Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles No Bang

I got 4 bricks of CCI 200's made back in the 90's for $12.50 a brick, January of 2022 during the height of component shortages. About like winning the lottery. They are the blue/silver/yellow boxes and packs. Every one so far has all gone bang and can't tell any difference on accuracy or consistency in what I've shot so far.

Sometime back in the 80's CCI had primers that some guys were fussing about getting primers mixed in that wouldn't go off. I know 2 guys that wont use CCI's to this day because of it.

I read an article by a gent and I can't remember who, that worked at Speer I believe and moved to CCI during that time. He had never had an issue, ever, so investigating farther they discovered that the primer if crushed at all when seating, the primer compound was brittle enough to break up if crushed, and then wouldn't go off always when the anvil was struck. Seat them properly, no problems.

They changed the makeup of the primer compound shortly after and that potential problem went away.

I bought these primers a couple weeks ago at Cabelas.

I don't think age is the problem, unless they're over 70 years old. The problem is more like the assembly of the primer at the time it was made.... F__k ups happen.

My thoughts exactly. I have it happen what feels like sort of frequently.. several times a year.

The brand that is the biggest culprit has been Czech small rifle primers. But even those in ratio to the number of rounds I shoot, has been a fairly low percentage.....not enough to overly concern me... I just disassemble the round when I get home and reload it again for my next range trip or varmint field outing. Its not like I am out with only ONE Bullet to shoot.

or lost a trophy game animal....

I’ve only had it happen twice, both times with cci primers. I won’t use them for hunting anymore.

Don't know what kind of tool you used for seating the primers in that batch of ammo, but it's worth considering or looking into the possibly that that could have contributed to the dud you had, or possibly a tight primer pocket.

Back in the mid-70's, I had two duds and one hang-fire with CCI 200's in new Winchester brass in a Ruger M77 in .300 Win Mag. The load was a starter load out of the Speer manual of the day. I loaded that batch using the primer seater arm built into my Rockchucker press, which does NOT have a very good feel to it when seating primers, compared to other commonly available tools/methods. The primers had been a little tight to seat. I looked over the duds and unfired ammo carefully and compared them to some of my other handloads. I determined that the primers were not seated to a consistent depth and some looked like they were seated a little too deep into the pocket, and possibly crushed or fractured the priming pellet.

I disassembled that batch, and reloaded it using a Lee tool to seat the primers, because it had a MUCH more consistent feel to it. Have never had another dud or hang-fire since then on any of my handloads. Later switched to the bench-mounted RCBS Automatic Priming Tool and use it exclusively, except when running stuff on one of my progressives.

The CCI’s I had an issue with were new. I bought them in late 2021. Now the Winchester ones, I was betting on an auction for some .33 cal bullets right at the beginning of COVID and before all the craziness really occurred. I won the auction went to pick up my bullets, paid my money and was told to wait a few minutes. The worker at the auction house handed me a brick of WLRM and a brick of WLR primers. They weren’t even advertised in the auction, so I was excited to say the least.