Stupid is, as Stupid does.

wont know till you try them

There's a good chance they'll still work. Water is an integral part of making primer mix, and commercial primers are placed in "hot houses" to dry out so I think that your odds are quite good.

They'll work. Put a spare primer in a glass of water for a week. Take it out and let it dry. It'll fire.

O C said:

I put them on a cookie sheet in the convection oven for 10 minutes, on very low heat and let them dry.

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That may not be long enough. If the primer mix is saturated it might take a while for the water to evaporate through the flash hole. Can you still see the foil (paper) under the anvil? With enough water and agitation I would think you could wash out the primer mix from the cup.

Put 1 or 2 primed empty cases in yer 38 and point in safe direction outside and see if they pop. If they do, the rest are probably ok too.

Water is not a deactivating agent for modern primers. Once dried out, they'll work.

I wouldn't recommend putting primed brass in an oven though ._.

How many? 100 or less and I would start over. Unless you can shoot in privacy, having one round fail in public would be more than I could stand. In my private range, would give them a week then load and shoot. Putting in oven would have been a non option for me.

I would deprime and reprime with new primers.

Yes Myrtle, alcohol was involved)

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Ya see the connection yet ?

As noted, water will not permanently deactivate primers.

I had a round go thru 4 cycles in the washing machine.
After drying in open air for a week it went bang just like the others.

Hondo 60 said:

I had a round go thru 4 cycles in the washing machine.
After drying in open air for a week it went bang just like the others.

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A loaded round's primer is better protected from the liquid than one open to cleaning media, even plain water, much less some that might have some kind of detergent or something in it (and I have no idea what the O.P. puts in his steel-pin tumbler).

3 or 4 dollars worth of primers is not worth the trouble of thinking too hard about it. Unless you can't find any more primers at all.

However, what to do with the unfired, probably still explosive, but not necessarily so.

Primers are pretty well sealed. So, I would set them in a sunlit area with a fan on them for a couple of days and do this:

My choice would be to load them and shoot them. Any that did not go off, would be disassembled and the unexpended primers disposed of in a fire (shielded, of course), one at at time so I could count them and not have too many go off at once. I would suspect most of them will go off. If any resulted in a squib, I would unscrew the barrel (Dan Wesson, don't you know) and clear it and continue.

Alternative, load up the empty cartridges and pop the primers off without powder or bullets.

Lost Sheep

While i totally agree water alone will not deactivate a primer those primers were vigorously agitated so it's totally possible when they got wet enough the primer compound was dislodged from the primer or even some of the compound. The detergent probably did some damage too.

BUT, like said above, pull the trigger on a few empty cases and see...

i'd make some wax loads out of them and let the kids bust some balloons

Primers use caps and/or sealant to keep priming compound dry (that's why it's so hard to deactivate them and the color you see is not the color of the priming compound but the cap/sealant). I would chamber some in the pistol and see if they go "pop". If they do, I would test load some rounds.



Different brand primers showing different caps/sealant and varying shape/height of anvils.

O C said:

In my pre-orgasmic frenzy over getting my new dual tub tumbler to clean my brass with stainless media, I loaded one tub with .357 and the other with .38 Spec. Then I watched the Super Bowl forgetting that the tumbler was still running. (Yes Myrtle, alcohol was involved). Now I come home and go down to the "Man Cave" to putz around, and realized the tumbler was happily running away. I unloaded the .357 tub and the brass was better than new looking. No problemo, I muttered. But to my chagrin, when I opened the .38 tub I discovered that the load I put in had been PRIMED.
Now what to do? I put them on a cookie sheet in the convection oven for 10 minutes, on very low heat and let them dry.Now, how many of you guys out there think that the primers will work? I'll put them in a revolver and see if they go "Bang". What are the odds? I personally think they are O K. What say you?

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whats to dry from a tumbler?

O C said:

The stainless media works much better with some water in the tub along with a dab of dishwashing soap. The brass comes out shiney inside and out.

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wow, i had never heard of anyone putting liquid in the media.

How many is the big question.
If it was 200, you'd be out $6 if you deprimed and replaced.
Is it worth $6 to find out that 25% of your LOADED cartridges are unreliable, how about 10%, how about 5%.

wow, i had never heard of anyone putting liquid in the media.

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Only in a rotary tumbler not a vibratory tumbler.

I would deprime and reprime with new primers.

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This.... or deprime, let primers and brass dry, reprime a few (enough to represent the group) with the dried-out primers, and test.

Constrictor said:

wow, I had never heard of anyone putting liquid in the media.

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Read it again, it's not the media you're thinking of. We are talking about very small Stainless Steel rods which are suspended in liquid media with some sort of soap and turned in a water tight rotary tumbler. The brass comes out as good or better than new, inside and out including the primer pockets.

Take a look at this site and run the videos, that should clear it up for you.
http://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/reloading/brass-cleaning-with-stainless-media/

I'd put my money on bang 3:2.

If you left them in the oven for 2 full hours on low heat, I'd up my odds to 19:1.