Primers ,,,Hard to KILL,,,

[expiper]

there is a thread on here with someone worried about disposing of one (1) live primer ,,,and there have been many posting on there giving advice on how to do it !!!....all this hullabaloo reminds me of an account I had with primers a few yrs ago,,,,,,(once upon a time) a man that I worked with had his reloading components stored in a wooden cabinent according to most recommendation ....I dont know how ,but somehow the powder stored in this cabinet caught fire and ignited !!!!,,,it burned quickly as we all have seen it burn when disposed of properly,,,the fire singed the bullets in the boxes and blacked most of them,,,,there was a brick (1000) of large rifle primers in there also,,,the fire was so hot and so quick that it melted some of the plastic trays that the primers were in (trays of 100 primers) to the point that they could not be pryed out of the gob of plastic,,,,,some could be removed from other boxes of 100 and some on the other end of the brick ,,away from the fire were practicall un blemished ,,,even the paper slip tops were intact,,,,he kept these primers for probably 20 years and showed them to many friends,,,,one day he asked me if I wanted them,,,I said yes ,,I would like to examine them further,,,,welll,,,,,I took them home and looked at them and decided to put them in a one gallon freezer baggie and put them out in a lean to shed on the farm,,,the rain and snow blew in ther on them for three years before I stumbled upon them (I forgot that I had them) and once again my curiosity got my wheels turning,,,I opend the boxes again and pryed the most of them loose from the melted plastic and kept the wort of them seperat from the ones that looked un-damaged,,,,some of the cups were singed from the fire ,,,I used these first,,,I was shooting two wildcat ctgs at that time that required fire forming of the brass,,,,I used these worse ones first and eventually used them ALL (there were about 200 that were totally imbedded in the plastic and could not be used) to fire form my ctgs. !!...NOT ONE of them failed to fire,,,,20 years after going thru the fire and three years laying out in the elements (in a freezer bag) ,,,they still worked,,,,,Roger

 

[Dusty Stevens]

They are indestructable til you remove the anvil

 

['Freak]

Once upon a time, well before there was an infernal.net, I thought best I be rid of what’s left of several one pound cans of smokeless and a thousand plus assorted primers, all having been stored for too long in what often times was a harsh environment. Spread across the bottom of a HD metal oil change catch pan, I covered the primers in ‘bout an inch of oil rich weed-eater gas. Then went on about me chores, one of which was spreading the smokeless and covering it with soil, having read that it made a decent enough fertilizer.

Given about an hour of soak time I figgered surely those primers got to be dead, but what to do with that already gone stale now also contaminated weed-eater gas? I’d intended to bury the dead primers but didn’t want to dump weed-eater gas along with the dead primers all into the same shallow grave. So, I figgers why not light it and burn off the fuel leaving behind only the dead primer bodies.

All went well right up until the fuel level burned off low enough for it to expose the supposedly DOA primers to the oxygen in the atmosphere, at which point it became most obvious that those primers were very much still alive. I had to wait awhile before tending to the numerous subsequent small fires until the barrage of a thousand plus tiny missiles stopped bouncing off me cracker box’s windows and walls, raining down on the roof, and punching dents with numerous perforating the heavy gauge metal of what had been a decent oil change catch pan. No intact primers remained in the pan; some were on the ground nearby, most made bang and launched into low orbit.

 

[bsekf]

50 years ago when I was first starting to reload and was using an CH, C-press with the primer arm. Had lubed the cases and not washed my hands, almost every primer I touched was contaminated and didn't fire. I pulled about 100 bullets with an inertia bullet puller and learned a valuable lesson.

But....Murphy's Law...... about the time you think you have killed all the primers ..... you get the surprise of your life!

Bill

 

[bobm]

OleFreak, that was a hilarious read. Wished I could have been there.

bsekf....most case lubes I am familiar with such as RCBS lube-2 are non toxic and water soluble. The only caution statement on the bottle says "too much lube may destroy powder and primers". MAY. With today's variety of priming tools there is little chance of primers coming in contact with contaminating substances.