[Ak Guy]

Has anyone ever had an accidental discharge of a primer while reloading? I'm thinking especially while seating primers, but any other incidents would be good to hear too. Should I be wearing safety glasses during reloading?

[Kamicosmos]

There were a couple of threads about a month or so ago about a primer detonation on a Dillon progressive, and a slightly tounge in cheek one on a Loadmaster.

While I haven't set one off myself yet, I have seated a few sideways and crushed them pretty good in my Loadmaster.

I don't wear hearing protection when I reload, and I don't wear official safety glasses either. I have prescription glasses, but I probably should have safety glasses on, just in case.

[whm1974]

I use the Lee autoprime, and I wear eye protection when I prime my cases and point the case AWAY from me.

When I tell people I reload they always acted like handeling gunpowder is very dangourus. In truth it's the primers you have to be careful of.

-Bill

[Murphster]

I've never had a primer detonate while loading. But I'm waiting. I always (and yes, I mean always) wear eye protection while priming. Little bits of explosive matter plus the nice brittle plastic in my Lee primer equals a lot more potential shrapnel than my soulful brown eyes care to think about. I rarely preach but I'd really urge folks to wear eye protection. Perhaps I should wear it during all phases of reloading but it's always there when I'm priming brass.

(Back when I cast bullets, I used to wear a full plastic face shield. One day, a tiny drop of molten lead launched itself from someplace in the casting pot or mold and made a beeline for the center of my left eye. It was stopped directly in front of my eye by the shield. First time I ever wanted to kiss a piece of eye protection.)

[The Bushmaster]

NOPE!!! I use a Lee Auto Prime II. I haven't set off a primer in the twenty years that I have been reloading. I wear Store bought 1.75 polymier reading glasses and I don't have my fingers over the mouth of the case or do I look in the case while priming just in case I do set one off. You will find it takes a lot to set one off when reloading. Like Kamicosmos just said. I have put them in sideways and crushed them, upside down and had to punch them out with my resizer die. and no bang. However...That doesn't mean it won't happen. Soooo...Wear some protection for the eyes.....IM not so HO.

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

When I started selling several brands of progressive reloaders I investigated every case of an explosion I could get feed back about and ALL of them happened with CCI primers. Of the thousand reloaders of hand and automated types I have sold since I advised my customers never to buy CCI as when you buy Cheap You Get What You Pay For!!.

In my little blue Booklet wll known to my customers and to members of the Bullseye List I warn about their variable dimensions, High Anvils, Cocked anvils, Burrs on the cup edges and ONLY reccommend Federal and Winchester Pistol Primers.

When CCI first invented Magnum primers as an advertising gimick they were the same strength as the Federal and Winchester standard primers. So that meant standard CCI primers were JUNK. I was also a commercial police reloader at the time also. I have never had a Federal or Winchester fail to fire.

In the Bullseye courses I recommend Federal for the 25 yard range and Winchester for the 50 yard range because they are a little hotter and that idea has become generally recognized in the Bullseye sport.

[EghtySx]

I only reload shotgun sheels atm and have never had a problem. Not even with my MEC Hustler hydraulic loader. Been using it for 25+ years.

[Ol` Joe]

My dad had one go off back in the mid `60s while useing a old Lee pot metal hand prime tool loading 38/357s`. I don`t remember much about it except it caused him change his pants and insist I wore safty glasses around primers from then on. I don`t think any particles were thrown but he did comment on the flame lenght more then a couple times.

[Steve in PA]

Nope, never had a problem. I've been reloading for probably close to 15 years now and I use CCI primers for everything, small pistol, small pistol mag, large pistol, large pitsol mag small and large rifle.

I can even begin to think how many thousands upon thousands of CCI primers I have gone through using my RCBS single stage press. I have no idea why some people have problems with CCI. I'm thinking its more the equipment/person than the primer.

[sm]

Never had a problem with all the shotshell reloading I've done. From Ponsess-Warren, Mec Hydraulic, Mec manual progressive, or Mec Single stage.

Yes I wear Safety glasses, even over my regular bifocals.

