Primers?

Sorta like what Nick C S stated, I started using CCI primers when I first started
stuffing my own back in April 1963. I used them in everything shotgun, rifle, to handgun.

Out of all those thousands of cartridges and shotshells I only had one squib, and that was with a 44 Mag that had been sitting back on the shelf for 30 years.
 
Squib (bullet stuck in barrel) is NOT the same as a primer failure to fire. Squibs are typically due to zero, or very little, powder. The primer alone can push a bullet into the barrel. What we are talking about here is when the primer does nothing when struck.
Squibs are far more dangerous because they obstruct the barrel, and a follow-up shot in the obstructed barrel would be expected to suddenly and violently disassemble the firearm, and injure the shooter.
 
Well, to satisfy Marco Califo, the first snap did nothing except snap. The second snap produced a squib with the bullet stuck in the forcing cone. Just so we are straight. The second resulted in a good bit of H110 hanging out all the cracks.
 
It isn't always about what you're doing and about what you're buying.

About a year or so I had the displeasure of buying about 10000 or so Remington small pistol primers. The were dirt cheap, $19/1000.

Turned out, they were good for malfunction drills and aggravation. They had a 5% plus failure rate, and most did not fire on the second strike.

I loaded them in 9mm (most of what I shoot handgun wise), 38, and 357, and all had the same problem.

They do work great for unstaged, and unexpected malfunctions though. That was the only good thing about them.

I normally use CCI's for pistol and rifle, unless they are unavailable. Never had an issue with them. They are all I use in my rifles, as I've had slam fires with Winchesters in my AR's.

The CCI's seem better suited for rifles where that is, or might be an issue.

Ive been using an old RCBS "O" press to do my priming. I tried the hand presses for awhile, and was not having good luck with some of the swaged military cases I was using at the time. Even when swaged, they were often still very stiff, if not impossible to get seated with the hand primer. The press gives a lot more leverage to get things done.

I can "feel" the primers seat fine, and every round gets the finger test as it comes out of the shell holder.
 
No significant issues with primers here. Use Winchester, Remington, Federal, and CCI, though not every type in every brand. Perhaps 1 in 10,000 fail to fire on first strike in all. All primed with Lee hand primer or on progressive press. Nearly all the guns firing them have stock hammer or striker springs.
 
Primers are usually 99.999% reliable. I don'the think your storage had anything with making the primers less inert. Usually your problem is high primers (not well seated) or primer pocket contaminaction where the primer is cushioned in the primer pocket.
Another possibility is case contamination. There could have been tumbling compound in the case where the primer could not ignite the powder..
I would pull the bullets of the rounds that did not fire to see if I could determine more.
 
I use a RCBS Ram priming set up , I use mostly CCI primers I'm afraid to say I never had a primer to fail . Now for sure it's going to happen , With the ram primer I can feel it bottom but the play it safe you can uniform your pockets , only have to do it once . As others stated you have a stock of 15,000. , I don't think the problem is the primers but a seating issue .
 
Interestingly enough I was back to the range today. Once the gun was well heated, at around the 100 round mark I started getting light strikes.

First time, I put offending round in my legion and it fired.

Next three, which were randomly in the string of the next 25 shots were put back in the offending gun for a second try/diagnosis and all three fired in the original gun.

Offending gun sig P365 with about 1100 rounds through it.

Every round I brought today was hand inspected before I started my session. None were anything but flush with the case and appeared perfectly normal prior to loading mags.

Took the P365 striker apart, didn’t notice much there, but did notice that the striker seems to only protrude through the breach about half as much as any other striker fired gun I’ve got, which includes Walther pps m2, h&k vp9sk. I will see about picture and actual measurement tomorrow.

More pondering....total clicks were 8 of 200 rounds.
 
Flush=too high.
They should be slightly below flush.
Fire on restrike confirms not fully seated. Strike one seated primer. Strike two fired it.
 
Interesting about the lack of firing pin protrusion. I would contact the manufacturer with your measurement of that protrusion and ask if it is in spec. It's always possible a metal burr is in the firing pin tunnel somewhere.

Another thing to look for is to watch the back of the slide to see that it goes forward the same amount on every round. Failing to go fully into battery due to fouling build-up is something I've seen in my 1911's, though not usually until after about two or three thousand rounds (depending on how dirty the powder burns) without cleaning.

Is it possible you got some cases that needed the remains of an original crimp removed?

Is there any chance you got mislabeled primers and have small rifle primers instead of small pistol primers? Unlike large primers, small rifle and pistol primers are the same sizes.

Sometimes Forrest Gump is right about life being like a box of chocolates.
 
It’s happening enough that I think I’m going to send to sig and have them look at it if I don’t see any issues with striker channel.
 
I use cci 500 myself after going through about 2000 winchester primers. In my last 10000 rounds I've had 3 miss-fires in winchester and 2 CCI 500 miss-fires and all of them were out of dry media tumbled winchester brass and I came to a conclusion of what was causing my problems - the winchester .40 S&W brass has a bur at the primer hole. When fired, factory WIN rounds deposit lots of GSR residue behind and around the area of that bur. I changed 2 things - I went to wet tumbling my brass with stainless pins to remove the GSR at the bottom of my shells and I bought a Lyman primer hole reaming tool to clean up those burs. The next 6000 rounds never once have I had another miss-fire.

The bur was inhibiting the primer flash - which I doubt. OR - GSR not removed but loosened in the dry media tumble possibly flaked off and blocked the primer hole and blocked the primer flash. OR I just got the odd bad primer. I'm leaning to the GSR flake and the really rare bad primer.

Another reason I prefer CCI 500 is being chromed & simple aesthetics - I prefer the color difference against the brass as I can more easily see if a primer isn't seated to the right depth because it's not the same color as the brass.

So - check your brass. Do you note a bur inside the shell at the primer hole? Do you see a lot of GSR at the bottom of the shell which might flake off and block your primer flash?
 
Are you saying the primers ignited and the powder didn't? I don't believe I've ever heard of that where the powder wasn't seriously deteriorated. Normally a primer is more than strong enough to blow out plugging media and to squirt flame out through burrs. But if the primers didn't light, then its usually a seating or a defect problem. Winchester has had some instances of bad lots of primers over the last decade. I don't recall hearing of CCI having any, though.
 
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