Have you seen this before (It's a strange one for me)

ShootSavage

ShootSavage

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I was doing some case resizing today and something just happened to catch my eye on one of my cases, when I picked it up and looked really closely at it there was a tiny pin hole burnt through the primer on the outside edge, it actually burned away a tiny bit of the of the primer pocket on the case.

Just wondering if this is something that has happened to anyone else

I forgot to mention that when I popped the primer out and held it up to the light the hole was clearly burnt right through, I'm going to try and upload a picture if I can get it to work.



002-1.jpg

????? WHAT IN THE WORLD????????
 
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Yes, on at least a dozen occasions over the past 40 years.
I believe it is caused by a "thin" area in the Primer cup,
I can leave a very tiny crater in your boltface as well. [But does not always do so]
I discarded a certain flat of primers because 3 of them blew through in the first 20 rounds.
Regards, Eagleye.
 
ShootSavage said:
I was doing some case resizing today and something just happened to catch my eye on one of my cases, when I picked it up and looked really closely at it there was a tiny pin hole burnt through the primer on the outside edge, it actually burned away a tiny bit of the of the primer pocket on the case.

Just wondering if this is something that has happened to anyone else

I forgot to mention that when I popped the primer out and held it up to the light the hole was clearly burnt right through, I'm going to try and upload a picture if I can get it to work.



002-1.jpg

????? WHAT IN THE WORLD????????
Click to expand...

It newer happened to me but Eagleye is right, there must been weak spot in that cup IN ADDITION to liberal (read to much) powder in that case....
 
Eagleye said:
Yes, on at least a dozen occasions over the past 40 years.
I believe it is caused by a "thin" area in the Primer cup,
I can leave a very tiny crater in your boltface as well. [But does not always do so]
I discarded a certain flat of primers because 3 of them blew through in the first 20 rounds.
Regards, Eagleye.
Click to expand...
yes Eagleye your right it did leave a very small burn or crater in my bolt face in fact it's so small I you have to look at it under bright light to see it, I'm guessing that won't cause any problems, would you think? (the crater in the bolt face I'm referring to)
 
phishroy said:
what primer?
what cartridge?
what load?

was it a hot load?
Click to expand...
300 Winchester Mag, Winchester case and primer (large rifle magnum) and 75.2 gr Hogdon H4831, and yes it was .3 gr less then max load, I've been working up to this load for moose hunting and only had this happen once out of a few hundred at this load, I'm actually up to 75.4 gr now which is the load I'll be using for my hunt and shot 40 a few days ago with no problems at all, no primer cratering or push back , no signs of any problem at all I actually took a magnifying glass to the range with me and went over each case.

I think that Eagleye was right about just being a thin spot in the primer wall, I've used this combo for a good while now and never had any issue at all
 
Same thing happened to me last year, shooting a 22PPC with H322, 1/2 grain below suggested max. My primer blew exactly the same as your pic, with a crack down the side of the cup (it looks like your primer also has a crack). It also left a small crater in the bolt face. :mad: I suspected (and still do) that the primer had a weak spot.
 
Otto V said:
Same thing happened to me last year, shooting a 22PPC with H322, 1/2 grain below suggested max. My primer blew exactly the same as your pic, with a crack down the side of the cup (it looks like your primer also has a crack). It also left a small crater in the bolt face. :mad: I suspected (and still do) that the primer had a weak spot.
Click to expand...
yes it is split just like it looks, I know it's just a little pimple but the very very small burn in my bolt face really pisses me off. Oh well that's reloading for ya I guess, crap will happen
 
A lot of Winchester primers have been doing that lately, there have been a few pics come up on other sites. I had it happen with a WLR... eroded a nice little notch in my ejector pin hole.
 
ShootSavage said:
yes Eagleye your right it did leave a very small burn or crater in my bolt face in fact it's so small I you have to look at it under bright light to see it, I'm guessing that won't cause any problems, would you think? (the crater in the bolt face I'm referring to)
Click to expand...

