Bad Primers?

[94zcar]

Guys I shot about 300 9mm reloads yesterday. I had 2 primers that did not go bang till I hit them again. How common is this, I'm thinking it was because they were reloads. I used remington primers. First time I have had any problem, but I have only reloaded about 800 or so rounds.

[jlottmc]

Just to be safe, I would spray clean that striker channel, then check the seating depth of the primers. That is really about all that would cause so few problems. The other side of that coin looks like this: there is a reason we use factory ammo that being that it is more consistent. Sometimes reloads do funny things.

[rwblue01]

It could be a couple things.
1. The firing pin is not hitting the primer with enough force.
2. The primer is not seated fully and the first strike is using the force to seat the primer.
3. The primers are somewhat bad.

Assuming these are new primers, #3 is very slim.
Assuming your gun is not having a problem with commercial ammo, #1 is slim.
This leads me to think that #2 is the issue.

[jlottmc]

I still think that with that many rounds fired, and most likely more than that from other sources; that problem lies not with the gun. I could see some older primers losing some pop, but that is rare too. I personally wouldn't worry about it, as the most likely culprit is the primer being seated too deep. Easy to do.

[wyntrout]

I vote for primer seating. That's why I always was very "hands on" and did primer seating with the RCBS hand primer with auto feed. I visually inspected and I felt each one to make sure it was seated far enough. It takes longer but I could depend on the primers going bang when struck... instead of soaking up force as they are more deeply seated with the firing pin strike.
YMMV.

If you obsessively "clean" the primer pockets, they can get loose or too deep, as well. Reloading takes its toll on the cases... if you trim and clean and chamfer... it all adds up... or rather the cases lose material and there are limits to how long you can do that to cases without bad results.

With the chamber pressures involved in firing, brass flows... and when you keep trimming back, the cases are weakened!

Wynn:)

[earle8888]

I'm with Win! I use the Lyman priming tool and got in the habit of running my thumb over the base and primer as I put it in the rack. This became my practice after a buddy of mine had a high primer go off in the cylinder of his Smith while it was trying to turn/index.

[94zcar]

I"m loading with a Lee Classic Turret, so It is hard for me to get a feel for how deep the primer is seating on the press, I usually look at every round briefly once it is complete to make sure the primers are flush, But I could see missing a couple. I'll have to try getting into that routine of checking them by running my finger across them.

Once I had a round completed and the primer was high enough that I could not get the round out of the shell holder, is was a bad Idea but I had to go back to the reseat the primer or there was no way I could get the round out of the shell holder. So I put a large board between me and the press and reseated the primer, without any drama.

[TonyT]

Most probably it is either grime in the firing pin channel or primers which were not fully seated.