Primer anvil separation during decapping

Happens all the time. Don’t worry about it.

Yes, I have had this happen often. On a new primer the anvil is set proud of the cup, but still held in by the cups pressure on the 3 legs of the anvil. When properly seated, I believe, the anvil gets seated flush with the edge of the cup which causes the primer pellet to be "prestressed" enabling more positive ignition.

The open end of the cup is slightly tapered to ease insertion and to firmly grip the anvil. Ignition causes the primer cup to open up releasing the anvil, which may or may not, reacquire the anvil upon spring back.

I have not done and engineering analysis on all the dimensions involved, but this explaination seems reasonable to me, so that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I save primers with bad brass, but just for the scrap. Now I'm also starting to think that it might not be that crazy to try to find a way to re-use them.

My concern with re-using them would be getting a consistent level/amount of ignition from each home made primer.

Spent primers are recyclable brass. I keep all mine till I get enough brass to take to the recyclers.

I save mine in a gallon antifreese jug. When full I take it to the recyclers. Takes about a year to fill it full.

FROGO207 said:

Takes about a year to fill it full.

Click to expand...

Wow, about 50,000+- ?

Yeah, I accumulate the spent primers, and add them to the Club's brass barrel from time to time.
I'd be leery of trying to reuse primers; the priming compound is dangerous stuff to handle.
Let us hope it doesn't come to that.
Moon

I actually cut back this last year and the jug is 2/3 full as of the end of the year. Not all my brass is reloaded but I process the brass as I get it. I size/decap then clean with SS pins. How many primers in a 5 gal bucket of 9MM brass? I have two processd this year. Many buckets of other brass. Too much time on my hands now and trying to stay busy.

I've seen this occasionally over the years so its nothing new. I also save the fired ones and add them to by brass scrap. They add up faster than you think.

Don't sweat it, very common occurrence.

My theory was that when I pressed too hard when installing the primer it caused the primer to split when I deprimed it.

idonnoh

I got lazy about 10 years ago and just dropped my spent primers in a bucket on the floor. I now weight about 20 lbs and I'll decide what to do with them later...

The comment by PWC above is, in my understanding correct. When seated properly primers have anvils seated deeper in the compound. It used to be called "sensitizing", I've just referred to it as "preloading". I had some Winchester SP primers that needed the preload to be consistent. I had a striker fired pistol that was 100% reliable with CCI, Remington and Wolf SP primers, but would produce misfires with Winchester primers. I figgered out if I added more pressure to seating them, "preloading", I could get 99.9% good performance...

I too have had many anvils separate from the cups after firing, and haven't bothered to determine if a specific primer in a specific cartridge/load made any difference. I believe the "back flow" of pressure from the powder ignition probably has something to do with this also (35,000 psi through a small hole up against a relatively thin brass cup)

I am curious.
How much money does a gallon sized container of spent primers bring at the scrapyard?

I’ve never given much thought about whether the anvil remains in the spent primer upon decapping or not. After all, the primer is spent and not usable.

One possible reason may be a slight burr in the tip of the decapping pin that grabs the anvil. The anvil and cup separate as the decapping pin is withdrawn.

I have a used shot bag on the discharge of the decapping tube on my Hornady L-N-L. I do not shoot as much as others andit takes me a few years to fill it up.

Over a year ago I turned in a gallon and a medium flat rate box filled with .22 and various bad brass and got IIRC $43 for everything.

A gallon jug of primers.... I wonder how much money that would represent, in the cost of components or supposing shooting new commercial....coulda bought a collector grade M1

PWC said:

A gallon jug of primers.... I wonder how much money that would represent, in the cost of components or supposing shooting new commercial....coulda bought a collector grade M1

Click to expand...

At the risk of shutting this thread down, (please don't) there would be about 50,000 primers in a gallon jug. 50/50 large and small. At today's prices, if you find them, I'll let you do the math.....

Price for spent primers depends. How much does the jug full weigh? What is the current scrap price for brass? (the scrap metal prices vary just like the stock market). And what is the scrap yard going to "classify" the scrap primers as? (clean, no contaminates, to "mixed" with small amounts of other metals etc). Prices hover around $1.30 per lb. https://www.google.com/search?q=bra...j0i22i30l7.10039j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8