This was a first...

[fkimble@charter.net]

I've seen this on 9mm and 223 range pickup that had gotten wet, rained on. So now I immediately take range pickup home, wash it and deprime before drying in a dehydrator before putting it on the shelf for later use.


Frank

 

[Doom]

Uh, Winchester? Seems W LR primers show up a lot with issues.

I was initially decapping with RCBS die set and switched to a LEE Universal one with the same results.

Can't see decapping with FLS die fitting my scenario. I will say that wet tumbling is one aspect of case cleaning that I would not use. It has the potential to create issues since there are unknown minerals in the water unless you use demineralized water which is probably not a good idea as it will leach the zinc from the brass. .

 

[K22]

Nope, it was standard loads with Winchester LR primers, NOS JHP, 43 grain H110, no flat primers and bullet seated with competition die to 1.600 COL.

Surely you didn't mean "43 grains of H110."

Never seen this before and I have loaded well over a combined 100,000 rounds of 38, 357, and 44 magnum pistol cartridges.

While I never used wet tumbling and know nothing about it, that would be the first element I would suspect. I try to keep water away from my reloads and firearms.

 

[ebb]

I had an issue with this some years back, i asked about it on the net at one of the forums and the guys called it a ringer if I remember correctly. Mine were for sure range pickups that had been wet on the ground a couple of times. Yours have not been wet , but I suspect they were struck too hard/ too deep when the caps were stamped. I was trying to get a bunch of like head stamped win brass and wanted to have a full 200 so I dug the primers out with a pic.

 

[Cecil S.]

I deprime before I wet tumble with SS pins. Just saying.

 

[bozo699]

I also deprime before I wet tumble with steel pins …… oh wait I like my brass I don’t do that I use dry media if I clean at all.
Wayne

 

[The German]

Surely you didn't mean "43 grains of H110."

Never seen this before and I have loaded well over a combined 100,000 rounds of 38, 357, and 44 magnum pistol cartridges.

While I never used wet tumbling and know nothing about it, that would be the first element I would suspect. I try to keep water away from my reloads and firearms.

Oops - no, that would not even fit it was 23 grain...

Also have an idea of what might have happened. I did not deprime before cleaning them and after I removed the remainders from the primer pocket, it looked like some dirt may have gotten between the primer and the pocket sides, maybe that made them stuck - but just a wild guess....

 

[The German]

I deprime before I wet tumble with SS pins. Just saying.

Yes, agree - that is what I normally do - not sure, why I did it differently this time. Well, that will not happen again...

 

[The German]

43 grains of H110?…..you better check the frame on your revolver….. that’s about 19 or 20 grains over max load on a 240 jhp
Wayne

Yes, it was mistyped....23 grains - one of the things I did in the last 25 years of reloading is staying below published max with every recipe, there is (at least in my books) nothing to gain with gambling here...

 

[bozo699]

Yes, it was mistyped....23 grains - one of the things I did in the last 25 years of reloading is staying below published max with every recipe, there is (at least in my books) nothing to gain with gambling here...

I knew it was a typo 43 wouldn’t fit, just goofing with ya.
Wayne

 

[Webster]

First time I had this happen in 20+ years of reloading.

I started reloading some .44 mag today and realized that on some shells, the decaping pin simply pushed off the top of the primer and the rest got stuck - this happened to about 20 out of 300 shells. No idea why, they all were reloaded with the same load/bullet in a medium range, so there should have been no over-pressure causing this. I had them all wet tumbled with steel pins and let them air dry, but that was the same process for all of them as well...

Thoughts?

View attachment 1589212

Might have sommething to do with air drying and not getting all of the water/moisture out. I dry rifle cartridges in the kitchen oven at 190F for hours. When you get the damaged primer out does there look like any corrosion took place?

ADDED LATER:
After I tumble rifle cartridges I shake each one very hard by hand. A lot of water comes out even after just tilting them to drain. Just fo try something, after shaking each case hard I decided to put the straw of a dust off can in each case and use compressed air to see if any additional water remained. I was shocked at how much water came out of some cases after shakiing them hard by hand. So now I alway put them in the kitchen oven for a couple hours at 190F. After a couple hours baking I turn the oven off and let them cool to room temp over nite. 200F worked good but the cases were oxidized a little darker. Pistol cases are smaller but I wouldn't trust air drying them. There is no way to know how many hours it takes for all the moisture to air dry off. Each case has a different amount of water in it after shaking them.

