Flooded Basement, wet primers salvageable?

[All-Around-Shooter]

We had quite a rain here in NJ today, My usually dry basement has about 4" of water in it.

Anyway, I had some primed .45 brass that got wet. Has anyone ever dried out primers and used them?

 

[Kamicosmos]

I one time had some primed .44 Mag cases get filled with water from a leaky water pipe. I dumped the water out,let them dry and 'fired' a couple in a revolver. They went off.

However, I decided to hose them down with WD-40 and not risk using them, and tossed them in the trash.

In hind sight, I should have carefully popped the primers out, and at least saved the brass. But at the time, 50 cases of .44 Mag wasn't a concern when I had several hundred available.

 

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

Wet Primers

I have had a commercial reloader customer of mine tell me he bought a batch of millions of wet primers dirt cheap, stored them in a warehouse in the california desert for a year and when dry used them in his business without any complaints.

 

[HSMITH]

They are made wet, so I don't see any reason why they won't dry and fire just fine. The only concern for me would be what else was in the water that might have contaminated them. If it was clean ground water I would dry them out, load them up and use them for practice ammo. I would also take a squib rod to the range with me.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Agreed!

HSmith has it! Primers are notoriously hard to kill when you want to get rid of them--water doesn't do it.

I'd load 'em and use 'em. Having said that, however, I would NOT use them in loads I might have to bet my life on, or for extreme precision shooting. Any other use, go for it.

BTW, as I understand it, WD-40 doesn't kill primers either. When it evaporates--as it is supposed to--the primer is right back in business.

Only way I am sure of getting rid of unwanted primers is to set 'em on an anvil and cancel each one with a hammer, separately. Putzy but 100% effective. Oh, and do use eye/ear/hand protection!