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This was a first...

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?

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I have had this happen on a few pistol cartridges and what I credited it to was getting into a groove when using a decaying die and hitting them pretty hard. Slowed down and no more issues. I don't remember if was 9mm or 45 ACP.
 
Serious question though ?
Do you seal them in at all with anything like nail polish ?
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.

Edit: Yes, I mistyped - that recipe is with 23 grains of H110 :) ....and LP primers, not LR...
 
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I have had this happen on a few pistol cartridges and what I credited it to was getting into a groove when using a decaying die and hitting them pretty hard. Slowed down and no more issues. I don't remember if was 9mm or 45 ACP.
I was initially decapping with RCBS die set and switched to a LEE Universal one with the same results.
 
There was still some moisture in some of them, hydraulic pressure the weak spot in the primer let lose and pin pushed the material to the side????
 
Primer weld. I’ve seen a few. Maybe 10-15 times in my lifetime.
Good point although never seen it.
But if you consider we can push sealed and swaged primers outta military cases without issue it might seem the OP has another issue, maybe seating primers too firmly as Doom has mentioned.
 
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.
I had 20 incidents on 300 cases of this on factory loaded Winchester .45ACP in a lot of bulk brass from the South Carolina law enforcement training facility a couple years ago.

It appeared as though the cases that retained the primer skirt had been in the weather since there was some light corrosion visible between the skirt and case.
 
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I suspect one of two possible scenarios.

One is the primer cup reacted with the wet tumble solution and that chemical attack tends to go to the "high energy" places first, so the bend at the bottom of the cup radius is the hardest place and likely to react first. Depending on the time lag of shooting, to cleaning, to decapping, the wet tumble opens to the door for ionic reactions.

Another scenario is a primer cup radius that is slightly too hard, and subsequent to firing becomes just weak enough that there is no margin when something like wet tumble makes an addition bond between the case and the primer. So, not so hard that it leaks during firing, but just hard enough that there is little or no margin for anything else.

How long was it between wet tumble and decapping?

What brand of primers? What did you use to wet tumble?
 

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