Now cleaning the reloading room has caused three vacuum cleaners to suffer early demise due to live primers. :)

[The Bushmaster]

I side with Steve in PA. I use both CCI and Winchester primers and have, as I have stated above, had NO problem. I have inspected my CCI primers after reading one of the above posts and if you put Winchester side by side with a CCI primer the only difference is the color of the compound. Reading almost all of the posts I have noticed that a lot of reloaders on this site use CCI and none of them have complained about them going BANG making the powder go BOOM.......

[ftierson]

I use CCI primers almost exclusively, after trying/using pretty much everything over the years.

I have never had any problems with them, except for a couple of bricks (same lot) of CCI300 Primers (Large Pistol) that were slightly oversized and hard to seat in .45ACP cases...

And that's in hundreds of thousands of primers used...

The only real problem that I noticed was with a couple of cases of Winchester Small Rifle primers that I purchased during the great "primer desert" of many years ago. They were so poorly made (probably due to over-ramping production to meet the increased demand) that I sent them directly to Olin for replacement. I don't mean that as a flame of Winchester either, because I use Winchester primers if not CCI...

[Ak Guy]

Thanx for all the responses. I will start using glasses when seating primers !! I've been using CCI 300's in my .45's w/ a single stage RCBS Rockchucker and have had zero problems, but it looks like the potential is certainly there !!

[trickyasafox]

interesting info. another hijack here, im new to reloading but am nervous to try federal cause i hear they are the "softest" aka go off the easiest, so i've been trying to stick to winchester which i heard was substantially harder. any truth to this?

[taliv]

i'm very fond of federal. I use them for anything important I'm doing. I use CCI when cost conscious and I like them just as well.

I did have a detonation with the forster benchrest seater and fed GM match. As was suggested above, it was an "equipment problem" not a primer problem. The forster tool has a springloaded handle that will bounce and if you're not careful will allow you to attempt to seat two primers at the same time. fortunately, only one went bang.

[2400]

I've loaded 100's of thousands of rounds since the late 60's on many different RCBS and Dillon's without ever having a problem. I don't know anyone that has.

[TooTaxed]

The current Lee catalog lists an explosion shield ($5) as an accessory for the Loadmaster, "Necessary if using primers other than CCI or Winchester brand"... :eek:

[P-32]

CCI did have QC problems some 20 years ago. But today my primary primer is CCI.

I shoot a lot of stick powders. Winchester primers are made for ball powders. I get smaller groups with the CCI's.

[PinnedAndRecessed]

Here's my confession. A buddy of mine just started reloading. He bought a new Dillon and a 454 Casul. He was asking me what kind of primers to use. I have no experience with the 454 and told him he needed to consult a loading manual.

However, and, this was just off the cuff in informal conversation, I said I was sure it would take a large pistol primer. So that's what he used.

And (you all know what happened) when he tried to force the large pistol primer into the 454 case, he got an explosion. Being the kind of guy he is, he kept doing it. Blowing primer after primer up.

Then he checked the manual. (IIRC) He was supposed to be using small rifle primers. :banghead:

[The Bushmaster]

Tends to ruint yer whole day, don't it Pinnedandrecessed....L O L. I assume that he didn't get hurt and that's good...

[Steve Smith]

I have squished and smeared the living hell out of primers and never had a detonation, but they still deserve a lot of respect.

Paul, CCI has really shaped up. They make some quality equiment now.

[Deavis]

Dillon 650XL + Any Primer + (Tight S&B 9mm || WCC brass) = Detonation

The only primer detonations I have had have been with S&B brass or WCC. Normally the primer is destroyed due to the etremely tight fit and sometimes it goes bang. It isn't that loud and you are generally not looking at it directly anyhow since on the downstroke you are checking to see that your powder dropped into the case on your 3rd station. I think wearing eye protection is good idea!

[mleeber]

Yeah, I had a Winchester Large Pistol primer go off in my Loadmaster. The one that went ignited many of the others in the tray and blew the primer disk and primer feed assembly to he!!

The Loadmaster primes on the upstroke so it is very hard to feel the primer seating. Add to that some brass that was really hard to resize and you have no feel seating the primer at all. After the bang I placed the sizing die in the primer station (without the decapper pin) and used another sizing die with the decapper in station 1. This setup holds the case and perfectly aligns it to accept the primer. Now any reloading I do on the Loadmaster is done this way.

