Primer strike no combustion

[Kalebrown10]

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I'm not sure if I should post this here, so here goes.


I was reloading .270 win today. I loaded it with the same steps i load my pistol rounds. I had no problems with those rounds. However, when it comes to the .270 I get a primer impact with no combustion of the primer. I fired a factory round and had no problem with the rifle. PLEASE HELP!
DATA:
Winchester 70 .270
Federal large rifle primers
Winchester brass (NEW)
Nosler accubond long range 150 grain
IMR4350@ 52.6Gr

[Slamfire]

Go read this first:

Mysteries And Misconceptions Of The All-Important Primer

http://www.shootingtimes.com/ammo/am...motaip_200909/

According to the article, the most common cause of misfires is high primers. The primer anvil has to be firmly seated, and then the cup/primer cake, pushed on to it, setting the "bridge distance". So, maybe that is your problem.

I had this one:




I reamed the primer pockets too deep and firmly seated the primer, but none of the primers went bang in my M70. It was very frustrating as this was with match ammunition and I was shooting in a 600 yard Mid range match. As you can see in the picture below, at least 20 rounds did not go bang, while I was in position, during my shooting period! However, fired every single one of those misfired rounds in my M1a, and they all went bang!

A final one, sometimes you run into a dud primer. Bad things happen. Sometimes the firing pin strike is not enough to set off the primer cake, but enough to cause the primer cake to crack. Next firing pin fall, no primer cake between the anvil and cup, and no bang.

Off center firing pin hits increase the possibility of a misfire. One of these days I will create a picture, but basically the more off center the firing pin hit, the less likely the primer is going to go off. A lot of people not merely don't know about this, they are in total denial about this:

Firing pin strike

http://thefiringline.com/forums/show...=primer+offset

On other thing, just how old is your M70? I have been very good about replacing firing pin springs. The things do wear out.

[Jim Watson]

If a misfired round goes off on the second strike, it was probably a high (improperly seated) primer. The first hammer/striker blow seated the primer all the way, the second fired it. I had a 9mm do that last week.

Rifles have limited firing pin protrusion and it is possible to seat a primer too deeply. I had some factory .25-06 cases made with too deep primer pockets. If I seated primers to the bottom of the pocket, they were out of reach. I managed to get them to go off by seating just below flush, but that was not really right and accuracy was mediocre.

[Sure Shot Mc Gee]

700 models are notorious for having their firing pins factory tighten down to much by its bolt shroud. _One other item.

CCI rifle primers. I prefer Federal's or Winchester before CCI use. Remington & off shore made are non starters for me.

Seat the primers deeper. Than take your bolt apart and clean its firing pin & spring assembly as one piece and bolt as best you can and lightly re-oil with Rem-oil Not CLP as CLP's viscosity thickens in the cold.

[Tallest]

I agree with checking primer depth. I’m pretty new to reloading, and haven’t encountered this, but I’d like to learn from it. I would be interested to know, how many did you test?

Also, and this is just me, but I’d pull your bullets and dump your cases before attempting to seat the primers any deeper!


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[Marco Califo]

This is almost always caused by not seating primers deeply enough. The proof is your factory rounds work. You really need to press primers into place FIRMLY. They can take it.
If not, your firing pin wastes some of its energy pushing the primer in until the anvil legs find bottom. That lost energy does not leave enough to crunch the priming compound between the anvil and the striking surface of the primer.
Rifle primers also vary, some having even thicker cups, designed for military rifles or magnum chamberings.
I prefer to prime as a separate step with a Hand operated primer. Mine is an RCBS. I can immediately inspect the result. It generally takes more force than you would think to seat primers. I usually see pressure marks on the striking surface of primers I seat, where the seating rod contacts the primer. They should never protrude above the brass. And seating just below the brass is very normal.

[Kalebrown10]

I tested 6 rounds. I am also new to this, so I will tell you the outcome.

[44 AMP]

What are you seating your primers, with??

I used the press mounted arm for a long time, but sometimes I really had to put a lot of pressure on them to seat them right. Then I tried one of the Lee hand primers, and could really feel when the primer was fully seated, and without a lot of pressure to do it.

