primers extending after shooting- 30 remington

[aumuddy]

After firing some reloaded brass , 30 remington, I have noticed some of the primers starting to stick out. probably a 1/64". It is not due to overloading as the loads crono at less than 2000 FPS. Has anyone observed this?. Should I just keep these cases or discard?

[wncchester]

You have resized the cases too far and set your shoulders back that much more than they should have been. And your load is too light to push the cases back to reseat the primers flush. You haven't harmed anything...yet.

[aumuddy]

Thanks for the information. Would you please explain that another way. Not sure I understand.

[F. Guffey]

primers extending after shooting- 30 remington

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After firing some reloaded brass , 30 Remington, I have noticed some of the primers starting to stick out. probably a 1/64". It is not due to overloading as the loads crono at less than 2000 FPS. Has anyone observed this?. Should I just keep these cases or discard?

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30 Remington, once named the 30-30 Remington, shooters became confused, they thought Remington manufactured ammo for the 30-30 and Winchester manufactured ammo for the 30-30 etc.. that was before the Internet.

We will assume your guess of 1/64” inch is close, 1/64” is equivalent to .015”+, I could say that is not a problem but then I would have to qualify the answer with ‘FOR ME’, for everyone else that is excessive to the point the chamber from the bolt face to the shoulder of the chamber is longer than your full length sized/minimum length case by .015”. To say ‘no harm’ is not true, if some of your primers are protruding and some are seated flush there is a chance some of the cases stretched between the case head and case body when fired, meaning some of the cases could have stretched on the cases with the seated primers.

I am the fan of cutting down on all that case travel, back to no harm. If after firing a case the shooter notices the primer is protruding it is important for the shooter to understand the case head is not supported. It is incorrect for the shooter to assume the case dead did not stretch, the assumption should be ‘the case did not stretch enough between the case head and case body to reach the bolt face. Then there are the slide and glide shooters, they grease their cases to allow the case to find ‘it’s own center’, slide and glide shooters are found under the heading ‘BENCH RESTERS’, my opinion ‘greasing your bullets is a bad habit, it got started when everyone took each other too seriously and no one questioned the answers’. Again, I am the fan of reducing all that case travel so I determine the length of the chamber first, then form, then fire.

You have a 30 Remington, you have fired the 30 Remington, you need to start measuring the length of the case before and again after to determine the difference in length between the chamber and cases being fired. Caution: Do not get hung-up on the snap-back, jump-back or spring-back thing, 1/64” (.015”) is a lot of case travel.

If I was shooting the 30 Remington and while shooting it I noticed the primers protruding I would measure the height? of the protruding primer ‘THEN’ with a feeler gage I would transfer that measurement to the press by adjusting the die off the shell holder an equivalent amount less .002” thousandths.

Example” If the primer is protruding .010” I would adjust the die off the shell holder with the ram up .008”. After adjusting the die to the feeler gage (setting on the shell holder) I would secure the die to the press with the lock ring ‘and’ not allow the die to move while securing the lock ring. If after sizing a few cases I find the cases chambering with resistance I would decrease the gap between the shell holder and bottom of the die.

Again, I have one Eddystone M1917 with a chamber that is .016” longer than a minimum/full length sized case, back to ‘no problem’, I adjust the sizing die off the shell holder .014” thousands when forming cases for the long chamber, it does not give the reloader much to think about but the last .016” of ram travel offers resistance to sizing, it is possible for the case to whip the press, as in offer more resistance to sizing then the press has ability to size.

F. Guffey

[Sure Shot Mc Gee]

Dies set up wrong in your press i.e. (re-sizer die set to tight up against its shell-holder) or perhaps a reduced loading not up to required pressure to push the cartridge case fully back up against its bolt enough to re-seat the fired primmer after its firing. (shells do develop a loose primmer pocket after a few firing thus causing primers to back out slightly upon your cartridges firing) I believe is being said by wncchester._

[F. Guffey]

“Dies set up wrong in your press i.e. (re-sizer die set to tight up against its shell-holder) or perhaps a reduced loading not up to required pressure to push the cartridge case fully back up against its bolt enough to re-seat the fired primmer after its firing. (shells do develop a loose primmer pocket after a few firing thus causing primers to back out slightly upon your cartridges firing) I believe is being said by wncchester._”

Aumuddy ask:

“Thanks for the information. Would you please explain that another way. Not sure I understand.”

