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Has anyone ever seen green rcbs primers?
- Thread starter briandg
- Start date
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=346192&highlight=killing+primers
Post #2
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=188291
Post #2, see how far the myth goes? Post #3 says just the opposite.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=188952&highlight=killing+primers
A good test.
Above is from;
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=665612&highlight=killing+primers
Post #9
Ned more, tomorrow, right now I'm tired!
Post #2
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=188291
Post #2, see how far the myth goes? Post #3 says just the opposite.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=188952&highlight=killing+primers
A good test.
Primers...
Here, too--I've deprimed live primers and re-seated them, and they all went bang with results not observably different from first-time primers. If you take your time they don't go off, and if they do go off it's no big deal.
Back when I was reloading with a Lee hammer-it-in kit, is the only time I ever popped a primer while seating it, which was no big deal. "BANG!" and a little smoke comes up around your hand which is holding the die over the brass and primer seater. Drive out the primer with the decapping rod, resize the case, reprime the case--more gently this time--and reload as usual. That happened, oh, perhaps 3-4 times, over several years, before I got hold of a used Rock Chucker press.
BTW, if you choose not to re-use the removed primers, oil will NOT reliably deactivate 100% of them. This has been tested to death, and argued to death previously. No household chemical will kill 100% of your primers, none. All the oil is doing, Steel Talon, is making you feel better about putting the discarded primers in the trash. Primers are killed 100% by only 2 things: Heat, or Percussion. A fire would do it--NOT RECOMMENDED!!! Or put each one on a rock and hit it with a hammer. Using hand/eye/ear protection of course.
Please don't lets re-argue the issue of killing unwanted primers--Please. It's all been said and done already.
Above is from;
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=665612&highlight=killing+primers
Post #9
Ned more, tomorrow, right now I'm tired!
All good links, but again, all just here say and unscientific opinions on the internet. The secret is time. A SCIENTIFIC experiment was conducted and provided results of soaking in several chemicals and solvents including water over a period of 5 days. This was using Winchester primers.
Over time, the only one that deactivated the live primers was water.
A seperate study was conducted on Federal primers, and everything that was used killed them in 2 days.
Over time, the only one that deactivated the live primers was water.
A seperate study was conducted on Federal primers, and everything that was used killed them in 2 days.
orionengnr
New member
A SCIENTIFIC experiment was conducted and provided results of soaking in several chemicals and solvents including water over a period of 5 days. This was using Winchester primers.
Over time, the only one that deactivated the live primers was water.
A seperate study was conducted on Federal primers, and everything that was used killed them in 2 days.
Where and when?
Board member Hummer 70 once reported having a primer killed by a leak in the roof over a firing point when a drop of water landed on the primer of a live round that was nose-down in an ammo box. Other times and in other experiments, they've survived all sorts of immersion torture.
I suspect the reason for the irregularity is seal condition. Primers are generally made to resist being damaged by humidity and contaminants for reliability reasons. An lacquer or other coating applied to them can occasionally dry out and crack or fail to adhere well to the sides of the cup and so on. So I suspect you just randomly get some that are killed easily and some that aren't. I note many primers appear to have only the paper "foil" and no lacquer, and I've wondered if those have something akin to the acrylic adhesive used in some kinds of concrete mixes for water resistance. I just don't know how much of that you can get away with before you desensitize the mix unacceptably. Probably some finite amount.
In any event, primers seem to be one of the last things to die in a cartridge. I have some that squibbed irregularyl that was made in 1982, and pulled bullets showed an oily appearance that I presume was nitroglycerin weeping from the double-based stick powder in them. It had coated the powder and made it clump together as it broke down. But the primers in these rounds fired just fine. I know someone who test fired M1 Ball ammo made in the 1920's, and it was a little bit weak, but that's all. Basically worked just fine. I've seen photos of a burst M1 Garand that blew up firing military ball ammo made in the 1940's. Storage and whether the powder is single or double-base makes a big difference (with double-base breaking down in about half the time of the single-base). But nowhere have I heard of the primers going bad from any of that kind of aging or powder break-down. So, I conclude that, on average, primers have better longevity and toughness than powder. Only the old mercuric primers tended to weaken in short order (a couple of years could do it), so even though mercuric priming was one of the solutions to corrosive priming, it never became popular with military organizations, which need to be able to stockpile ammunition.
When I was at a Gunsite class we were told that as little as one summer in a trunk in Arizona could kill primers, but that's very hot; potentially over 170° for part of the day. I've not put this to the test.
Braindg,
For the above reasons, it's most likely those old primers will work. The thing you want to be aware of is that they were made before the process revamp in the early 90's which got rid of the primer cup lip burrs that CCI had before then. These make the primers harder to seat—about like Tulammo and Wolf are today—and I could never get them to seat completely reliably in my Dillon Square Deal. Had to prime by hand. They were also made before the 1989 formulation change by CCI for their magnum primers, done to improve ignition with the spherical powders available at the time (the St. Marks Western Cannon series, in particular; the same ones sold as Hodgdon and Winchester spherical powder numbers today).
I suspect the reason for the irregularity is seal condition. Primers are generally made to resist being damaged by humidity and contaminants for reliability reasons. An lacquer or other coating applied to them can occasionally dry out and crack or fail to adhere well to the sides of the cup and so on. So I suspect you just randomly get some that are killed easily and some that aren't. I note many primers appear to have only the paper "foil" and no lacquer, and I've wondered if those have something akin to the acrylic adhesive used in some kinds of concrete mixes for water resistance. I just don't know how much of that you can get away with before you desensitize the mix unacceptably. Probably some finite amount.
