Primer strike no combustion

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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
 
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Go read this first:

Mysteries And Misconceptions Of The All-Important Primer

http://www.shootingtimes.com/ammo/ammunition_st_mamotaip_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:

nwTXKGc.jpg



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/showthread.php?t=527973&highlight=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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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Primer Seating

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.
 
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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...
 
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
 
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. .
 
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!
 
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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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.​
 
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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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
 
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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.
 
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