Got a batch of bad primers?

[Dusty Miller]

I think the Winchester Small Rifle primers I used for making up some 454 Casull loads are bad.   Out of the 12 rounds I tried to shoot about 1/3 of them did not ignite.  I've yet to pull the bullets and check the primers to see if they in fact did ignite and the powder just did not burn (for whatever reason).

[Slufoot]

Hello Dusty,
What kind of gun are you shooting these in?

[Lloyd Smale]

I can see one primer in a brick being bad but with that many failures id have to guess its more then likely a gun problem.

[PA-Joe]

Shouldn't you be using pistol primers?

[SHOOTALL]

the .454 Casull is a high press.  cartg. that requires a rifle primer !

[stuffit]

Waiting for the autopsy on this one.  Should be interesting.
s.

[SHOOTALL]

You most likely did this , but did you try a second hit on the primer ? if by chance the primer wasn't fully seated it might fully seat with a strike or two then ignite ! my experience has been it is best to use a separate priming tool and not the one on the press , the first one i tried was a lee and i had to put enough pressure on it to seat primers all the way the pot metal tool broke so now i use a rcbs tool and it works great , now my thumb gets numb ! I offer this not knowing what you have or have not done so please don't think i'm trying to be a expert

[Lloyd Smale]

454s use rifle primers and you have to keep in mind that the cups on rifle primers are much harder then the ones on pistol primmer so if you do an action job on a 454 or have a hammer spring that is even a little tired or dirt in the firing pin area it doesnt take much to get missfires.

[Slufoot]

If your gun is a Ruger SRH the firing pin is more than likely rounded on the side that makes contact with the transfer bar, like a ball peen hammer.
David Clements of Clements Custom Guns informed me about this after I acquired a new SRH. I had only shot the gun about 200 times and when I pulled the trigger group out and looked at the tranfer bar it had already began to get peened by the rounded firing pin. David told me this would happen and sure enough it had. I took my revolver to Clements for a little work and he installed a firing pin for a Ruger Single action, these are flat where they contact the tranfer bar, and he also installed a new tranfer bar because mine had already been peened within only a couple hundred rounds.

[Dusty Miller]

The indentation on the primer was substantial so I'm sure it got enough "THWACK" to get the job done.  As for the primers not being properly seated, this is an FA gun and if the primers were not far enough in that right there would've made the gun lock up. 

[stuffit]

The suspense is intense here.   I'm gonna speculate that H110/Win296 may be involved here in some failure-to-ignite situation.  Grab that RCBS inertia puller and tell all.   
 
stuffit

[Lloyd Smale]

do you have another gun, say a .223 rifle that you could try them in? I would have to say that ive loaded at least as much ammo in my life as anyone here. Probably in the vicinity of 10000 plus rounds a year and in all my years of reloading have never had a round go not go off that i could blame on a primer being dead. I dont use alot of ww primers but have used enough through the years that i do have some experience with them. Did you happen to pull any of the bullets. Ive had rounds that i had made mistakes on that were either without powder or very light loaded that all a guy heard was the click of the hammer falling and you would have swore the primmer didnt go off but it did. Same thing has happened to me with cast bullet where lube was left on the bases or tumble lube was used and it contaminated the powder.

[SHOOTALL]

why would a FA lock up if the primer was seated flush instead of all the way in ? also a primer can have a nice crater in it but if the anvil was not seated tight against the bottom of the primer pocket it could only move back not seting off the primer , most cases are set up with .003-.006 clearnce from the face of the rim to the primer to protect the primer from accidental hits . in manf. ,shipping ,during loading etc. so in effect a flush seated primer could have as much as .006 room to move back , this is just one possible cause for sure but a second or third hit is by far the quickest check to make !
also i use H-110 in most of my loads with Winchester primers with no problem ! is there something i should watch for ?
good luck with eliminating the problem , let all us monday morning  gunsmiths know what ya find !

[stuffit]

SHOOTALL,
If H110/Win296 are loaded below a certain optimum level they sometimes fail to ignite.  The manual recommendations for loading them usually give a percentage of the maximum under which they advise the loader not to go.  Partial ignitions with some bullet movement can also occur, or, at least that's my impression from what's been published on the subject.   Bottom line is that this powder is not suitable for loading anything but maximum and near maximum loads.
 
stuffit

[Graybeard]

He posted in another separate thread that he failed to add powder to the cases. It wasn't a primer problem but an operator error.

[SHOOTALL]

STUFFIT , that explains why i haven't had a problem then , I load to the max most of the time , the only load i have ever checked with a chronograph clocked over 1700 fps . it was a 44 mag , ruger super blackhawk 10 1/2 bbl , no as a matter of fact the cases didn't last long !
thank you for your help . no i no longer shoot that load , it was a wee bit over max. it was a test load , and after a few or 20 shots i backed down to printed loads