Smoking Primer!!!!!!

P

Prof Young

New member
Have a buddy who is still relatively new to reloading. He had some 223 that he'd made and he had a hang fire. Said he took the round out of the gun and the primer was SMOKING! (Yikes!) Threw the thing as far as he could, but never heard it go off. Turns out that in his first efforts at reloading he'd used some gun oil to help seat the primers. Has since learned that's not a good thing.

In all my reading and learning I'v never ever ran across the idea to use some oil to help seat the primer.

Thoughts and comments welcome.

Life is good
Prof Young
 
First off you need to tell him that any time he has a round not go off, he needs to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction & count to 30 before he opens the bolt to remove the round.
No oil or lube needs to be used in seating primers.
Ask your buddy if he owns a reloading manual & if he has read it, I would bet he has not.
 
Also ask him where he got the idea that it's a good idea to use gun oil to seat primers and tell him to never use that source for advice again.
 
reloading without bothering to read a basic how to manual, article, or asking a knowledgeable friend for a lesson :confused: Seems to me a good example of the Darwinian syndrome
 
If you’re reloading and haven’t read any of the manuals that tell you how, or haven’t had someone teach you, you’re asking for trouble. Natural Selection’s going to catch up to you sooner or later. If he is “your buddy” as you said, you’d better talk to him. Who knows what he’ll try next?
 
Back in the stone age ( 1960's) I was instructed to never touch a primer with your fingers because they were so sensitive to OIL just the oil on you finger tips would KILL the primer , cause miss fires and the dreaded Hang Fire ...!!!
After 50 years I can tell you primers aren't quite that sensitive to oil on your finger tips ...I've picked up a gazillion primers with my fingers and placed them in primer arms and some old seating tools .
but oiling them so they seat easier ... is a big No-No !

Your buddy either came up with this idea on his own or ... You Tube , I've seen more bad / wrong / dangerous reloading info on you tube than you can shake a stick at ....
I just avoid the madness over there .

Of all the books and articles I've read about reloading in the last 50 years ...and I read a lot ... not one book or writer has ever advised to "Oil the Primers" for easier seating !
Gary
 
I'll ask him . . .

I didn't think to ask him about where he got that idea. Will do so when I see him again.

In the same breath that he told me about using the gun oil, he also told me he now new it is a bad idea.

Guy is a real gun enthusiast. I was surprised to learn that he hasn't been reloading for years.

Has a four hundred yard shooting range in his "back yard."

When I write about ringing the gong with my garand or mosin it's his gongs that I'm ringing.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Sounds like his gong was wrung to come up with that primer oil.;)

Actually, it seems like a perfectly reasonable idea if you don't know primers and powder can be messed with by oil (lack of manual reading, again). However, it also occurs to me he might have done it because he was having a hard time seating the primers. Find out if his cases need crimp leftovers removed.
 
Just curious.
As I understand it (and this is probably where I need to be corrected) the bullet was still seated in the case and the primer was still seated in the case so was the smoke somehow escaping from around the primer or the bullet or was the primer punctured? Once again just curious about the situation.
 
just speculating but lets assume he used a light oil on the pockets applied with a Qtip. Seats the primer and a small amount of oil is forced into the flash hole and perhaps on the powder just in front of the flash hole. The primer fires and the oil prevents proper ignition of the powder but is burned itself. Maybe the burnt oil forms a bit of carbon which blocks the flash hole or the powder directly in front of the flash hole is contaminated and does not ignite. Just using my imagination here.

Now this is a three beer hypothesis and I sure am not going to test it but I could see the scenario playing out like that
 
To make smoke, oil just requires heat. So if the primer did a slow, cigarette-type of burn and there was still oil in the perimeter crack where the primer meets the sides primer pocket, that could smoke. But more commonly in squibs, what has happened is pressure got just high enough to expand the case just enough to let some smoke out around the case mouth that comes back around the cartridge and out of the chamber. Of course, it's also in the muzzle, but that's a longer path so that may not show up immediately. Pierced primers also can leak smoke at the edges without the pierced location being immediately apparent (usually covered by soot).

The Box-O-truth test is a little funny. The second test on live ammo uses ammo that has sealant applied to the primers. In the end, the test may only prove the primer sealant is effective. Do that with ammo without primer sealant or, better yet, a loaded cartridge case that has been reloaded a dozen times and has scuff marks up and down the sides of the pocket and no primer sealant, and then you may get a different result.

In the first B.O.T. test, he soaks unnamed primers and succeeds in killing them. But primers are different. If he'd done that to Federal primers that have a big blob of sealant dried on the inside of them, would he have had the same result?

We've had posts of primer killing tests before, and the results have always been mixed. Some are, and some are not killed by soaking in various things, including WD-40, IIRC. If it interests you, try searching the forum for past posts on the subject.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top