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

I have been reloading for 55 years and I agree that some of my dislike of CCi comes from when they were invented talking to injured reloaders and in the 1970's I have seen primer magazines turned into a corkscrew, pieces of primers imbedded in a face and bodies, a primer follower that went through a basement ceiling into a childs bedroom and have found several dozen explosions traced to them that I wrote about in my little Blue booklet "How To Live With And Love Your Progressive Reloader" included in the many hundreds ofprogressive reloaders that I sold and that a goodly number of my customers from the 1970's to date appreciate.

In reading the Bullseye list daily for the past 5 years it seems that all the failure to fire and primer reloading problems STILL CAN BE TRACED TO CCI PRIMERS. There may be some good ones but the problems and explosions I talk about happen 99 and 99/100ths of the time in PROGRESSIVE RELOADERS where the primer dimensions would not fit and jam in the RELOADER PRIMER FEEDING MECHANISM.
This has not happened with Federal or Winchester or Remington primers amongst my many customers on my personal reloading lists.

[The Bushmaster]

And for twenty years I have been abusing, forcing and crushing CCI primers into .38, .357, 9mm, .45ACP, .30-30 and .30-06. And none have gone bang at the wrong time. I will admit that they do fit a little tighter then the Winchester primers. But I do fear a primer that falls out in a magazine or a cylinder so I tend to use the tighter fitting CCI where a hot load is not needed (Winchester primers seem to give about 30 to 50 faster fps. And makes for a fine adjustment to performance.

At this point I wish to make a small disclaimer: "One of the reasons that there so many manufacturers of many products is if you don't like Post Toasties, you can buy Kellogg's corn flakes". Don't like one manufacturer, try another. A free country and I helped to make it that way.........Damn...It's raining out there and I have to shoe a horse today....

[Clark]

Twenty years ago my brother took a college girl out on a date that had scars on her face.
She said her father bought some primed brass, but wanted different primers. She was tasked with depriming. The pool of de primed primers went off and shot her in the face. She said that every few months an anvil would work it's way to the surface of her skin.

[BluesBear]

In almost 3,000,000 CCI primers I have never had a bad one.


But then again it took me almost 40 years of shooting .22 rimfires to get that first dud and then I had several from the same two boxes.

[Wildalaska]

I cant complain about CCI primers...

Never used one in my life :)

WildfederalonlyAlaska

[taliv]

dang, blues bear. what is it you do that lets you shoot 3 million times with the same primers?

at $15/box, that's $45,000 just for primers!

if you shot 1000 rnds/ week, 50 weeks/ yr for 40 years, that's only 2 million.

[The Bushmaster]

Oh oh...Bluesbear...Caught...You may have to fess up here. You go to the range every day or two? That's alot of shootin'. You mean when I finally retire I can shoot as much and go broke even faster? :D

Ain't tall tales fun? First lier don't stand a chance. At least that is what I've been told. :neener:

[BluesBear]

Caught? I don't think so.


I know a least few of the members here remember a decent little enterprise called King Cartridge Company back in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was sold directly to Police Departments, Security Agencies and Gun Shops, primarily east of the Mississippi River. At that time my FFL, License to Manufacture Ammunition, was #61-14967.

I was King Cartridge Company. And yes I loaded every single round myself.


And don't worry Taliv, they're quite a bit cheaper when you buy them 25,000 at a time.









Bushmaster likes to disagree with many of my posts and that's his right, but if he wants to call me a liar I suggest that he gets his sorry assets out to Washingtin State and tells me to my face. But we all know that'll never happen.

Right now I've only got one good hand but that's all I'll need to slap you silly. :what:
Hells Bells™ boy, I'll even meet you at the airport that way you won't even need luggage. :neener:


Oh Bushmaster............... Now you have been told.

