI BR primers (and various powders) with great results. Maybe if I lived in a hot, humid climate - a small refrigerator for storage?

 

[dave@aDave]

Remember when empty brass with primers installed was sold?
Wonder how long some of that sat on a shelf in a gun store with no A/C and a wood stove for heat.

 

[Walt Krafft]

I asked an engineer in a primer plant how to make primer mix inert. His answer "you can't". Water may corrode the metal parts, Oil may slow it down, but it will not be inert.

 

[ebb]

I was looking to buy small pistol primers a few years back and a guy at the gun show had some on the table. I asked and he said $50i asked "for both boxes?" he says "for all of them." so I give him $50 and he bags up 17000 primers and I walk out the door confused. When i get home the boxes look rough and I open some up and they have moisture inside. I take out all 170 trays and put them in a dehydrator along with the packaging. after about 2 hours the packages are dry and crisp, so I reassemble them. I gave Ggmac 2 boxes and my frind in Tennessee and a box to a friend that I used to shoot with and loaded a bunch myself. No one has ever told me they didn't fire and none of mine have misfired. At BR Central a shooter loaded 10 cases with primers only set 5 in the window sill and put 5 in a bucket of water and after 30 days loaded and fired them and he claimed the SD numbers were single digit. The current compound was designed to not have issues with moisture, the one thing I don't like is it has lead.

 

[Jester560]

I recently bought 30k spp from an estate sale. All are from the 70s and 80s. I have shot about 5k of them with not a single failure.

 

[Evan]

They still work 50 years later. In fact my RPR prefers them to Feds or CCI.

 

[NZ_Fclass]

I'm down to RWS with an eagle and a swastika stamped on them. Should set the cordite off.

 

[ebb]

The RWS stuff has the best reputation of anything on the market. Some of the old Pennsylvania 1000yd guys said they liked the brass over Lapua.

 

[expiper]

A coworker of mine had a fire in his garage in the 60s. These primers were involved in the fire when a car that he was working on call on fire several pounds of gunpowder ignited and blew the door off of the storage area that he had his components in the heat from the flash fire of the gunpowder melted, several of the plastic trays that the primers were stored in, they were original containers. This was a box of 1000 primers the front end of the box that was sticking out on the shelf got hit with more heat than the back end of the box that was near the wall and away from the fire, the primers in the back of the box, and the and the paper boxes that they were stored in seemed unaffected, but the ones in the front or singed and smoky and the trees as you see in the photo here were melted, and some of the primers were immersed into the plastic, and I had to pry them out with a small screwdriver before I could use them to load Are use most of the ones that look the worst for fire forming loads and the ones that did not look so bad are used for varmint and planking rounds. These were shot in 22 to 5243 to 70 and 30 Ott six cartridges and they were zero fail to fire or any kind of a spluttering load no malfunctions whatsoever the primers were manufactured in the 1950s fire occurred in the 1960s. My friend gave me these around the year 2000 along with a reloading press and several thousand bullets that were still smoky and dingy from the fire that they were exposed to also ran the bullets through corn called media in my Tumblr, and they shine like new I was somewhat concerned about their appearance, and their viability of the priming compound there were 900+ primers in the box and I used all but two or three of them with no problems. I forgot to add that when I brought them home at first, I put them in to 1 gallon, freezer bags, storage bags and store them out in my lawnmower shed in the yard with no heat or air conditioning for two years, and then I began a project involving performing and thought I would try those primers and see if they work, and they certainly did and I used several them in the hunting loads as I stated earlier with no failures

 

[nilebartram]

I have primers that I bought in the 80's still works. One time I tried to see if I could render them to be destroyed. Put them in soapy water for one month. Dried them out and they still went pop!

 

[NZ_Fclass]

I have primers that I bought in the 80's still works. One time I tried to see if I could render them to be destroyed. Put them in soapy water for one month. Dried them out and they still went pop!

Careful - someone will bring out a $1000 "primer washer system" and there will be articles all over the web on why we need to clean primers.