primers that have been in storage for awhile

[Herk30]

A friend recently gave me a box of brass, bullets, primers and dies that he's had in his basement in a cardboard box for maybe six or eight years. Everything looks like brand new, no rust on the dies or anything. My only concern is the primers. Can they be stored in that manner for a period of time and still be ok? I guess worst case is they won't go off, but I don't want to reload 1,000 rounds of duds either. I thought about randomly picking 20 or so and see how they work, but I figured I'd pick the minds here first.

 

[esheato]

Cool and dry are the key words.

Basement storage should be fine.

Yes, I would load a small batch before cranking them out.

 

[Trent]

I've shot 1960's manufactured CCI primers as lately as this year. Every single one has fired fine, and I've gone through several thousand of them (I inherited them from my late uncle Joe back in the early 2000's).

They bulk packed primers quite differently back then, by the way. A "brick" of 1000 is very, very tiny. They were all in little black trays, stacked neatly from front to back in rows of 10, no separation or spacing between them whatsoever.

 

[jcwit]

If still got and have lately "this last summer" Large Rifle Primers made in the 1940's.

They all go BANG.

I have even used primers that somehow got dumped into the cats water dish, let them dry out in the sun for a week or two in the window. They also all went BANG.

All in all primers are pretty tough. Till hit with a firing pin.

 

[jcwit]

They bulk packed primers quite differently back then, by the way. A "brick" of 1000 is very, very tiny. They were all in little black trays, stacked neatly from front to back in rows of 10, no separation or spacing between them whatsoever.

Those I mentioned from the 1940's are packed in wooden trays.

 

[Slamfire]

I know an insensitive munitions expert and I asked him the shelf life of primers. He said indefinite. It might be indefinite for the munitions community as powder deteriorates before the primer, and powder shelf life is a minimum of 20 years for double based powders.

I did find in an early 60’s American Rifleman magazine a similar question. The response was that primers had shelf lives in terms of decades. That primers will slowly deteriorate, a few will misfire, then more. I know I used 30 and 40 year old primers without any duds, but I have had duds with old military surplus ammunition.

Saeed, the system administrator for the accuratereloading.com forum tried to dud primers with WD40. It took a lot of soaking time before any misfired.

http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2511043/m/2241051161?r=5631048161#5631048161

 

[Herk30]

Interesting, thanks guys

 

[BYJO4]

I recently used several thousand primers that were about 30 years old with no problems at all. They had been kept in a dry basement.

 

[mbopp]

I picked up shooting and reloading after a 25 year lapse. All my primers went "bang!" They had to - I got back into the sport at the tail end of the component shortage.