[The Bushmaster]

Bluesbear. I'm from the Great Northwest. Spent most of my life in Oregon and Washington. One of my sons lives in Lynnwood. Just in california to get some gold and return home. Spent 16 years hunting and fishing the Snoqualmie river basin. Caught a 5 lb Golden trout out of lake Philipa when you had to hike back in there. Shot many a Blacktail up in the Sunday Creek Canyon and have hiked and camped at Lenox Creek Falls. Caught steelhead out of the Green River. And Silvers out of Hood Canal at the Sub Base Bangor (of which I am a Plank Owner) As you can see, I know the area well. (Don't let them build a dam at the mouth of the Snoqualmie Basin)

As far as picking on you...Ya need to soften yer shell a bit. But if that isn't in the cards, I will let up on ya. Of course, there will go all of the safe gaurds. I'm just a poor retired Sailor that has traveled the Pacific all over and hunted (Thanks to the US Navy) in many places. Now my contract Company to (NAVSUPSALV) is letting me travel to the Med on jobs. (Lucky me.) In between all this I have a whole bunch of stories that are untold, but will save them for my Grandchildren. Ruffled your feathers? My deepest apologies. (Still think he should use his sense of humor more often. Makes ya wonder if he really did all those things) Oh Sorry...Did it again...Darn.

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

The Star progressive reloader came on the market back in 1931 and its primer feeding was based on Western? primers which became Winchester/Western then Winchester. I believe Winchester helped Federal get started and the progressive reloaders invented by that time used Winchester, Federal and Remington primers successfully. When CCI was invented their dimensions were sloppy and had ltttle or no quality control and they exploded when forced in to the precise dimensions of the primer feeding systems of the earlier reloaders.

Anyone using non progressive presses may never know the difference.

When Dillong started hanging around Star looking for proceedures to copy for his reloader I gather he took into accounnt the sloppiness of the CCI's by having larger dimensions his reloader feeding systems but in reading the Bullseye list whenever there is any primer complaints guess who caused the problem.
I should have taken a picture of the fellow with the corkscrew shaped brass primer magazine in front of his face full of CCI primer pieces.

[taliv]

i imagine they were quite a bit cheaper back then, too.

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

And I kept telling my reloader customers that when you buy something cheap you get a very cheap product in more ways than price. Like cheap in reliability. Lack of quality control, not fitting and jamming in standard size primer magazines so some followers when pushed down hard had the magazine explode.

In the 1970's the three main brands were standardized in diameter, roundness, height of the cup and consistency in the seating and height of the anvil. There were no magnum primers.

The only difference between them was that the Remington primer formulation made their ammunition reliable when exposed to being carried in and out of extreme cold and hunting cabins. That was the opinion at the time to justify their higher price and were recommended in northern climates.

CCI was invented and as a sales gimmick invented magnum primers. In tests of the time it was determined that the CCI magnums were the same strength as the big three primers. So what did that say for the standard CCI primers?.

So to defend their market share and with the invention and use of the new .41 and .44 magnum calibers the big three invented their own magnum primers.

A commercial reloader friend who was an example and mentor to me bought 3 million CCI primers at a time for his Gromak Industries police reloads and it was a sight to see 3 million primers on the forklift pallets all together.
I would have really hated to have a traffic accident with the 18 wheeler that delivered them.

Another friend bought 10 million primers dirt cheap that had gotten seriously wet so he rented an empty warehouse in the Majove desert and I forget the amount of time they needed but when they became dry he made a bundle selling them.

Another thought is that it pays to have a lip on the front edge of your reloading bench to keep primers from rolling off and being stepped on.

[The Bushmaster]

A comming or lip on the edge of your work bench...Not a bad Idea. It would keep those little rascals on the bench. :cool:

I still feel that times have changed for CCI's. I have been loading with them for about 20 years without incident. I like the fact that they are just a tad weaker then Winchester (By about 30 to 50 fps). It gives you a little tuning room when working up a tight load.

[taliv]

don't hold back there, fitz. if you don't like cci primers, just say so! :)

[The Bushmaster]

Yup...He did say so. About 6 or 8 times now.

[Smythe77]

Been reloading basically h/gun loads in Small Pistol & Large Pistol for something like back in '74. Never heard a bang, accidently put a few in upside down, but popped them out & put them back in again with same results of others in that batch.

I wear glasses anyway so no problem. My PPC revolvers & all other center-fire revolvers receive Federal while my 9mm & 45ACP take in CCI, & Winchester, though I carry a fair stock of small so sometimes a chap will ask if I will trade my Federal small for their Large of any make & so cometimes come across Federal Large Pistol for my 45s still no sweat.