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CCI Primer Duds?
So, I’d been having some light strikes issues using my Lee Pro 4000. Tightened the shell plate, no more problems…until…
I’ve had a few rounds that will just not ignite. I had to use SRP because that’s all I could get. No matter how many times I loaded that round back in to the firearm it would not ignite the primer. I put it into other pistols as well just to see, and no ignition. (I run a Glock 34 with Timney Trigger, Black Yikes Connector, 4lb Striker Spring, Extended Titanium Striker, Light Plunger Spring…ate the SRP primers with no issue.)
I assumed the primer wasn’t fully seated and expected ignition on a restrike. Could I just have a few dud primers? I don’t clean the primer pockets, so maybe I need to? Any ideas?
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5 Replies
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Normally a primer failing is due to it not being fully seated. If a primer is proud of the pocket (not fully bottomed out in the pocket) the first strike pushes it into the primer pocket.
The industry accepted rate for bad primers is somewhere between one and ten per million. I can’t find the exact rate, today. Back in the 1960s we’d sometimes get a sleeve of primers that had the anvils loose in the package. That wasn’t fun.What can cause more than acceptable failures is mis-handling during shipping or storage. Mis-handling, dropping, tossing the box to another truck or other bad handling can crack some of the primer pellets. Those will sometime crumple and can even fall out during the reload process.
Humidity and moisture don’t usually matter. You can soak primers in water, then dry them out and they will still fire fine. Primer compound is loaded or charged, while it’s wet, by a person standing in water.
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How does the indent look where the striker hit it? The rifle primers are thicker and do require a heavier strike to ignite than standard pistol primers. Some brands are also different in their tolerances so CCI might have a thicker base than another brand.
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If you wet tumble with primers in and don’t deprime shortly afterwards you stand a good chance of seizing the fired primer in the case. When you actually deprime the case a likely outcome is punching the face out of or out of the fired primer, leaving the circle wall of the primer in the primer hole of the case. It’s OK to fish out one here and there. But it’s tedious if you got several. If you don’t catch it and try to seat a new primer on top of the remaining wall of the fired primer you crush the new primer and normally lock up the cartridge and shell holder inthe single stage press. It’s considerably worse in a progressive press. Interrupted process on a progressive is where big drama happens if you aren’t careful. When buying bulk brass, I asked to always have brass sent to me uncleaned. I hate punching out corrosion bound primers. Also use a universal decapping die for deprimming dirty brass. The scratches on brass and dies just isn’t worth not spending 30 bucks on a universal decapper.
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I’ve had duds before, it happens.
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How do you clean your brass?