The corner of the brass primer cup is highly stressed because of the sharp bend. You may get stress corrosion there caused by exposure to chemicals from the burned power and primer and moisture? The primer cup area is probably the area that traps the most water and takes the longest to dry. I think the primer cups are Ni plated for protection. The primer cup is made of 2 dissimilar metals plated together. Whatever happened the cups failed for some reason at the bent corner. Something made it fail at the sharp bend. Corrosion seems to be the most likely???

 

[searcher]

I'd guess the residual water was the problem, or a contributing problem as well. Had the primers been faulty (ie; too thin, etc.,), that would have likely resulted in a pierced primer when fired. The water likely allowed corrosion to take place between the primer and the brass, creating a cold weld between the primer and the brass. That the brass sat for a long period of time before being reloaded could reinforce that theory. If you still have some of those primers and batch of brass that were not yet loaded, I'd seat some, pop them and see how they do being ejected when sizing. I'd guess they pop right out.

 

[1shot]

Bottom line is, if you can get the remaining piece of the primer out, the brass should be fine.

Lloyd

 

[The German]

Bottom line is, if you can get the remaining piece of the primer out, the brass should be fine.

Lloyd

Agree - was able to get half of them removed with a little bit (more) of force, the other half went into the bin... Cleaned the primer pockets and new primers seat without any issues.

 

[DiffEQ]

Primer weld. I’ve seen a few. Maybe 10-15 times in my lifetime.

Nope, they have been sitting in the dry basement for half a year.

I've had this happen a few times, which makes it at least three times for me to remember. Like @joshb, I chalked it up to primer weld. I toss 'em.
The common denominator is time between shooting and processing the cases. I have enough brass that I clean and polish about two days per year, where I'll do thousands across as much as ten different cartridges.

 

[MikeT124]

To the OP, in post #9 you wrote you use Win LR primers, why use rifle primers in a hand gun case? I seem to recall that large rifle primers are longer than large pistol primers. I'll have to go through my documentation on primers to confirm that statement, but if it's true you may be squashing the primer into the case and causing extra force on the sides of the primer. Just a thought.

Mike

 

[The German]

To the OP, in post #9 you wrote you use Win LR primers, why use rifle primers in a hand gun case? I seem to recall that large rifle primers are longer than large pistol primers. I'll have to go through my documentation on primers to confirm that statement, but if it's true you may be squashing the primer into the case and causing extra force on the sides of the primer. Just a thought.

Mike

It was a double mistake - I used LP and 23 grains... When I posted, I just got back from reloading some 500 S&W mag that used LRM and 43 grains H110... old brain starts to act up :-(

 

[bozo699]

It was a double mistake - I used LP and 23 grains... When I posted, I just got back from reloading some 500 S&W mag that used LRM and 43 grains H110... old brain starts to act up :-(

That doesn’t sound fun …..Wow!..my hats off to ya sir.
Wayne

 

[Webster]

I'd guess the residual water was the problem, or a contributing problem as well. Had the primers been faulty (ie; too thin, etc.,), that would have likely resulted in a pierced primer when fired. The water likely allowed corrosion to take place between the primer and the brass, creating a cold weld between the primer and the brass. That the brass sat for a long period of time before being reloaded could reinforce that theory. If you still have some of those primers and batch of brass that were not yet loaded, I'd seat some, pop them and see how they do being ejected when sizing. I'd guess they pop right out.

I doubt that primer cups are occasionaly made too thin. We don't know who Ni plates the cups. I would guess they are Ni plated after they are punched from long sheets of brass. It should be easy to hold the brass sheets to thickness tolerance. I think the charts put up on this website give thickness tolerances about +/- 0.002".

 

[searcher]

I doubt that primer cups are occasionaly made too thin. We don't know who Ni plates the cups. I would guess they are Ni plated after they are punched from long sheets of brass. It should be easy to hold the brass sheets to thickness tolerance. I think the charts put up on this website give thickness tolerances about +/- 0.002".

I agree. While there may be occasional bad lots of primers in some respects - I think how they are stored or used in conjunction with reloading practices create far more problems for shooters. Nothing to back that up - just seeing issues as to how folks do things that create problems leads me to believe this. In 50+ years, I have never had (that I recognized as) a truly bad batch of primers. Then again, maybe I did and wasn't aware it was the problem.....