Lite strike Failure to Fire O/U

Another Under Barrel FTF!

I went back to the range after carefully cleaning my under barrel firing pin and pin hole. (The thing and the rest of the receiver were immaculate as purchased, but I still cleaned the wee bit of residue off of the pin and cleaned out the pin hole with CPC.)

Again I got a FTF in the lower barrel. The shallowness of the strike looks identical to the one last week and the primer appeared about as deeply recessed as the first. I loaded it into my upper and Blam. For the rest of the day I continued to use the under barrel without incident.

The pimers are Winchester 209's and while they are from two different 100 primer packs, the packs are from the same sleeve. If the rest of the hulls left from todays shoot have crisp deep impressions in their primers should I assume it is just a bad lot of primers? The gun isn't even broken in as it has less than 2,000 rounds through it?
 
Klawman,

Bolsa Gunsmithing in Westminister is a Browning authorized warranty center... If you cannot get the problem rectified I would take it to them... They've been taking care of us for years..
 
Hi Weatherby. I might just end up at Bolsa. I can understand getting a lite strike on the under barrel if the primer is too deeply recessed, but why do I get a hard strike when I then shoot the FTF in the over barrel?

This is a pic of the ftf. I am wondering if I am wrongly thinking it should look as deep as the fired shotshells, but those primers are flattened back against the breech face by the force of the burning powder as well as the exploding primer are they not?

FTF%20005.JPG


The next pic is of that same ftf, which is out of focus, and a shell that fired out of the same barrel just yesterday.
 

Attachments

  • FTF 005.jpg
    FTF 005.jpg
    253.6 KB · Views: 16
  • FTF 006.jpg
    FTF 006.jpg
    259.1 KB · Views: 16
Last edited:
first pic looks to be a bit recessed - I get the same thing now and again, just pop it into the top barrel and it goes bang everytime
 
Thanks oneounce. I thought it was recessed a tad too much but wasn't sure. The one that failed yesterday went bang when I popped it into the top of my Citori. I pulled a pack of Win 209's and to my naked eyeball some of them look about as deeply recessed. That is two failures out of the last two 100 packs of primers. If it keeps up I will call Winchester as 1% seems too high a failure rate, but if I count the 8 packs I have gone throught in this sleeve it is only 2 failures out of 800, which is a .25% failure rate.
 
2nd photo, right shell = concave Shell Head
Click to expand...

I think that you may be looking at an illusion created by my poor camera skills. [Added by edit: That or I wonder if you are looking at the dished in central area of the shot head. If so, I believe that is normal for Remington Gun Clubs.] Placing a straight edge up against the FTF and the one you spotted, which fired without incident, the heads look nice and flat. There is a minute amount of rocking of the straight edge due to how the primer rim grabs the outside of the shell head.

Not really knowing what I am doing, I grabbed 6 random shotshells that had fired without incident and deprimed them before shecking them for head flatness. All were true.

Like I said, this is only 2 failures over the last 800 reloads, but both were one out of the last two primer packs. If I continue to experience faiures at a rate of 1% or if the rate increases, I may take Weatherby's advice and take the gun to Browning's warranty smith. I may also call Winchester to see if they experienced a high rate of FTF with the lot. Still, the rate may drop off in which case I won't worry about it.
 
Last edited:
Winchester won't tell you anything.../ they're too afraid of lawsuits...and "insinuations, that they may have a proble"...

Switch to a different kind of primer ...like Remington or CCI ...and see if the problem continues.....

If it does ....then I would get the gun over to Browning and let them look at it ...its too new a gun / too good a gun to have this kind of an issue costing you misses...and getting into your head...
 
Getting into my head is easy right now. Unfortunatley, I have 4,200 primers left out of a 5,000 primer sleeve. Still, if the problem continues, I will buy a thousand primers of another brand to see if that stops. If not, I agree, its off to Browning. Meanwhile, I will call Browning to register the fact that I am having a problem with a relatively new gun.
 
I finally remembered to try to fire that FTF from my top barral today. I tried it twice and even thought the indentation in the primer was a liitle deeper than that left by the bottom firing pin, it just wouldn't go boom.

One thing someone pointed out to me in a PM. If I understand them, the depth of a pin strike as observed in a expended shotshell is not really indicative of force of the firing pin strike. The strike itself is nothing like how deep the indentation you see on a fired The pin impression in an expended shell is as deep as it is because the force that propels shot down the tube also shoves the base of the hull and the primer hard against the face of the breech and the protruding firing pin.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top