Modern Primer Torture Test, Poll

How many rounds will fail to fire or squib

  • None. All will perform like normal

    Votes: 34 61.8%

  • 1 or 2 will fail

    Votes: 16 29.1%

  • 3 to 5 will fail

    Votes: 2 3.6%

  • More than 5 will fail

    Votes: 3 5.5%
  • Total voters
    55
  • Poll closed .
Hartkopf

Hartkopf

Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2019
Messages
2,797
Location
Texas
I have been picking up live rounds at my range for about 3 years. They were dropped by fellow members who I’m guessing just lost them in the dirt and gravel. They are all random brands, some were obviously reloads. I picked them up out of the mud, 108dg baking Texas sun, high humidity, 40dg winters, rain, etc. Some rounds had clearly been there a while because the brass was fairly dark.

So after picking up a few per week and saving 89 rounds in my non climate controlled shed for 3 years, I pulled all the bullets and processed the brass. The original primers were not removed. I then reloaded all 89 cases and primers with 6 grains of HS-6 and 124 grain TC RMR jacketed bullets. I’ve been using this load for months so my complete set up was previously proven with new components. Aprox 1000 of these rounds have been shot with zero failures. I will now attempt shooting the 89 rounds with the old “tortured” primers.

***EDIT: Some of the live rounds were tumbled in walnut media. No open cases were tumbled so no media got in the flash holes (from me anyway). ***

I will shoot these rounds out of my police trade Glock 17 gen 4. It has many thousand rounds through it with no failures.

So, how many will fail to fire? The poll will run for 1 week and then I’ll post the results.
A07A801A-C9F7-4AF8-91CA-BE8C31FF93B6.jpeg D5C479AB-7F04-4857-A951-67090D46CD37.jpeg EE4137E5-8B3B-473D-9519-24D4E86BFE1B.jpeg
 
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ive got two bircks of degraded/no bang LRPs, so I do know they go bad. Id bet those rounds pretty much all go bang tho, and the few failures will be with the original hand loads.
 
I have a feeling most will likely light off. If they were submerged for any length of time, they might be more prone to not, but from past experience with a good bit of ammo that was failing, the primers weren't the problem.

Now, if any of those primers are Remington brand, all bets are off! :p

I got a great deal ($19/1000 when everything else was selling for $30/1000) on them a number of years back, and bought 10K of them. They had a 5%-10% failure rate, and that was new, out of the box.
 
Docendo Discimus said:
I bet they all fire. Primers are really tough to kill. It will be interesting to see the results.
Click to expand...


I agree. I've been salvaging primers for years and have never had one fail to fire.
I pick up all the abandoned ammo I see on the ground at the range. I dismantle all of it, and use the primers for casual shooting handguns or fouling/warmup shots in rifle.

I have never had one fail to go off.
 
illinoisburt said:
Just to confirm, did any of the picked up rounds show signs of a dud like a primer strike? If not, then I'm going with 100% firing. People drop good ammo for all kinds of reasons - accidentally rolls off a table, racking a slide to clear a gun, etc.
Click to expand...

All of the 89 in this test show no signs of light strikes except one. It had a light strike WAY off center, almost hitting the case. It's possible this one primer could have internal damage if one of the three legs was struck. I'll try to post a pic of that one primer later and if we (THR) mostly agree that it could be damaged, I'll remove it from the total for the sake of the poll. But I'll definitely shoot it to see if it'll light. Some primers could have had scratches or small dings but nothing from a firing pin that I saw.
 
They are, as long as they dont get submerged in a liquid of some sort (or worse, a penetrating solvent) for any real length of time and dont have a seal. And even then, theres no guarantee.
 
Before the poll closes I'll interject my experience, which is limited.

I've bought more than 4000 primed pistol cases from American Reloading. Some, very few, have been badly corroded. I would guess 200 cases looked iffy. I sorted them out and reloaded them first. Of that 200 two wouldn't ignite. But others, ones that looked even worse, fired just fine.

I'll put my money on "all of them did fire."
 
Looking forward to the results, I think all will fire. Back in the '60s, milsurp ammo was plentiful and cheap...and reliable to fire, there were some duds, but I don't remember how many. What I do remember is .30-06 1942 Remington ball ammo had a number of brass casing, longitudinal splits below case necks, with resulting gas blowbacks to the face.

2001ish, I still had some of the '42 ammo and of the ~75 rounds, there were a handful of duds, of the ones that fired, they were still accurate out to ~300 yards from a 1942 Remington 30-06 Springfield.

All the mil Swiss 7.5x55mm (K31 1934) ball and en bloc Greek '06 ball (1955 M1 Garand N.M.) ammunition still fire w/o any duds. 1950s era .300 Savage ammo have all recently fired w/o duds...

I'm thinking all 89 rounds will fire.
 
2zulu1 said:
Looking forward to the results, I think all will fire. Back in the '60s, milsurp ammo was plentiful and cheap...and reliable to fire, there were some duds, but I don't remember how many. What I do remember is .30-06 1942 Remington ball ammo had a number of brass casing, longitudinal splits below case necks, with resulting gas blowbacks to the face.

2001ish, I still had some of the '42 ammo and of the ~75 rounds, there were a handful of duds, of the ones that fired, they were still accurate out to ~300 yards from a 1942 Remington 30-06 Springfield.

All the mil Swiss 7.5x55mm (K31 1934) ball and en bloc Greek '06 ball (1955 M1 Garand N.M.) ammunition still fire w/o any duds. 1950s era .300 Savage ammo have all recently fired w/o duds...

I'm thinking all 89 rounds will fire.
Click to expand...
I bought some .303 from 1942 that had about 4 of 10 that gave a bit of a delay…click; 1,2, BANG!

But I think that was more a combo of old cordite and old primers, rather than just the primers alone, that made those a sporting challenge to shoot. :what:

Stay safe.
 
Only way to really kill primers is long term exposure to moisture. If any don’t, I would bet on the aluminum case from some sort of corrosion from dis-similar metals and weather exposure. Over 5 years though, I’m really expecting all to go. A further guess is that if any don’t, then it would be due to junk powder gumming them up before you processed them.
 
WestKentucky said:
Only way to really kill primers is long term exposure to moisture. If any don’t, I would bet on the aluminum case from some sort of corrosion from dis-similar metals and weather exposure. Over 5 years though, I’m really expecting all to go. A further guess is that if any don’t, then it would be due to junk powder gumming them up before you processed them.
Click to expand...


There was pretty nasty powder that came out of a few of them when I pulled the bullets. I tapped the cases good and hard on a steel bench but I’ll admit to not inspecting every flash hole.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised if all fired. I voted for at least one failure for two reasons. First, that it’s a biased sample, discarded rounds are more likely to come from bad batches than general production. Second, I just don’t feel comfortable with always or never conditions in any situation.

That said, I’ve never had a centerfire round fail to fire because of the primer. Like my uncle uncensored said about loading WW1 vintage primers, “I’d rather be be behind them than in front of them.”
 
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