Moved to the RCBS hand primer, with a primer supply onboard, and haven't gone back since. Yes, its not as convenient as a press mounted system, but for me, it works BETTER. (and I used Lyman, RCBS and Dillon press systems)

I do my loading in batch steps, gave up on progressive presses over a decade ago, but that's just me...

[F. Guffey]

Kalebrown10, There is nothing suspect about the dent in your primers, I use killer firing pins, when I pull the trigger my firing pins take up all of the slack.

I have busted primers that have been hit 6 times. I do have one rifle has a suspect speed, the problem is the distance it travels and the short time it has to get there.

I took it apart and said something like; "WHAT?" And then: I thought about accuracy, time and distance and left it on the accuracy side.

F. Guffey

[RC20]

The only difference between factory and your reloads looks to be your primer seating vs factory. You used new cases and those are likely to be very close.

Firing pins have amazingly narrow range of function, I wonder they work at all

That said, seat the primer fully at depth. It should be .003 to .005 below the case rim.

Seated too high, the primer moves as the firing pin hits it.

Often once the dent is there it won't fire on a second attempt as its partly caved in (poor terminology but expresses it) and there is not enough further denting to created the needed affect of the exterior and the anvil allowing detonation. .

[Fotheringill]

Don't yell on me, but are sure there is powder in the case?

[jamaica]

Hmmm..... I have always pushed the primers all the way in till they hit bottom. The only duds I had was where the primer somehow got in upside down or sidewise. Have fun!

[tangolima]

Primers just need to bottom out in the pocket. No need to seat them any deeper than that.

What is the fire pin tip diameter and protrusion? Any headspace issue in that rifle?

-TL

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[Unclenick]

Tangolima,

Naval Ordnance at Indian Head and Remington and Olin and Federal disagree with you. The anvil should be compressed at least 0.002" past mere contact with the bottom of the primer pocket for the most reliable and consistent ignition. Remington and Olin used to specify 0.002" to 0.006" below the contact point. They referred to this as reconsolidation, meaning assembly of the primer is the first consolidation of the primer components and setting the bridge thickness of priming mix between the cup and anvil tip at seating was the second consolidation. NOIH did a bunch of testing and came back saying 0.002"-0.004" reconsolidation produced the highest reliability. Federal simply says 0.002" for small primers and 0.003" for large primers.

This whole matter became an issue in the early 90's when the late Creighton Audette published his last writing before he died. It was on the primer as analog rather than digital device, meaning you could vary ignition effectiveness and reliability by how hard the anvil was pressed against the priming mix, and that it was not simply a matter of igniting or not igniting. You actually get more consistent primer flame temperature and ignition speed doing this. Auddette proposed, by verbal description, what was to became the Sinclair primer seating tool as a way to feel what was happening to the primer better. Then K&M came along with their Primer Gauge Tool which actually lets you measure reconsolidation on a dial indicator on an individual case-and-primer-by-case-and-primer basis.

Writing two or three years after Audette, another benchrest shooter, the late Dan Hackett wrote:

"There is some debate about how deeply primers should be seated. I don’t pretend to have all the answers about this, but I have experimented with seating primers to different depths and seeing what happens on the chronograph and target paper, and so far I’ve obtained my best results seating them hard, pushing them in past the point where the anvil can be felt hitting the bottom of the pocket. Doing this, I can almost always get velocity standard deviations of less than 10 feet per second, even with magnum cartridges and long-bodied standards on the ’06 case, and I haven’t been able to accomplish that seating primers to lesser depths."

Dan Hackett
Precision Shooting Reloading Guide, Precision Shooting Inc., Pub. (R.I.P.), Manchester, CT, 1995, p. 271.

[tangolima]

Unclenick,

Sorry I wasn't clear on what I meant bottoming out. The vertical wall of the primer touches the bottom of the pocket. Any deeper something would have to give / be crushed. That would be quite deep enough.

-TL

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[Chainsaw.]

You didnt get oil on the primers did ya?

[Jim Watson]

Spec for extra light DA competition revolvers.
Federal Primers hand seated 0.010" below flush.