In any event, primers seem to be one of the last things to die in a cartridge. I have some that squibbed irregularyl that was made in 1982, and pulled bullets showed an oily appearance that I presume was nitroglycerin weeping from the double-based stick powder in them. It had coated the powder and made it clump together as it broke down. But the primers in these rounds fired just fine. I know someone who test fired M1 Ball ammo made in the 1920's, and it was a little bit weak, but that's all. Basically worked just fine. I've seen photos of a burst M1 Garand that blew up firing military ball ammo made in the 1940's. Storage and whether the powder is single or double-base makes a big difference (with double-base breaking down in about half the time of the single-base). But nowhere have I heard of the primers going bad from any of that kind of aging or powder break-down. So, I conclude that, on average, primers have better longevity and toughness than powder. Only the old mercuric primers tended to weaken in short order (a couple of years could do it), so even though mercuric priming was one of the solutions to corrosive priming, it never became popular with military organizations, which need to be able to stockpile ammunition.
When I was at a Gunsite class we were told that as little as one summer in a trunk in Arizona could kill primers, but that's very hot; potentially over 170° for part of the day. I've not put this to the test.
Braindg,
For the above reasons, it's most likely those old primers will work. The thing you want to be aware of is that they were made before the process revamp in the early 90's which got rid of the primer cup lip burrs that CCI had before then. These make the primers harder to seat—about like Tulammo and Wolf are today—and I could never get them to seat completely reliably in my Dillon Square Deal. Had to prime by hand. They were also made before the 1989 formulation change by CCI for their magnum primers, done to improve ignition with the spherical powders available at the time (the St. Marks Western Cannon series, in particular; the same ones sold as Hodgdon and Winchester spherical powder numbers today).
I believe that they would have fired, because there was no sign of poor storage. Primers are, however, not sealed and protected like ammo.
If this guy wasn't a greedy, abusive clod, I'd be a little less suspicious of his motivation, and the idea of selling salvage as new product without clearly saying so, at full price of modern product bothers me.
Seriously, every time I walk through his door, it leaves a bad taste.
Btw, I once dumped a box of old primers into a paint can, punched a bunch of holes small enough to contain them, put a concrete slab on top, and set fire to a bunch of kerosene soaked charcoal. That probably rendered them all inert.
Bleach for a few weeks might have worked too.
Wanna get rid of a huge carton of gumball? Scatter them in your neighbor's yard. Someone who would sneak into your yard and kill your goldfish with bleach, and girdle your trees with a chainsaw deserves far worse.
If this guy wasn't a greedy, abusive clod, I'd be a little less suspicious of his motivation, and the idea of selling salvage as new product without clearly saying so, at full price of modern product bothers me.
Seriously, every time I walk through his door, it leaves a bad taste.
Btw, I once dumped a box of old primers into a paint can, punched a bunch of holes small enough to contain them, put a concrete slab on top, and set fire to a bunch of kerosene soaked charcoal. That probably rendered them all inert.
Bleach for a few weeks might have worked too.
Wanna get rid of a huge carton of gumball? Scatter them in your neighbor's yard. Someone who would sneak into your yard and kill your goldfish with bleach, and girdle your trees with a chainsaw deserves far worse.
GWS:
The $3,500 for a new Goat in 1968 would be in today's dollars about $23,870.00.
A $6.00 carton of 1,000 primers would then cost in today's dollars $40.92...IF they were $6 then.
I remember paying $20/1,000 about 1985 when they were not on sale or discounted or clearanced... That would be $44.11 now...
All this is purely CPI across-the-board inflation, "time value of money", nothing taking into account other variables like supply and demand. I would guess that there are some operating efficiencies helping us out now. A little.
The $3,500 for a new Goat in 1968 would be in today's dollars about $23,870.00.
A $6.00 carton of 1,000 primers would then cost in today's dollars $40.92...IF they were $6 then.
I remember paying $20/1,000 about 1985 when they were not on sale or discounted or clearanced... That would be $44.11 now...
All this is purely CPI across-the-board inflation, "time value of money", nothing taking into account other variables like supply and demand. I would guess that there are some operating efficiencies helping us out now. A little.
UncleNick:
The "corrosive" chlorate primers were the solution maybe more than 100 years ago for the problems of mercuric primers.
Mercury fulminate and similar products worked great for BP caps, but the use of copper and brass cartridge cases was a disaster for trying to reload such cases fired with mercury. They appeared hard enough to serve as "fixed" ammo but failed miserably under firing pressure of BP cartridges. AFAIK, it's far, far worse than brass SCUBA fittings getting embrittled by ammonia.
The chlorate compounds were long-term stable, gave a hot "spark", and left salts in the bore which required the WWII-era cleaning drill of swabbing out the bore for three consecutive days after each shooting session. One guy I know who fired a lot of surplus chlorate primer ammo swore that using Windex for the first few patches was the best way to keep the rust devil away.
The "corrosive" chlorate primers were the solution maybe more than 100 years ago for the problems of mercuric primers.
Mercury fulminate and similar products worked great for BP caps, but the use of copper and brass cartridge cases was a disaster for trying to reload such cases fired with mercury. They appeared hard enough to serve as "fixed" ammo but failed miserably under firing pressure of BP cartridges. AFAIK, it's far, far worse than brass SCUBA fittings getting embrittled by ammonia.
The chlorate compounds were long-term stable, gave a hot "spark", and left salts in the bore which required the WWII-era cleaning drill of swabbing out the bore for three consecutive days after each shooting session. One guy I know who fired a lot of surplus chlorate primer ammo swore that using Windex for the first few patches was the best way to keep the rust devil away.
Windex sounds good. Cleaning out the salts is best done with water solvent instead of petroleum. Alcohol in it will help clean and speed up drying. Even the tiniest pits in the steel will allow salts to penetrate, so the things would be best cleaned with lots of hot water and detergent. Plenty of wet patches. My dad shot black powder, and he went to real extremes.