Gone Hiking
Member
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2019
- Messages
- 177
My Dillon 550 press sends many spent primers errant. Instead of going into the spent primer container, quite a few spent primers go onto the floor, the press, the bench, and sometimes into the blue container on the front of the press that holds the empty brass. I've often wondered what may happen if a spent primer found its way into an empty pistol case that I reloaded. I assumed it would be fired out the barrel, but this week I learned that's not necessarily the case.
While reloading 9mm cases, one of them wouldn't go into the resizing/depriming die. I pulled the case and inspected it. It was a piece of FC brass, and inside the bottom of the case was another primer, cup facing up, that had welded itself by way of primer flow into the flash hole. I used a pick to free it out.
I don't believe this was a spent factory load I had picked up, because one primer was brass, and the other nickel plated. If I had to guess the mechanism, I'd say the spent primer was probably resting at the aft end of the case when it fired and was pushed completely rearward. The heat / pressure before the barrel unlocked was probably great enough to cause the tiny column of primer flow that I saw into the flash hole, locking it in place. It did not appear to damage the brass case, but I pitched it anyway. In any case, I've never encountered this in 10's of thousands of reloads and just found it interesting enough to share.
While reloading 9mm cases, one of them wouldn't go into the resizing/depriming die. I pulled the case and inspected it. It was a piece of FC brass, and inside the bottom of the case was another primer, cup facing up, that had welded itself by way of primer flow into the flash hole. I used a pick to free it out.
I don't believe this was a spent factory load I had picked up, because one primer was brass, and the other nickel plated. If I had to guess the mechanism, I'd say the spent primer was probably resting at the aft end of the case when it fired and was pushed completely rearward. The heat / pressure before the barrel unlocked was probably great enough to cause the tiny column of primer flow that I saw into the flash hole, locking it in place. It did not appear to damage the brass case, but I pitched it anyway. In any case, I've never encountered this in 10's of thousands of reloads and just found it interesting enough to share.
