Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles dud primer

This was a new experinece for my reloading career. At the range this morning with my son's Model 70, 270 wsm. We have fired several hundred rounds through this rifle with no trouble. Federal 215m large rifle magnum primer. I couldn't believe it that all I heard was a click. I even tried to pull the trigger again! I ejected it gently, looked at the normal dent in the primer and tossed it in the range DUD receptacle.
I do my priming with clean hands and in a clean environment.
Any thoughts? Thanks.

Dud

wsmnut,

I had that problem once. I gave it to a friend who put it on his shelf for display. It was a .30-378 Weatherby.

I called Sierra and asked if they had heard of it. He told me he had one and put it up on the shelf. About fifteen minutes later it fired. The fellow to whom I gave the shell called to tell me it went off while sittingon his shelf.

If I have anymome, I will make sure it is horizontal so the primer can blow out of the case.

I taught a friend to reload this past spring; the very first shot of his first batch of reloads, click - dud! That was a Remington 9 1/2 primer, all the other primers in his test batch fired. I also bought a brick of the Remington 9 1/2 from the same lot, so far I have used 50 and all have fired. Who knows?

Just a random dud. I hadn't had one for thousands of rounds and then this summer, "click". It was on a cast boolit .260 Remington round and I figured I might have missed charging the case. I took it home after tossing it down by the target bank for the rest of the session and pulled the boolit. Full charge of powder, just a bad primer. Look at it this way, they don't happen very often, just be glad it didn't happen on a hunt!
Selmer

Thanks folks.
Selmer, that was precisely the thought I had!

I have reloaded thousands of rounds over the years and have had a few where the primer failed to detonate. When this has happened, I have always dismantled the round and then loaded that primer in a round for my Model 98 7x57. I can only remember one that did not fire when this was done! This leads me to wonder if most of the trouble with faulty primers is not caused by weak and/or dirty firing-pins. When this has happened with my own rifles, I have taken the bolt apart and cleaned things up, and, as far as I can remember, this seemed to take care of the problem.

IMHO, there are a lot more weak and/or gummy firing-pins out there than there are defective primers!

M Bell

I have had a fair amount of Federal primers that have been dudes lately...I say a fair amount, because you hardly ever seen them...

but I'll bet out of the last box of 1000 Fed 210 primers I had a dozen or more duds in it..