[gwpercle]

Seat all primers until they bottom out in the pocket, when you feel them hit bottom, spin the case 180 degrees in the shell holder and apply a little more pressure , make sure that primer is bottom dead center all the way in.
Don't bother measuring anything...if the primer is good , it will fire on the first strike. An old shooter told me this method pre-sensitized the priming compound ( I'm not sure that part ) but doing it does improve reliability.
A hand held priming tool and this method of seating has solved all my " Light Strike" and faulty primer problems. They no longer happen...it wasn't the primers or the gun .
Try it just once.
Gary

[Stats Shooter]

Tis' rarely the case, but in the tens upon tens of thousands of primers I have purchased, I had one brick of bad CCI 250 primers. I know it was the primers because I had 4 different guns to try them in, 3 or them were the same cartridge and one was a lever action with a heavy hammer. Multiple attempts to fire the "duds" proved fruitless. About 1/15 would not fire.

I tried a different brick, different lot, and problem went away.

But, I will say, that bad primers are the exception, not the rule.

[Kalebrown10]

lol. Yes I had a charge in it. I also did not have oil on the primers.

[Mal H]

Going solely on the images you supplied, I think several have correctly diagnosed your failure-to-fire problem. You haven't seated the primers deep enough in the pocket. In the second image, I would swear you can see a good portion of the side of the primer which you should not be able to see at that angle, or any angle for that matter. If you still have that case intact, place a straight edge across the base and see what you find.

The first image has good focus on your glove, but the primer is so out of focus as to make that image useless for analysis.

[cdoc42]

I'd suggest before you fill the case with powder, stand the primed case on the bench top. If it rocks at all, rather than being flat, reseat that primer with a bit of pressure on it until the case stands flat. High primers can also make it appear your finished cartridge has the bullet not seated deeply enough, causing you to blame bullet imperfection, thick case necks, etc. Before you reset the die for that round, stand that cartridge on the bench to see if it rocks.

[Unclenick]

Tangolima,

If the cup edge touches the bottom, it's gone too far. If you look sideways at a primer, the anvil feet are sticking up more than 0.002"-0.004". So what you are looking to do is feel the anvil feet just kiss the bottom of the pocket (when the resistance goes up noticeably) and then go 0.002"-0.004" deeper. It won't be far enough for the sides of the cup to touch the floor of the primer pocket, though.

I think I'm seeing what Mal does, but the focus problem makes it impossible to really be sure.

[Reloadron]

Going back to Slamfire's post where he mentions:

According to the article, the most common cause of misfires is high primers. The primer anvil has to be firmly seated, and then the cup/primer cake, pushed on to it, setting the "bridge distance". So, maybe that is your problem.

Also UncleNick's comments:

With that in mind let's take a look at a few primers up close and personal right out of the box:


Looking closely it becomes apparent the primer anvil extends just a fraction of an inch, a very small fraction, above the rim of the primer cup. When I seat a primer I seat it till the primer "bottoms out" in the primer pocket. When this is done correctly the seated primer should be sitting just below the case head. Generally about 0.003" to 0.005" depending on the starting primer cup height. This looks a little like the below image if we place a straight edge across the case head.


When a primer is seated correctly and assuming a firearm with in specification firing pin protrusion and force, the primer will detonate and do its job. The fact that a rifle shoots fine with factory loaded ammunition is a good indicator that firing pin protrusion and force and within specification.

Ron

[mikld]

Yep, a whole bunch of good info and theory, but for starters and K.I.S.S., just make sure you seat the primers all the way to the bottom of the pocket and disregard "below flush" measurements for now. Primers need a solid "platform" to work and if you eliminate this as a problem (and it could possibly solve your problem) then you can look at other potential problems.

I started reloading handgun ammo and never had a "dud" after looked at a primer and figgered out how it works. I had one gun that would not work with a specific primer (striker fired plastic gun and Winchester primers. I researched and found the I had to "preload" or "sensitize" the primer. Seat all the way to the bottom of the pocket and add a bit more pressure, got 100% firing after that), but every one of my 15 cartridges I reload, handgun and rifle, work well in my stock guns with just making sure the primers are seated correctly. Works for me for 30+ years...