Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Primers

Tom, I have never had a single misfire with a Remington or CCI primer both non magnum and magnum. I often see the statement I've had problems "In my early years" That statement " In my early years" lends more to the reloading technique of a beginner being the culprit than the actual primer.

A wise man once told me when you are experiencing difficulty if you blame something else as a starter it becomes very difficult to fix whatever it is you may be doing wrong. I'm not insinuating that you didn't have a primer problem I'm just saying if it was early on in your experience it may not have been an actual primer problem

When we got into competition we tried all kinds of things.

One thing we found was that on any given load a primer change could cut a group in half, double it or more or have zero effect.

And that certain cases/powders seem to have a best primer for the most part regardless of the gun.

Varget in a 223 sized case has almost always been best with BR4...

Bottom line I keep on hand every primer I can get my hands on just in case. Find the right primer if its an issue, and go buy at least 1000 if not 5000 for that particular combo.

I have never had a misfire with Federal 210 or 215s, Remington 9 1/2M, S&B, or Winchester (old stock). I also have never had a Remington or Federal handgun cartridge fail to fire. That’s why I use them in my carry piece. Happy Trails

PS: I’m sure that I have less experience handloading than many on here, so my sample size is considerably smaller. The only factory loads I have had issues with were Hornady, PMC, and Winchester cheap target loads. Never a fail to fire with SIG Sauer pistol loads.

I've had FTF's with just about every common primer tried over the years, which I would guess is due to shooting a lot. (Same deal with having 20 different brands of scope fail in some way on my rifles, including some known for being very tough. That's brands, not individual scopes.)

What I tend to believe about primers these days are two things:

They do vary from lot to lot, and more than most handloaders believe, just like powder--or even bullets.

Trying different primers with the same basic load makes more of a difference in smaller-capacity and, to a lesser extent, with larger-capacity cartridges. Rifle rounds that work well with the vast amount of medium-rate powders (say around IMR4895 burn-rate) usually do not improve vastly by trying different primers. But you never know!

At one time I had a variety of primers on hand then over time just exclusively used Feds. I've bought out a few reloading benches over the years and a brick of WLR's came with one. On a whim I tried the WLR's in a load, and I'll be darned, the groups got smaller. So I'm back to stocking a smorgasbord of primers in my cabinet.

One of the interesting things about this thread is how many posters decided long ago to use one brand/model of primer. There's nothing wrong with that, but have noticed that many 24hour posters who have never tried different primers suggest "whatever bullet your rifle likes best" or some handloading technique such as seating a bullet partway, then turning the round a little and seating some more, as one of the "the secrets" of accurate loads.

Have thoroughly tested turning the partway-seating bullets technique in a bunch of rounds, and have never been able to find any advantage, in either bullet run-out or smaller groups. Instead I experiment on how to seat 'em straight in the first place, which is what I've found, through lots of testing, works far better.

Yet many of the same handloaders who try such stuff somehow don't believe a different primer--or even a different batch of the "SAME" primer--can make any difference. They can make a difference, and do--partly because even the "same" primer often changes over the years, whether due to the priming compound, thickness/alloy of the cup, or just from lot-to-lot.

Will readily admit that am somewhat obsessive about this sort of stuff--but that's my job.

John: So to compress your last two posts into one summary and relate it to my current scenario, switching from CCI to Remington in a 30-06 150 grain hunting load will probably not show a whole lot of difference, right? Either way, the difference might be due to lot-to-lot differences rather than something inherent in the brand. Furthermore, 30-06 burning H4895 is not the sort of scenario which would accentuate a primer difference.

Let me throw out another scenario: As you know from prior threads, I'm using REM 223 as a cheap way to wiggle my toes in the waters of accuracy. I'll be working this year with my RAR Predator to see what I can produce. Based on what you've stated, this might be a situation where primer differences would be more likely to show up. Right?

I've just never thought much about primers before.

BTW: My copy of The Benchrest Shooting Primer showed up. Yikes! Turgid is a mild description. This is turning into quite a bunny hole.

I've been using CCI primers for many years, but not exclusively. I usually base primer selection by what's on sale. Just had my first failure to fire with CCI primers a couple of days ago. Shot 300 rounds of 9mm and had 2 primers that didn't fire. The firing pin dent was just as deep and centered as the rest.

I shoot as many handgun rounds in a week ( 250-300) as I shoot rifle rounds in a year. I can't remember the last bad primer in a rifle round.

210M’s, 215M’s. That all I use for the most part. I do have a custom Mexican Mauser in 257 Roberts that only likes WLR’s so that’s what she gets.

Are those sold as match any better in this regard?

And primers are not the only lot to lot thing. Bullets. Cases. Powder. Hmm did I miss anything? Even know a guy that was going along and all of a sudden ammo didn't shoot... took lots of components until he fell back to the indicator and found somehow his press had sprung... banana ammo isn't that great especially in competition

Anal is what led to buying a 200 pound container of powder years ago for us. Think it only had 170 pounds of powder in the copper container though. LOL

And then I SWEAR, since we lived without AC for some years, that I had a batch of super good primers for one load, that the primers went bad, changed etc... not sure if heat or humidity or age. Have never seen it since but switching to a different lot of primers was the only thing that brought that accuracy back...

