Hello. I have 4000 remington 7 and 1/2 small rifle primers that were stored in a garage for 5 to 10 years. I was going to turn them into our hazardous waste disposal unit here in town but with the primers now going to $300+ for 1000, I am rethinking my decision. They look real good but I am thinking I need to test several from each box to see if they are still dependable. We have all had some bad ammo that we have to pull the bullets and decap the primers (at least I do). I routinely pull these bullets and use the powder as lawn fertilizer with a lot of water and place the primers back in primer trays in a primer box conspicously marked "BAD PRIMERS, In the evening on July 4th and New Years Eve i take these primers out back and detonate them with a hammer (of course I have hearing and eye protection). I could wait until July 4th to test these primers in that manner but I will probably run out of primers before then. Is there any way to test these primers? I guess I could go to the range with primed cases (no powder or bullets) and fire them in my AR15. Is that safe? Any suggestions? Thank You for your help!
How would I test an old lot of primers?
- Thread starter pasote
- Start date
I would load some from each tray in brass and pop them off in a rifle. It should be safe and tell you what you need to know. I recently tried some that where 30 plus years old. Have no idea where I got them, but they fired fine. Things last a long time if stored in the dry. I wouldn't get rid of them until I tried them in days like these.
I have used a lot (thousands) of primers older than I. I have only once found a batch, mid-70s CCI LRP, that FtF about 1/8. They detonate under flame just fine, so whatever happened isn't totally debilitating. . . but really annoying.
I would put them in a climate controlled low humidity environment for a few weeks then test them.
thank you. no they were in the garage all the time
Thank You. they were in the garage all the time.
lol!
i will do that thank you!
Thank you. I will fire a couple of primed cases with no powder or bullets and that should tell me what i need to know.
I don't think the powder works as fertilizer. It isn't water soluble.
Coyotefurharvester
Silver $$ Contributor
Very low odds of having ANY bad primers in 4 bricks of primers.
must be an old wives tale that i have always believed. come to think of it, powder is nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose that would probably be dissolvable in alcohol but i would not do that.
sounds like there is a story there
well, i hope not but these are at least 20 years old. they have been in temperature controlled dry environment for the last 10 years. I had placed these aside and I was ordering and using new primers until this primer drought hit. i havent been able to get primers for about a year now, so i used up my reserve of remington primers. I do have some cci 400 primers but i dont like them as well. They are softer than the remingtons and dont seat that well in my brass. I hope these older primers will be ok.
I have been using some mid eighties Rem 9 1/2’s that we’re stored in an old tin roofed non insulated shop that had 100 degree temp swings. They work just fine.
Put them in new packaging and sell them on GB......seriously they should be fine. Its actually quite hard to kill a primer
I'm shooting primers from the 70s without any issues and to the contrary, excellent accuracy. They're RWS Large Rifle primers. I've got CCI 400 I'm shooting that are from the 80s too, also excellent.
Your primers are almost certainly fine and I wouldn't waste time or resources firing off a bunch of them without powder or bullets checking for faults. If you're wanting to be conservative, load up a couple rounds to go shoot. If they work, then the bricks are fine.
Your primers are almost certainly fine and I wouldn't waste time or resources firing off a bunch of them without powder or bullets checking for faults. If you're wanting to be conservative, load up a couple rounds to go shoot. If they work, then the bricks are fine.
Jager
Gold $$ Contributor
Your primers are very likely entirely fine. As mentioned above, many of us are happily using powder and primers that are decades old.
Beyond simply making sure they go bang - which, really, isn't much of a test - you could evaluate them in a more serious way by loading a small number of rounds using a load from your records that you're familiar with. If that batch performs as expected, you have your answer.
Beyond simply making sure they go bang - which, really, isn't much of a test - you could evaluate them in a more serious way by loading a small number of rounds using a load from your records that you're familiar with. If that batch performs as expected, you have your answer.
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