Primers - When will we make our own?

hopefully never!

Don't know how safe but very time consuming and I wouldn't want to have to do it. http://onlinebooks.110mb.com/tm 31-210/31-210-03-05.htm
LM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0jxpLH8FtY&feature=channel_page

Ammosmith shows how to reload used ones here. Not the same as making new, but this would be a way to do it if production stopped tomorrow. Just pop out an old one and reuse it like the cases.

I too wonder if it could be made easier though. Couldn't one buy the chemicals that are in the ingredients and "pour" it into a used primer cup (once the dent was removed)? If they chemicals themselves are regulated/impossible to get, maybe substitutions could be made even if the cost factor is high.

Craig

The prospect is very unpleasent. This is maybe why some are stocking up with 50 to 100 k worth.

Does anyone have any idea how unstable large quantities of primer compound would be stored in one's house? Don't even think about it!

+1

We had the Hercules Sunflower army ammo plant near here. It operated from 1941 to 1998, when it was deactivated.

Primer house explosions were quite common, and spectacular.

The manufacturing & storage buildings were so contaminated they had to burn them all.
Too dangerous to even try to tear them down.

rc

Yeah, if you can accidentally set off 100 "loaded primers" in your feed tray and take out the flourecent ceiling lights (one report I saw here I think), imagine what a golfball/softball size wad of the stuff could do.

I have seen the Ammosmith video on YouTube where he recycles them. I heard of a local guy that saves his fired primers from reloading just in case.

Primers

I remember reading a few years ago about an incident that happened at the Winchester plant back in the early 40's. Seems a kid was walking through the factory with a third bucket of live primers. He was shaking them back and forth as he walked through the plant. The article said he had just left the powder room where they were making the ammo when the shaken primers exploded, killing the kid. Can't remember where I read that, but always remembered reading it.

I imagine when you start buying mass quantities of lead azide or potassium perchlorate, the Department of Homeland Security & ATF will take a sudden interest in you too.

rc

i read that story, it was either in the ABC's of reloading or similar.

I want a golf ball sized wad of the stuff, sounds like fun

I would think, if it comes to that, someone will come up with a viable electronic ignition system that can be retrofitted to most guns. Far safer than dealing with initiator compounds in mass.

Priming compound is an explosive. Think of the paperwork involved and you will stop right there. Way too much hassle and way to dangerous for most of us to work with.

Man, it's a wonder I've lived this long. I'm just not that interested in tempting fate.

Me? Never. I like shooting, but I can practice what I need to know on an air rifle and run the rest of my days on a handful of hunting rounds, worst case scenario. I keep an operable lot of long-term components and never dip below that. That way if I have no options but what I have left, I still have options.

Perhaps the time has come for electronic ignition ammo....Remington tried this a few years ago with their "Etronic ammo". All you would need is a fresh battery now and then.

I know exactly what paperwork is involved with explosives. I am a "licensed possessor" for several mine sites in PA and have helped with paperwork to gain our "manufacturer's" licenses for certain sites as well. A "manufacturer's" license is required when mixing diesel & AN into an fo.

This being said, is tannerite an explosive? Does it require paperwork? Understand my point here? We are attempting to think outside the box here for a solution to a possible primer problem, not limit ourselves with obvious hurdles.

Craig

I have long wondered if a barrel could be threaded to accept a standard automobile spark plug. And if a piezoelectric grill lighter could be used to spark it. Perhaps with black powder (low pressure)?

None of the basic materials are a problem...nor do they require any special or legal hoops, to order, buy or have.


Anymore than the basic materials would be a problem with say, an interest to make Nitroglycerine.


Anyone with a basic working knowledge of simple Chemistry procedures, can do it, out of mundane-enough basic ingredients.


The problem, is the inherant sensitivity/instability of the final compound a Primer uses, and, the delicacies and fine points of safely handling when being made, or handling it once made, and prior to completing the Primers proper...and even then, after, as the 'Bucket' story suggests...hings can still be 'iffy'.


The old 'Fulminating Mercury' Primers, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_fulminate ) would be pretty easy to make...but, one little mis-hap with a Batch of Material, or with incidental dried residu or slop, and you couldbe hur or killed or embarassed as Fire Trucks and Bomb Squads Paramemdics and lots of Police come pulling up to the curb...


Techical and Trade Formularies used to have How-To info on making these things...


For that matter, Chlorates used to be freely available to anyone in regular Drug Stores only a few generations ago...


I've seen big, hardbound, 1880s Technical Formularies...one I recall was published by Scientific American...which had all sorts of recipes for these sorts of things.

I have long wondered if a barrel could be threaded to accept a standard automobile spark plug. And if a piezoelectric grill lighter could be used to spark it. Perhaps with black powder (low pressure)?

Click to expand...

That almost makes me want to check the breech plug threads on my Knight in-line

Really not something i would be intersted in doing either. Unless i had no other choice. It may well be easy enough to do, but honestly, unless i just could not get primers without going to jail, i would rather just buy them.