I recall reading about some primer cups being "hard" and some "soft". Is this your experience, and what brands are "hard" and what brands are "soft"?

In my experience, CCI 200's are "harder" than Fed 210's. I've had more misfires with the CCI's vs Fed's.

I can only comment on SR primers.

In the AR15 you have a floating firing pin. It dings a primer as it chambers. Lightly, hopefully not enough to set the round off.

Slam fires have come from the new WWSR brass colored primers and from federal SR primers. I"ve never seen or heard of a slam fire from any of the other ones. So those 2 are soft for sure.

In over 100K rounds using the R7.5, the BR4, 450 and M41 We never had a single failure to fire or slam fire. There were even a couple of cases of the old WWSR silver primers shot in those 100K plus rounds over the years. I'd say these then are fairly tough primers.

A few years back I was shooting several hundred rounds a week. I use mainly CCI and Winchester primers. Swapping primers didn't seem to make much difference on paper, at least I could see no difference. Then I built a new rifle in 338 Jamison. Could not get that gun to shoot much less than an inch and I wanted much more. An older friend and long time reloader and I were BSing and I mentioned primers and that problem. He was hung up on Remington, which I had never used. He suggested a Remington 9½ and VOILA, under half inch. The only time I ever saw much difference in them, so I guess they can and do make a difference.

The last thing I do in developing loads is to swap primers at the end to see if there is any effect or improvement. I almost always stay with the one I started with.

It is possible but not certain. I had to unlearn a lot of pure garbage my father taught me. One of the things I "unlearned" was the use of WD-40 as case sizing lube. That overlaps with buying a case tumbler and switching to Federal primers. So yes, there could have been a learning curve component. However, lest we over-value that, it's important to note that while I was getting misfires with the CCI primers, I was not getting misfires with the Remington and Winchester primers I was also using. And yet again, lest THAT be over-valued, I was shooting a lot more CCI than the others combined, so maybe I just didn't shoot enough of those to encounter the problem. Another change, not related, but giving some view of the scope of the necessary unlearning, was I also started trimming my brass, something my father never did 'til I bought him file/trim dies for his '06 and .30-40 about 20 years ago. Funny thing .. when you trim brass and don't use a spray can of oil, the neck/shoulder dents and the long wrinkly necks go away.

It's a wonder I survived given my, er, mentors.

So, again for context, my latest problem with Remington primers was only a couple years ago, not a learning curve issue. I've had probably 30 years of success in between those old CCI failures and the recent Remington failure. I'm not throwing those primers out. Times, politics ... I think having even slightly questionable primers could be more valuable than having none at all some time down the road.

Tom

I use CCI and Remington. My Winchester Large Pistol primers fire 8 out of 10 times. It's good training for clearing a malfunction under stress so I kept them...lol.

Dan

Years ago, I worked as a Quality Assurance Manager. What happens is that once you start in on improving the quality (in this case consistency) of a given component, you end up identifying other components that require improvement. A manufacturer will enter into a positive feedback loop where the overall quality keeps going up over time. The payoff will be less scrap, and therefore lower costs. If it happens with one mfg, then it can set up a chain reaction with others. I suspect this is what has happened to ammo mfg overall since WWII.

The stuff we're shooting now (ammo as well as components) is overall better than what was available 80 years ago and a lot of it comes from trying to build lot-to-lot consistency into the process. I work next door to the QA manager at my current company. Trying to keep lots of mfg'd components within tolerance shift to shift, day to day is a constant bugaboo. A lot of our mfg is automated, so now it appears we have more inspectors than anything else.

Back during the Great Primer Drought I bought 1000 Win LP primers for the 41 mag. Same problem, except the ratio was closer 30% misfires in the Taurus Ti Tracker, 5% in the Ruger SBH, and 15% in the 657.

I now keep enough CCIs in small pistol, large pistol, rifle, and mag rifle to get me through the next shortage.

A few years back, a guy named Stan Watson put out a pretty cool book documenting his results playing with a 30-06 equipped with a Oehler PBL to measure pressures as he shot it over a chrono. Watson played with different primers, bullet brands, powders, seating depths etc and documented the effect of each on pressure and velocity. Very cool stuff, especially for the era (late 90's). I'll see if I can dig mine up and share his primer results. The results related to the specific brands are probably no longer valid, but it did illustrate how much changing your primers could effect your pressures and velocities.

I'm with Rost on primers. I'm not wedded to a particular brand. I'll use it as a variable to tune a load. As the range gets longer, the primer brand (and lot) becomes more important and finding the right primer can make the difference between a load that shoots acceptably and one that doesn't.

Something i learned from Bob Jensen was that when you run out of a particular lot of primers, you need to test any new lots as if you're working with a completely different primer. The context of this was for long range shooting as Bob was an commercial accuracy handloader and loaded the hundreds of thousands of rounds shot in the 1992 Palma Matches at Raton.