As many of you know, I started reloading when I was a teenager. Shortly after I got married, I developed a neurological condition that left me unable to reload for a couple of decades. When I resumed, I had to deal with cases, powder and primers that had been in various stages of the process at the time I became handicapped.
The sudden stop provided a sort of "living laboratory" for the effects of handling and storage of all reloading components. I have previously posted about brass and powder so I will not repeat them here. But, I was concerned about whether or not twenty-something year old primers stored in a garage in North Texas would be any good. Since primers were comparatively cheap and were readily available, I decided to buy new primers for use as I returned to reloading.
But once I was back into the swing of things, I decided to try out the primers that I had left over from my "former life". My CCI small rifle primers all had a Gibson's sticker on them which tells me they had to have been bought no later than May 1983 (when I graduated from college for the second time). I loaded 48 rounds of LC74 & LC80 5.56x45 brass with these geriatric primers. The load was 20.8 grains of IMR 4198 under a 45 grain Speer soft point bullet. Every one of them performed flawlessly. A further 42 rounds of mixed brass was also loaded using 19.5 grains of IMR 4198 and 55 grain FMJ bullets. These also performed flawlessly.
I had been apprehensive about using 30+ year old primers for fear of getting a squib due to incomplete firing, but 90 rounds loaded with these old primers all functioned without a problem, so I will continue to use the remaining 800 primers that I had leftover from my mis-spent youth.
The sudden stop provided a sort of "living laboratory" for the effects of handling and storage of all reloading components. I have previously posted about brass and powder so I will not repeat them here. But, I was concerned about whether or not twenty-something year old primers stored in a garage in North Texas would be any good. Since primers were comparatively cheap and were readily available, I decided to buy new primers for use as I returned to reloading.
But once I was back into the swing of things, I decided to try out the primers that I had left over from my "former life". My CCI small rifle primers all had a Gibson's sticker on them which tells me they had to have been bought no later than May 1983 (when I graduated from college for the second time). I loaded 48 rounds of LC74 & LC80 5.56x45 brass with these geriatric primers. The load was 20.8 grains of IMR 4198 under a 45 grain Speer soft point bullet. Every one of them performed flawlessly. A further 42 rounds of mixed brass was also loaded using 19.5 grains of IMR 4198 and 55 grain FMJ bullets. These also performed flawlessly.
I had been apprehensive about using 30+ year old primers for fear of getting a squib due to incomplete firing, but 90 rounds loaded with these old primers all functioned without a problem, so I will continue to use the remaining 800 primers that I had leftover from my mis-spent youth.