Winchester Primer or Loose Primer pocket?

[Varmit]

Had two failures with a 270 a couple days ago which did cause some damage to the bolt. The cartridges with Remington brass were fine so I'm wondering if it was because of some of the bad the Win primers that were causing issues a couple years ago or Federal loose primer pockets. I try to weed out an bad cases when setting primers but some may have slipped through.

If it is bad primers I'll have to pull about 100 rounds as I don't want any more bolt face damage.

Anyone have any advice on which issue was the culprit?

 

[Alpheus]

It's the primers. Winchester LR primers haven't gotten better. Toss 'em before the ding up your bolt face.

 

[maynard]

Federal cases are also crap and are known for loose primer pockets even on factory loaded ammo. I would pull all the bullets with the Federal cases and toss the cases.

 

[Icefire]

It's me or those look like really hot ammo? primer edge are way too flatened.

 

[SND]

It's the primers, easy to see the hole in the corner, seen a few like that in person too. There's been a lot of these pierced WLR primers the last 5-6 years. How old is that lot/box of primers?
Pretty sure there was a list somewhere of many of the affected Lot #'s.

 

[Varmit]

The primers were about a year old and that was the last of them so I don't have the the lot numbers.
As for the load if was 52 grains of H4350 behind a 150 grain Hornady Interlock. It's from Nosler and is at Max. I used this load for a few years without any issues but this range day was really hot, so the pressure may have been up a bit. I'll post a picture of the Remington case which looks OK.

 

[300wmxcr2]

Winchester primers, had the same issue a couple of years ago, I had fired 3 rounds before I noticed. They burnt a couple of holes in the bolt face, called Winchester in the US to see if there was a recall on them. They directed me to their Canadian dealer, cant remember the name, and got them to pay Gravel Agency to replace the bolt under a warranty claim.
Haven't used a Winchester primer since.

 

['Boo]

It's me or those look like really hot ammo? primer edge are way too flatened.

They look like they were loaded a bit warm to me too.

 

[hunter5425]

I had to rebuild a bolt due to faulty Win primers and haven't used them since, those look just like the ones that blew out in my gun.

 

[bigedp51]

I had the same thing happen to me around 1974 with a bad batch of Remington 9 1/2 primers that were recalled.

Remington replaced the bolt at no cost to me because the primers were defective.

Any time you see a primer let go at the edge of the radius it means the cup was weakened when the the cup was formed.

Meaning the brass cup was too hard and bending the brass 90 degrees to form the cup weakened the radius.

Remington and Winchester are no longer what they were in the past and they both went down hill after loosing the contract to make ammunition at Lake City.

On top of this Winchester sold off their brass manufacturing plant and now buy their brass from the cheapest bidder.

Bottom line, no more Remington/DuPont and Winchester/Olin and they were bought out by large stock holding companies.

Example the DuPont IMR-powder plant in Canada is now owned by General Dynamics Weapons Division. And I think the Winchester powder plant in Florida is also owned by General Dynamics. And ATK owns most of the other primer manufactures. https://vistaoutdoor.com/brands/

Note, I loaded my .270 with the same load you are using and the only problem I ever had was from one batch of bad primers. I would contact Winchester and see if they will repair or replace your bolt if it was damaged.

I use a Lee depriming tool to check for loose primer pockets, and if the primer moves with just finger pressure the case goes in the scrap brass bucket.