meinbruder
Member
About a year or so back, I started getting the odd failure to fire from my reloads; four or five per hundred, a high enough number to be annoying. My first assumption was operator error on the seating depth; more attention to detail should be the cure. Visual inspection and tactile testing showed depth to be correct but the failures continued.
The typical failure is a click of the hammer drop on the cartridge, open the cylinder to see a shallow mark on the primer, back it up and it fires on the next hammer drop. Ahah! The seating depth is again the suspect, as the hammer drop finished seating on the first try. Or did it? I’ve tried mashing the primers down to the point of flattening them down and the failures continue; four or five per hundred.
Okay, how about the revolver? It had a trigger job by a former optimist so I took the grip off and turned in a screw to put a tad more pressure behind the hammer. It seemed a little dry so a couple of drops of oil in the right places might help. The next box fired just fine. By George I think I’ve Got It!! Open box number two and get a click in the third cylinder and then another in the sixth, great the failures are down to two per hundred. Well that’s a 100% improvement, right?
Primer metal hardness? I’ve read here on THR that CCI primers are the “hardest” and that’s what I normally use but the failures started with Winchester primers which are the “softest”, also according to what I’ve read here. Okay, one last idea.
I’ve been loading these cases for almost twenty years; the shooting budget has varied over time so they get loaded once or twice a year. The lot of them had been trimmed to length for uniformity so they’re about ten thousandths under size and the dies have been adjusted to suit them. I’ve always punched out the primers and cleaned the pockets, before loading the next cycle, with the little wire pocket cleaner and gotten a pile of soot with some noticeable brass specks in it. I just bought a motorized “gee-whiz” RCBS cleaning station and the brass flecks are even more noticeable. Have I deepened the primer pockets? ….enough to cause the failures? ….am I grasping a straw?
I load 9mm, .45acp, .30carbine, and recently started loading .357 again. The only caliber that is failing at this point is the 44mag. The pistols and carbine have floating firing pins, the primer pockets would have to get really deep to be a problem. The revolvers are a S&W28 and S&W29 which have a fixed pin on the hammer, pocket depth might very well be a factor. The M28 is a replacement for the one stolen fifteen years ago so the brass is “half” the age of the M29 brass, if that makes any sense. I’m curious to see if failures show up in it. I suppose I should buy some new .44 factory loads to see if they all fire without a problem.
I don’t mind replacing old brass but I know some of these cases by first name. Your thoughts and comments are more than welcome.
Mike
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The typical failure is a click of the hammer drop on the cartridge, open the cylinder to see a shallow mark on the primer, back it up and it fires on the next hammer drop. Ahah! The seating depth is again the suspect, as the hammer drop finished seating on the first try. Or did it? I’ve tried mashing the primers down to the point of flattening them down and the failures continue; four or five per hundred.
Okay, how about the revolver? It had a trigger job by a former optimist so I took the grip off and turned in a screw to put a tad more pressure behind the hammer. It seemed a little dry so a couple of drops of oil in the right places might help. The next box fired just fine. By George I think I’ve Got It!! Open box number two and get a click in the third cylinder and then another in the sixth, great the failures are down to two per hundred. Well that’s a 100% improvement, right?
Primer metal hardness? I’ve read here on THR that CCI primers are the “hardest” and that’s what I normally use but the failures started with Winchester primers which are the “softest”, also according to what I’ve read here. Okay, one last idea.
I’ve been loading these cases for almost twenty years; the shooting budget has varied over time so they get loaded once or twice a year. The lot of them had been trimmed to length for uniformity so they’re about ten thousandths under size and the dies have been adjusted to suit them. I’ve always punched out the primers and cleaned the pockets, before loading the next cycle, with the little wire pocket cleaner and gotten a pile of soot with some noticeable brass specks in it. I just bought a motorized “gee-whiz” RCBS cleaning station and the brass flecks are even more noticeable. Have I deepened the primer pockets? ….enough to cause the failures? ….am I grasping a straw?
I load 9mm, .45acp, .30carbine, and recently started loading .357 again. The only caliber that is failing at this point is the 44mag. The pistols and carbine have floating firing pins, the primer pockets would have to get really deep to be a problem. The revolvers are a S&W28 and S&W29 which have a fixed pin on the hammer, pocket depth might very well be a factor. The M28 is a replacement for the one stolen fifteen years ago so the brass is “half” the age of the M29 brass, if that makes any sense. I’m curious to see if failures show up in it. I suppose I should buy some new .44 factory loads to see if they all fire without a problem.
I don’t mind replacing old brass but I know some of these cases by first name. Your thoughts and comments are more than welcome.
Mike
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