Then Sure shot Mc gee said:

“or perhaps a reduced loading not up to required pressure to push the cartridge case fully back up against its bolt enough to re-seat the fired primmer after its firing”

To avoid confusing Aumuddy, the case does not move back to seat the primer, if the case moved back? the case would have moved back and seated the primer, the case locked onto the chamber when fired (read the question again), not all the primers were protruding ‘WHY? We do not know if Aumuddy has sized his cases with inconstant case length, as in some long and some short. "As I said “cases that have been greased do not lock to the chamber, grease allow the case to slide and glide” in my opinion greasing your bullets is a bad habit, I know, bench resters grease their bullets, they always leave out/fail to inform the shooting public there is a difference between the shooting publics rifle and the bench resters rifle, even then if the bench rester was a case former fire forming would not be necessary, bench testers grease their bullets and call it fire forming.

F. Guffey

[aumuddy]

I'll do some measuring and get back to you guys. Hollidays and little kids arround. Merry Christmas to all of you loaders.

[steve4102]

Backed out primers is also a sign of a "weak" load.

[Mike Irwin]

Uhm...

What rifle?

A bolt action?

A semi-automatic?

A slide action?

This situation could very well be caused not by resizing problems, but by issues with the gun itself, or even the type of action.

[wncchester]

No matter what action is being used the 'problem' is excessive headspace that allows the primers to back out at detonation. If the shoulders are at the correct location to fill the head space the primers cannot back out.

Setting case shoulders correctly requires either a gage of some sort OR some experimentation in FL sizing and chambering until the action closes with just a barely perceptable touch of drag. Once the location of the sized shoulder is known, Guffy's method of using a feeler gage to find the shell holder-to-die gap for that shell holder and die makes it easy enough to duplicate if the die's lock ring gets moved. But feeler gages can only measure what's right, it can't FIND what's right; that's up to the reloader himself.

[aumuddy]

Rifle is a semi-auto Remington Model 8, 30 Remington, Made in in 1910. (I chronographed my first loads at 1970 Avg then doppped my loads to 1950 Avg for current shooting). I am currently using 170 GR FP Hornady Interlock bullets with 30 GR of 4320 powder. Winchester primers.
Although I have been reloading pistol round for 25 years, this is my first serious dive into reloading for rifle. Pretty good learning curve, although it has been fun and I havent blown up rifle.
Some of the things I have been thu:
Lead bullets, I gave up on because I could not get a group at 25 yds.
I learned about annealing, because the cases started cracking that the shoulder.
After all of this I decided to get my chronograph out of storage and use it.

I have been running the sizing die all the way to the shell holder, but based on feed back from this forum I will raise it up based on the measurements that I will make on the cases.
After company leaves I will get serious about the primers sticking out/measure cases.
Merry Christmas and Happy new year to all of you loaders.

[Bart B.]

I doubt those cases used were sized too much in a full length sizing die. I've seen the same thing happen with brand new cases as well as full length sized ones whose case headspace is only 2 thousandths less than chamber headspace.

What's happening is the firing pin drives the case so hard into the chamber its shoulder gets set back a few thousandths from that impact. The case is "sized" such that it now has insufficient case headspace. And there's several thousandths of head clearance between the bolt face and case head at this time. How much depends on the friction between case and chamber, shoulder angle and its surface area, firing pin impact force and primer cup hardness. Get out your case headspace gauge then pop some primers in primed cases without powder and bullet and see how much shoulder setback there is. Holland & Holland learned about this over a hundred years ago when they took the rim off a double rifle case with very little shoulder taper and made it rimless for use in bolt action rifles; they had to put a belt on it to prevent shoulder set back yet allow its use in box magazines without feeding problems.

When the round fires, the front of the case grips the chamber walls first and that pressure pushes the primer out of its pocket a bit until it stops against the bolt face. (Yes, all primers get pushed out of their pockets as the round fires and pressure starts building up.) Then the back end of the case gets pushed back as pressure peaks until the case head stops against the bolt face. If there's not enough pressure to do that, the primer stays pushed out.

This typically starts happening when powder charges are more than about 10% below maximum. I've run a couple of tests just to prove this is reality.

Solution? Put a bit more powder in the case if it's a reduced load.

Note that those cases with their shoulders set back should not be reloaded unless the shoulder can be moved forward enough to meet SAAMI specs. Otherwise, you'll end up with case head separations as the brass won't be able to stretch any more. And the case neck may start getting long enough to prevent chambering.