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Old October 10, 2006, 07:54 PM   #16
Smokey Joe
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Join Date: July 14, 2001
Location: State of Confusion
Posts: 2,106
Primers you don't want in cases you do

Cpaspr--
Quote:
but why detonate the primer?
You will note that I said there were better ways of dealing with primers. The detonating in-case was done years ago and I can't remember why I thought it was a good idea. It WAS instructive to see the size of the flashes those little things produce.

Stephen426--It isn't the primer so much as it is saving the case. (Wrong primer put in by mistake, or some such. It happens.) And many, many TFL'ers report pushing out live primers in a loading press, successfully. You go slow, take it easy, and the primer ooshes out with no problem. Having detonated quite a number deliberately, I can tell you that it takes a sharp rap to set them off. A soft hit, or just pressure from a decapping pin, isn't going to set off primers. Nevertheless, they are explosives--NEVER remove primers from cases without ear/eye/hand protection. If you were to set one off while removing it, with the cartridge case surrounded by the resize die and plugged with the decapping pin shaft, and the flash hole plugged by the decapping pin itself, the path of least resistance would be for the primer itself to be blown down the spent primer chute, and into the primer catcher. Surprising, noisy, but not horribly hazardous. I'd rather do that than, say, poke a grizzly bear with a stick. Obviously you would have cleared your work area of other hazards such as other primers, powder, loose paper, etc, etc.

Experimentally, I've re-inserted primers into cases after removing them, and then loaded up the cases in an otherwise normal manner. The rounds all fired normally, with no primer-associated problems. Even so, I'd not re-use removed primers as a regular thing--I agree with you that the primers are inexpensive enough to not use twice.
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