CCI BR2 Fail-to-fire

JustBen

JustBen

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I recently decided to try some BR2 primers. I've usually stuck to Federal/Winchester primers, but the shop I stopped at only had CCI in stock. I figured, why not splurge? Maybe there is a difference.

Thank god I only bought 200. Gave 100 to the brother-in-law to load up a few before hunting season. We both loaded up some about 6-8 weeks ago.

Thanksgiving we decided to do some longer range shooting. Second shot down range. CLICK. After the necessary safety precautions, we examined the shell. GREAT indentation. Almost like the primer material won't go off. No sign of ignition. Shrugged it off as a freak occurrence. Fourth shot down range, same thing. Fired off another 35 rounds of mine with no major issues, although I had a few that almost felt delayed (just a hair... messed up my groups). BiL had one fail to fire in his 25 rounds.

I'm a little worried. I've got another 40 rounds loaded up, and its off to the range some night this week to test them out. I can't have this sort of crap during hunting season.

Anyone else have any issues with these primers? Any idea what the hell is going on here? I've never had any issues before, and 3 in one afternoon seems fishy. I'm wondering if maybe the particular dealer didn't store them quite right? They were reloaded the morning and afternoon the day after they were purchased. We each loaded our own bullets separately (same press, different locations). Different calibers, different rifles, only thing the same was the powders and the primers. I'm drawing a blank here...
 
I use CCI's fo all my rifles, every type. No FTF's in thousands of rounds. My first guess would be contamination, second not seated all the way down, thirdly a bad batch. I would use them fo practice and chuck any that are left. The BR's have a slightly thicker cup but you said the indentation was fine.
 
You can get a bad/poorly stored batch of primers, I had to discard ( after neutralizing ) 900 Wolf primers that had probably been improperly stored by the vendor. I really dislike hang fires and if they are doing this I would discard the $8 of primers and load new ones, especially for hunting.
 
I wish I could say that I've never had a misfire after thousands of rounds. :redface: Well I could say it, it just wouldn't be true.:rolleyes:
What I can say is most of the many misfires I've had over many years involved me forgetting the powder or CCI primers. Between the hard cup and mild flame there are more clicks than I can shrug off. The other thing I can say is that if a rifle produces enough misfires that it shows up on the radar it's getting a new striker spring faster than you can say "Brownells will still ship them, donchaknow"
The worst string of bad luck I had was with CCI magnums in the .338 Edge in cold weather. Some of the primers went off and didn't light the powder, some just went click. Between the 2, half of my ammo was getting pulled down. I did everything you can do before switching over to my 215M stash, and never had another. There's a difference between the maybe hottest and softest, and the maybe mildest and hardest.
 
I had a similar experience just after I first started reloading but my problem was stupidity. I forgot to check the flash holes for tumbler media after I tumbled the cases
 
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