Do Primers have an "expiration date".

J

jchaplin

Inactive
My buddy's dad was a sniper in the military and before he got sick and passed away he had acquired a ridiculous amount of reloading supplies in multiple calibers. Which is now all in my basement where we will set it up and go through what is usable vrs "outdated" and see if we are missing any major components. There are thousands of primers (possibly from the 70's), a few lbs of powder, I know the brass and bullets don't care about age. Have supplies to reload shotgun shells to. I will likely be posting equipment questions to see if we have what we need. I will reload .308, he will likely do 7 mag and 22-250.

We both deer hunt so I will probably produce 100 or so rounds for that. but I want to work on long-range shooting so 75% of my production will be for the range. He only hunts. Looking forward to this journey.
 
Yes, they do have an expiration date.
When you shoot 'em.
I have primers that must be twenty five years old, at least, and they are still ok.
And ammo from the seventies, that also still shoot just fine, primers and all.
Unless they've been subjected to damage, don't sweat it.
Although it wouldn't hurt to try a few of the real old ones before using them to reload.
Just install them in empty cases and fire them in the gun they are intended for.
 
Primers don't go bad. Powder and ammo might. Depends on how it has been stored. Highly unlikely a military trained guy would not store stuff right though.
Be kind of surprised if you don't have everything you need. Mind you, it's possible something might have been stored in a 'safe spot' too.
That amount of stuff needs to be sorted according to size and purpose first. Size would be large and small rifle and pistol, large and small magnum rifle and pistol and shotgun. Save you a lot of headaches in the long run.
And stuff you don't need/want are trading goods.
 
Thanks, Yeah it is all compartmentalized in small boxes. Smokeless powder and regular powder unopened. casings are bagged and have primers removed already. I think he has a rifle in every caliber that he has reload stuff for. I only have the .308 I can reload. others are .22 mag and .22lr.
 
The ones from the 70's still work

While cleaning out some of my reloading stuff, I found 300 LPP from the late 70's early 80's. They all ignited with no problems....at all. They had been stored indoors the whole time.
 
I guess it might depend on how the primers were stored, but I haven't babied any of mine. (though I'm much wiser now and they are all stored indoors). My oldest ones were stored in a shed, and they date back at least to 1982. Though the packaging may show they were much older, 'cause that's when I bought them. I also inherited some old CCI's, they go off just as good as the new ones.
 
Skeeter Skelton wrote that he had some 44 Special reloads that were duds, said he used Unique that he had left in a plastic hopper, saw the insides of the hopper were granulated, surmised there had been a chemical reaction between the plastic and the powder, said after that he emptied the powder back into its container after every reloading session.
 
I still have some CCI primers from the 70s and they have all worked so far.

I did get some from my Dad that had been sitting in his un-conditioned work shop that had corroded from improper storage. I threw maybe 700 of those in the trash after soaking them for a week.....just in case.

Last year a buddy shot a deer, two pigs, and a turkey with some hand loads that I had dated from 1976. They also had CCI primers in them under some H4895.
 
The best way to preserve them for the future is to stuff them in a piece of brass, coat them with some smokeless powder, and cover the other end with a chunk of lead or other suitable stopper. I too have both shotgun shells and rifle reloads from the mid-70's.
 
I just picked up a few thousand Winchester shotshell primers from an old timer who doesn't reload anymore, they are from the 70's and they all go bang.
 
While I no longer have anything, primers or powder, dating back to the 70s (I started rolling my own in 1972) this past summer I loaded with quite a bit of primers and powder going back to the early to mid 1990s. As long as powder and primers are stored correctly they all work just fine. That has been my experience anyway.

Ron
 
Primers seem pretty rugged. Any high potential energy chemistry will break down, given enough time and heat, but primers seem to hold up more like black powder does than like smokeless, which is to say, a long time. I was told at Gunsite that the locals had discovered that leaving ammunition in the trunk of a car through the Arizona summer could kill it, but I don't know the mechanism. The powder would certainly have a hard time with that and it may be that the powder breakdown contaminated the primers rather than them deteriorating directly. I just don't know.
 
IF your basement is DRY, and somewhat temperature stable its fine.

If its DAMP, find another place for your components & tools.

Unless subjected to heat or corrosion, primers are stable for decades or much longer.

Ammo from the 1870s still mostly fires. in the 1970s I shot a bunch of 1918 .30-06 and .45ACP. It ALL fired fine, though the 06 hit 6" low at 100yds, compared to modern ammo...:)
 
I can only share my experience with primers. I still have and use, primers from the early '80s (only because that's when I started buying in bulk). I have not gone to any extraordinary lengths to "protect" from the elements and they are all stored in their original sleeves in bricks in a Tupperware tub, not hermetically sealed. I lived approx. 1 1/2 mi. from the ocean for 27 years and temps were between lower 40s to 110 degrees. Humidity was normally high in winter (80-100%) and bone dry during a "Santa Anna". Seven ears ago I moved, roughly 1,000 yards from the ocean in very wet, rainy coastal Oregon with temps from lower 30s to a bit over 100 on occasion. I have not found a "bad" primer in all that time...

I haven't tried "killing" any primers in many years and all those I have are pretty tough...:cool:
 
Primer formulations have changed over time, and the older corrosive primers are a simple chemistry and have demonstrated great lifespan. The early non-corrosive primers made first in Switzerland in about 1905 and that were developed here in the 1920's, used mercury compounds like fulminates that had short life expectancy and which caused brass to embrittle and be useless for reloading. The first non-corrosive, non-mercuric primers did not show up until the late 1930's. But the first formulations had problems and were bulky and did not meet military testing standards, so the formulations continued to be juggle, and were not satisfactory to the military until the early 1950's, when they began to be adopted (1952-1953, IIRC), so we can only be sure a reasonable approximation of a modern formulation dates back to around then, or about 65 years.
 
A friend of mine who shoots a LOT had his basement flood last winter. The water got into some of his primers, several hundred of them. He put them near a source of dry heat and let them sit for a week until they looked dry and "normal". After the week was up he loaded several hundred into some 12ga hulls he had and took them out sporting clays shooting. Each and every one fired with no problems. These things were soaked. He called the manufacturer about why they still worked and was told that the priming compound material was water based/soluble and if they got wet and then dried they'd work. I'd guess in some cases this might not be true depending on whether or not the water had contaminates in it or was moving water and washed the compound away, but in his case the worked. My point is: soaking primers won't deactivate them if you're thinking of disposing of them. I'm not suggesting letting them get wet and thinking it's OK to do so. My friend just wanted to see what would happen with them. He was willing to sacrifice some shotgun shells to find out.
 
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