Primers, how old is too old

[Diggs223]

Don't remember exactly, but I believe a member at the club was cleaning house thats where I got them. The shop they came from been closed for about 20yrs thy are marked $6 thousand. Went to use some saw this,

 

[Spook]

you could always send them to me for testing?
I'll let you know if they are safe to use

 

[Gappmast]

Good chance they will still work. Give them a try and report back

 

[Mark M.]

I dont believe it's a matter of age, but in how they been stored (Dry cool environment is preferred)

 

[Joe Salt]

I have thousands that go back into the 60's with $11.00 on the box of a thousand. If I ever get to shoot again I'll let you know how they work.

Joe Salt

 

[Diggs223]

storage would be my guess, but the box is in good shape . I have others just about that old, my storage has always been good. odd that the paper between anvil and compound looks like it deteriorated.

 

[243winxb]

These old small pistol primers fired fine in my 357 mag , a few years ago. NOTE - The wood trays.

During the primer shortage, i was complaining about no primers available or 2400 powder at my morning clubs BS session

Next morning, an old guy (older then my 72 years, at the time) hands me 200 primers and 1 pound of 2400. In the old metal tin. Price looks like $2.35

All worked well when loaded and fired. Very hard to kill primers.

 

[alchemist]

I have used primers that were at least 20 years old with no problems.

 

[JimPag]

I use Remington 6&1/2 primers from the 60's to FF cases. They work fine.

 

[Laurie]

I tried out a 100-ct sleeve of 'Kynoch' brand primers in 308 Win back in 2014/15 that a friend gave me. The sleeve was battered and scruffy, not suggestive of loving storage! These primers had to date from the early 1980s at the latest, more likely the 70s or earlier. I later learned Kynoch never made primers and these were rebranded Norma components. At the same time, I included very much younger Norma 'Superflash' examples in the test which would have then been maybe 10, 12 years old and stored in very good conditions.

As can be seen from the chronograph results, there was no appreciable difference between their performance in average MV or ES/SD despite the age difference (also confirming my information that they were one and the same model).

http://www.targetshooter.co.uk/?p=1471

 

[JSH]

I was gifted a goodly amount of Remington 71/2 primers.
They were priced $5-6 per thousand. I won’t use them for match work, but they have been put to use in varmint cartridges with zero issues.

 

[wkdickinson]

I bought 1,000 Remington 9 1/2's when I first started shooting high-power back in the late 1980's. I quickly moved to Federal 210M's (the prevailing wisdom back then). I still have a bunch of those 9 1/2's and I use them for hunting rifles - they still work great.

 

[Twicepop]

A couple of summers back I had an incident (another story) where I set off a primer that was dated to 1927 or 1928. It totally amazed (more like stunned) the power this thing still had.

 

[Evan]

I have some RWS large rifle primers from the early 70s. My grandpa's 300 Savage shoots the tightest with them. Better than newer vintages of primers by a noticeable amount. I will say that the only time I've not had a primer go bang is when something was wrong with the rifle.

 

[Iowa Fox]

Some of my oldest primers that I purchased go back to the mid to early sixtys. They work just fine and I have a hunch they will perform well much long than we think. A guy really should run them thru the chrony to see what they do for sure

 

[mikeinct]

I gave a good buddy of mine a box of "Alcan" SRP from the 1960's. He used over 900 of them to let the young guys blaze away w his AR. That was in 2012.. I had them for thirty years, they were over 40 years old. Not one failure to fire. mikeinct

 

[Burnt Powder]

Anything less than 40 years old is still new in primers and powder! It’s not like a tomato that gets rotten in a few weeks. I’m still shooting powder made in the ‘40s, WWII surplus 4831. Primers I know I bought in the ‘60s.

 

[edwardware]

I'm halfway through a box of Rem 1 1/2 SPP of about that vintage. No complaints yet.

 

[SBS]

If accuracy is important, a chronograph will tell you if they are still good. While a primer may still detonate, the brisance may be too variable. I once had a batch of CCI small BR primers that were about 10 yrs. old (not stored in a cool dry environment) and they produced velocity spreads of around 150-200 FPS. Not suspecting this, I had accuracy so poor out of a BR rifle that I rebedded it, tried different powders and bullets; just gave up for awhile. A year or so later, reading NRA minutes of a panel discussion of accuracy problems by Camp Perry HP competitors tipped me off that this may be the problem. Purchased new primers, used my original load and problem solved. Bought an Oehler chrono shortly thereafter, loaded some of the old primers again and saw this huge velocity spread. I still use a lot of older primers I pick up here and there for fire forming purposes (and they all go bang), but I do use fairly fresh primers anything serious.

 

[NorCalMikie]

Had a shooting Buddy die and I chose to clean out his shooting gear/supplies for his wife. Stashed his rifles for a later date. I did get the $$$ I wanted out of them and when I put the $$$ in his wife's hand, she damn near had a heart attack. I had told her ahead of time "I won't be giving any of them away".

On the shelf next to a couple of cardboard powder containers that had fallen apart from age, was a stash of Remington LR primers. EVERY one of them went BANG in my M1A. My guess? At LEAST, 20+ years old. The OLD powder? Made good fertilizer.