The tiny crater in the boltface will do no harm.
Obviously, repeated primer failures with one rifle would not be a good thing.
FWIW, this has nothing to do with the powder charge, it is simply a weak primer cup.
Those who have been slagging Winchester....I have never had a Winchester primer do this.
One batch of old ALCAN primers was the worst
Latest occurrence was CCI.
One failure in thousands of primers is unlikely cause for concern.
If I had more than 1 in a flat, I would be watching that lot number, to avoid it.
Regards, Eagleye.
 
I've had it happen more often with milsurp ammo than factory and on a few occasions with hand loads.

In the case of the milsurp ammo, it happened on a beater K98 mixmaster with a large chamber and a No4 MkI+ Savage with a generous chamber as well. Those I can understand happening. I suspect, the milsurp cases were on the negative side of milspec and when they were fired, the primer backed out allowing the gas to leak by and burning a hole as well as cracking the primer. This must be a rather regular condition because many milsurp rifles have a pitted circle around the area that covers the primer. It usually isn't so obvious.

In the case of the hand loads I mentioned, one batch was mine and a couple of others were from batches given to me or picked up in deals/trades etc. Depending on what I'm shooting, I will usually shoot a round first and inspect it the case against another in the batch. It will become quickly obvious if the case is on minimum or under spec. This is something that doesn't happen a lot or, is actually noticed by the handloader/shooter. Usually the primer will be pushed back into the pocket, maybe flattened but not punctured.

If as mentioned previously, there is a defect in the manufacture of the primer, the condition will escalate to what is shown in the pics. Pics definitely tell a story. The real problem may be masked by the condition of the primer. IMHO, you should measure a fired case and compare it with a resized case.

I had an older Savage 110 that would do that on a regular basis with hand loads. It really didn't matter who reloaded the cases. When I measured the difference between cases there was an oversize condition at the shoulder and a maximum headspace measurement. It never should have left the factory that way. It wasn't unusual for the same thing to happen to factory ammo either in this particular Savage 110.

This may or may not shed some light on the problem. In the case of my particular rifles, I only have one of them left. The Mauser K98 went to a fellow that was looking for an action to build into an Alaskan wilderness carry rifle. That was a good thing, we pulled the barrel and checked the lug seats to make sure there wasn't any set back. The Savage was fixed before it was sold. Surprisingly, both of these rifles were very accurate, even with the oversized chambers and minimum spec cartridges.
 
Eagleye said:
The tiny crater in the boltface will do no harm.
Obviously, repeated primer failures with one rifle would not be a good thing.
FWIW, this has nothing to do with the powder charge, it is simply a weak primer cup.
Those who have been slagging Winchester....I have never had a Winchester primer do this.
One batch of old ALCAN primers was the worst
Latest occurrence was CCI.
One failure in thousands of primers is unlikely cause for concern.
If I had more than 1 in a flat, I would be watching that lot number, to avoid it.
Regards, Eagleye.
Click to expand...
Thank you Eagleye, I very much appreciate your wisdom you obviously know what your talking about and your also right when you say, this happening after a thousand primers or so is hardly a problem with the primers and I've went through that amount or more in my guns and all Winchester.

I might have been a bit hasty when I said it was time to change primers, I also know allot of other guys that use these primers and have never had this happen. Thanks again for your opinion and thanks to all the rest of you guys also, very much appreciated
 
It happens from time to time--I have mostly had it happen on 7.62 x 51 or 5.56 cases when the primer pockets were not properly reamed--they would slightly damage to primer cup and the odd one would leak. I have had them occur with every brand of primer except remington 7 1/2 benchrest primers.

fwiw, 44Bore.
 
A good reminder to look at ALL of your fired rounds looking for pressure signs - if you went by just this one case, you would think you were over max. I'd suggest the entire primer cup was thin on this one, it's just hammered.
 
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