Failed Primer

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Failed Primer

Post by Baldrick314 » 02 Mar 2014, 7:37 pm

Yesterday I took my .22-250 to the range to check it's zero and one of my handloads failed to go bang.

After waiting a minute or so I opened the bolt and had a look. The primer had a perfect firing pin mark but I had heard no bang whatsoever when I pulled the trigger. Today I pulled the bullet apart to have a look, no burnt powder so I think the primer was completely inert.

It was a federal large rifle primer from a box I'd bought within the last 18 months so hardly very old.

Has anyone had a primer fail to ignite before and if so any idea what could possibly be the cause?
.177, .22lr, .22-250R, 2x .308W, .30-30W, 7.62x54r, 8x56r, 9x19, .357 Mag, 12GA
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Monty » 02 Mar 2014, 8:43 pm

Only once.

In my case it was due to what I guess was a failure in manufacturing which has caused the internals of the primer to be loose.

It was basically a little pocket of explosive rolling around in a metal tin (the primer).
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Bills Shed » 03 Mar 2014, 6:21 am

Sorry no, I have not come across this before.
I think it would have put a bit of doubt in your mind until you found the culprit.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Apollo » 03 Mar 2014, 7:53 am

Baldrick314 wrote:Has anyone had a primer fail to ignite before and if so any idea what could possibly be the cause?


Yes, several Remington 7 1/2's in a brand new Sako 85 .223R. I was lucky having another .223R rifle and most went off in that rifle so I investigated further and found the new bolt had a huge amount of grease and heavy oil inside around the firing pin. Cleaned out and coated with a lite gun oil. Problem never happened again.

Did you try and fire the cartridge a second time, sometimes they will fire unless the primer mix has been cracked and/or anvil squashed.

The most common reason a primer fails is that it hasn't been seated fully in the pocket. This could be that the pocket wasn't fully cleaned and some junk stopped it from sitting on the bottom of the primer pocket. Very unlikely to be a manufacturing fault but perhaps the anvil became damaged from some other means.

Contamination is unlikely as the primer substrate is covered with a foil seal to protect it against contamination.

If it was happening more than once I would suspect the firing pin strike being lite and clean the internals of the bolt / firing pin or that something is a miss with the primer seating routine. Hand primer tools are very handy in that you can feel much better the primer being seated fully home.

I don't use a press to seat primers but if one does it is very easy to squash a primer, especially the primer anvil and that will stop it from functioning correctly. If the primer cup surface looks marked or slightly flattened I would suspect it has been damaged in the seating process and the method needs correcting.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Norton » 03 Mar 2014, 9:14 am

Apollo wrote:Did you try and fire the cartridge a second time, sometimes they will fire unless the primer mix has been cracked and/or anvil squashed.


That's all I've done in the past.

Had 2 or 3 not fire. Waited for a minute, removed and inspected, fired again and they worked fine the second time.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Baldrick314 » 03 Mar 2014, 11:37 am

Apollo wrote:Did you try and fire the cartridge a second time, sometimes they will fire unless the primer mix has been cracked and/or anvil squashed.


I didn't try to fire it again cos I had other ammunition with me. I doubt it was badly seated, I use a hand seater and I'm very meticulous with my handloads.

I had stripped the bolt and cleaned and oiled it last time I used this rifle so I don't think there'd be a problem in that regard but I'll check when I get home tonight.

Thanks for the advice guys but hopefully it was just a one off dud primer
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Bark » 03 Mar 2014, 2:23 pm

I've only had it happen once and also just fired it again.

There was a firing pin strike mark but only about half the normal depth. Just not enough of a tap to set it off or a slightly insensitive primers I guess.

All else looked well though so cycled it again and it shot no problem.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Monty » 03 Mar 2014, 2:35 pm

Bark,

That's more likely a temporary issue with your bolt TBH.

Bit of grit or something that caused it to stop prematurely. Probably just worked itself out in the misfire before returning to normal operation.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Guliver » 03 Mar 2014, 6:46 pm

Bark wrote:There was a firing pin strike mark but only about half the normal depth. Just not enough of a tap to set it off or a slightly insensitive primers I guess..

The initial strike is not as deep as you see ejected from the gun, the majority of the depth is caused by recoil.

I've have had .22 ammo fail to fire but when reinserted in the magazine and the firing pin strike a different spot bang no problems, there can be dead spots on rim fire cartridges, I go through about 100 rounds a week and have had three fail to fire this year, so it's not too common.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by teekay0 » 03 Mar 2014, 6:50 pm

I get at least one in every 1000 CCI #200 , no big deal
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Gregg » 04 Mar 2014, 10:48 am

Yeah, no big deal at all.

If you get a misfire just give it 30 seconds in case of hangfire. After that give it another try.

If still no luck you've got a dud to dispose of.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Col » 16 Oct 2017, 11:51 am

I know this is an old topic. However I have recently had problems with Remington 9 1/2 primers in my T3 .243. I have been reloading for over 10 years (all 243) and never had a problem/misfire before now.
I loaded up 150 rounds with the usual load out of this batch and have had 5 "no bang" moments even after recocking and pulling trigger again. There is plenty of indentation on the primer (I will post photos of primer later). I have also had 3 hangfires (click-bang), which really makes me unhappy, doesnt help the accuracy.

Thinking of throwing the last 200 primers of this box out if they are going to play up.

Is anyone have this problem at the moment?

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Re: Failed Primer

Post by bladeracer » 16 Oct 2017, 1:26 pm

Col wrote:I know this is an old topic. However I have recently had problems with Remington 9 1/2 primers in my T3 .243. I have been reloading for over 10 years (all 243) and never had a problem/misfire before now.
I loaded up 150 rounds with the usual load out of this batch and have had 5 "no bang" moments even after recocking and pulling trigger again. There is plenty of indentation on the primer (I will post photos of primer later). I have also had 3 hangfires (click-bang), which really makes me unhappy, doesnt help the accuracy.

Thinking of throwing the last 200 primers of this box out if they are going to play up.

Is anyone have this problem at the moment?

Col


Probably coincidence but I had my first 9-1/2 Magnum primer failure on Friday, hit it a half-dozen times at different angles.
No.4 Rifle so definitely not a light strike.
I haven't disassembled it yet but I want to make sure the anvil didn't fall out during seating.
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Rikta » 16 Oct 2017, 3:20 pm

only ones i have had faulty in my 270 are federal, weren't failing to fire but was a 2 second delay, only other bullets have had it with are eley 410 number 4's
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by Mitch@Ripley » 16 Oct 2017, 7:03 pm

had a few factories do it. no reloads, except when my mate leant me his rifle, but half his loads also failed to feed so I would assume they were just carelessly made lol
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Re: Failed Primer

Post by BRNO_Bigot » 16 Oct 2017, 9:03 pm

Years ago had 2 in a batch of ten that failed to fire. Retried them a couple of times after waiting for a looooong minute. It was a .37 H&H, so waiting for it to go off was a tad nervewracking.

Pulled both bullets (by vice grips and press - since I wasn't wanting to start pounding away with what could have been an unstable primer) and the powder had been scorched near the flashhole - AR2206H was blond there. So it had actually gone off to certain extent, but not enough to shift the bullet or ignite the powder. My supplier replaced the primers immediately.

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Re: Failed Primer

Post by colinbentley » 19 Oct 2017, 7:14 am

Yes i have had it happen a couple of times with Remington primers but as that's a couple out of about 400 I'm not losing any sleep over it.I think I simply struck a couple of dud primers.
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