Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Blown primers/flame cutting

At what point or degree of pitting on a bolt face ,due to blown or leaking primers,is the bolt considered no longer safe to use?

At the very least, gonna need a pic.

Winchester?

I had some leaking primers that pitted the bolt face in a circle around the primer. I talked to my gunmaker, he said to send it to him and he cut a circle where the pitting was on the bolt face.

This simply created an air gap that stops the pitting and didn't weaken the bolt face...

I would be concerned about ammunition being safe to use.

Search "defective Winchester primers". It's happened to lots of folks, me included.

The first time it happened was with a gun that i had rechambered to 300wm.The cause was a tight chamber and a load that was close to book max.,blown primer.Recently I loaded some 180 gr. hornady RN over 55.0 gr. of h4350.A load that I have used for years,in a number of 30-06 rifles,and also a load that I have used in my 7600 Rem.WW once fired brass and Win. LR primers.The primers did seat with not alot of resistance.Third shot at target resulted in leaked gasses and a pitted bolt face?

Do the search about "leaking" or defective large rifle Winchester primers. It's not about max pressure loads; it's the primers actually failing/leaking at the junction of the primer sidewalls and the the face of the primer.

There are several Winchester large rifle primer lots that have been identified as being defective and they've been identified here on the 'Fire as well as other sites.

It's pretty likely that WLR primers are the culprit, and not the loads. I've had them do it on even low-pressure subsonic loads. The issue with Winchester primers is different from normal high-pressure blown primers; the Win primer cups crack and leak gas through the cracks. If you deprime one of the bad ones and catch the primer, you'll see a crack up the side of the primer cup, if that's the issue.

Problem is, Winchester is really slow to respond about it these days. I just today received a fresh case of 5,000 WLR primers from Winchester after sending my defective batch back; the claim was submitted back in July 2015. I have 3 pitted bolt faces from these; Winchester offered to look at them but I didn't want to send my rifles away for who-knows-how-long.

If you have normal blown primers with loose primer pockets though, that's a different issue, and related to the pressure of your loads.

After cutting the boltface on two rifles, I retired all WLR from my bench. All Federal or CCI now for me. As far as the flame cutting being a problem, I don't think one or even two blown primers will cut the boldface enough to be dangerous, but you definitely want to ascertain the reason for the problem. Changing primers solved mine. Sorry to butt in as I'm not a gun writer........

A couple years back, this WLRM put a serious divot in my R700 bolt face.



Trashed all the remaining primers in the brick. No more Winchester CF primers for me.

Has anyone experienced these WLR primer issues on Factory ammunition? Every once in a while I buy a box on sale for testing and the brass.

Geno

I can't tell the OP any sort of measurement about when a bolt is no longer serviceable. I can state that when the flame from a faulty primer or bad reload burns your firing pin into two pieces, you can't use the bolt until repaired.

Don't ask me how I know. :P

I've got a list of primer lots from a previous thread here that have given trouble. Does Winchester have a list available, or are they playing dumb?

Here's the list. Thanks to whoever provided it.


CAL401G
CFL486G
CLL555G
DAL594G
DFL717G
DHL766G
DNL 837G
DNL836G
EAL234G
GDL 225G
GEL 250G
DML834G WLR
EAL234G WLRM

I no longer use WLR primers because of this issue. I now have a couple rifles with divots in the bolt face.

Sounds like Im not alone!

Carbon,

That looks like non-plated brass. I've read that W/W put out some without plating and they were slightly undersize.

I'm wondering if the lots mentioned are those or plated ones.

I have some older, plated W/W LR primers and they work great.

DF

Never had any problems with the nickel plated ones.

The non plated brass are known to pierce easy in the AR15 and as such I"ve never bought WW since they changed...

W/W probably saved a few pennies but could lose their market share. I know I wouldn't buy any un-plated W/W LR primers, SR either. I'll keep using my old, plated ones, for sure.

Bean counters at work (if that's the case)...

DF

I can't say that I've seen any plated WLR primers in the last 10-15 years, do they even still make them?

I don't think the issue has anything to do with plating or size though. The brass cups are just too brittle, and sometimes crack when fired. Winchester is probably skipping an annealing step or some other cost cutting measure.

Winchester is playing dumb, and that list of lot numbers above is far from complete. I've had it happen a couple times on both WLP and WLR primers, that were not in that list.