Light strikes on primers, why?

I agree that the OP needs to clarify some things-----if we haven't scared him off already. All we can do is relate what we individually found for problems and he can sort through them and figure out what HE has for a problem.
With the info already I think high primers and his new revolver is not hitting them hard enough. But that is assuming a lot.

he will be back.

murf

Flush seated primers are not fully seated primers. You want them 0.005" below flush. I am sure that the shallow seating and hard primers are your issue.

jski said:

Guys, even if the primers hadn’t been seated far enough into the pockets, this wouldn’t explain the light, shallow strikes on the primers. I would think the strikes would have been even deeper?

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Nope. The energy goes into seating the primer the rest of the way.

When the primer is seated all the way all the energy goes into deforming the primer.

It was explained in post #19, among others. It's simple physics. When an object is struck and it moves away from the striking object, the blow is cushioned. An object tight up against an immovable object that is struck can't move away from the striking object, so the blow isn't cushioned.

You never did say whether or not you've tried seating primers properly (all the way to the bottom of the primer pocket). You should be seating primers between .003" and .005" BELOW FLUSH. Not flush, below flush.

Hope this helps.

Fred

You need to break the ones down that did not fire to find the cause. No Powder, missing Anvil on primer, or even a bad primer. Bad primers are very very rare. I've only have had 1-2 in 40 yrs of hand loading. They were actually missing the primer compound.

I love physics...

Walkalong said:

The large primer rod cannot seat small primers below flush, so there was the problem, despite "using the full length of the piston" which gave you the wrong impression that they were fully seated. All it did was strain/stretch the tool. The larger diameter rod cannot go in the small primer pockets.

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^^^^This!^^^^

jski said:

The BIG difference in seating the primers this time around was that I was using the small piston in the RCBS primer tool. There are 2 pistons that come from RCBS: one for seating large primers and one for seating small primers. Previously, I had used the large piston even though the 357 case uses a small pistol primer.

But in both cases I pushed the primer into the case using the full length of the piston.

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And it seems that we have made full circle to the primers not being seated properly.

and the full circle is necessary, in this case, to emphasize the importance of fully seating every primer. just one more step down the road to "no more fliers".

murf

murf said:

and the full circle is necessary, in this case, to emphasize the importance of fully seating every primer. just one more step down the road to "no more fliers".

murf

Click to expand...

It doesn't require 60 something posts.

But I ran out of popcorn and the stores are mobbed from the unprepared people.(hurricane)

some nails are harder to drive than others.

good luck with that storm.

murf

jski said:

Well guys, riddle me this: why did all the ones we tried originally fail and all the ones we tried the second time fire? Well actually, most of the ones we tried first.

That’s a strange random clustering of good and bad?

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How about just forget all hose "original" ones. Load some new ones with the correct primer and the correct seating stem and life will be good.?

Worry about the Hurricane or something else.

jski said:

Well guys, riddle me this: why did all the ones we tried originally fail and all the ones we tried the second time fire? Well actually, most of the ones we tried first.

That’s a strange random clustering of good and bad?

Click to expand...

As explained earlier. The first strike will move the primer inward, seating it deeper in the pocket. But since the energy was adsorbed by the primer being seated deeper (pushed inward in the pocket) it did not got off. On the second try, the primers has been seated enough from the first strike (sometimes) to transfer enough energy to set the primer off. If your using a mil spec primer these are harder to set off due to a different anvil which makes them less sensitive to slam fires. Now some primers are more sensitive than others. Mag primers have a heavier cup and a larger dose of primer compound.

I don't understand why your having such a problem believing what every one has told you about primers. Decades of experience here. This is a common problem with people starting off. If you have not taken a close look at a new primer do so. Look at the anvil feet hanging below the cup. These feet need to be pressed upward into the cup when seated, till they have bottomed out. This is the preload required for a primer to be ignited on impact. Like some one trying to drive a nail into a piece of wood holding the board by hand. The impact from the hammer moves the board away from you. But set the board on something solid and hit the nail it goes in. The same principle applies here.

I have not read every post here, but you are getting good info from a lot of the posts I have read.

Primers should be seated slightly below flush. If a primer is not fully seated the firing pin has to finish the job of seating the primer before pushing the priming compound into the anvil.

jski said:

Guys, riddle me this: why would seating the primer some small distance further into the primer pocket result in a deeper strike (from the firing pin) on the aforementioned primer?

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Because the primer cup being pushed into the case is absorbing the power of the firing pin.

What a waste of bandwidth.................

jski said:

Well guys, riddle me this: why did all the ones we tried originally fail and all the ones we tried the second time fire? Well actually, most of the ones we tried first.

That’s a strange random clustering of good and bad?

Click to expand...

it is not totally random. the primer pocket depth is random enough to cause this anomaly. so, when you decided to use the large primer rod, all primers got seated flush. the rounds with the shallower primer pockets had enough firing pin energy to go off on the first trigger pull, the rounds with the deeper primer pockets did not have energy to push the primer to the bottom of the pocket and ignite the primer and, therefore, did not go off on the first trigger pull.

suggest you use the small rod on small primers and the large rod on large primers, and seat all primers to the bottom of the primer pocket whether handgun, rifle, or shotgun.

luck,

murf