M-14S primers.

RememberTheSomme

RememberTheSomme

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Was at the range today trying to sight in again with my new Garand sight. On around the 80th round of Sellier&Bellot 150FMJs, I noticed smoke starting to roll from around bolt and underside Mag Well. I thought wow, how is it getting that hot from so few rounds to burn of oil from receiver, like smoke rolling from under a new AR's handguard. Checked the five brass just fired in that string and presto, an pierced primer.
There was no indication to me of any gas my way, so the rifle dealt with the pressure rearward into bolt face well.G:

When the Norc manual states to use only NATO spec primer ammo because of possible slam fire on soft commercial .308 primers, I'm assuming the firing pin strike is quite high to overcome the thicker NATO spec primer which itself eliminates slam fire.

Anyone else have primer pierce on .308 ammo? When I get more handloads, I will try to use Nato spec primers or is there a "reduced strike" spring for .308 ammo?

Would the CCI 250 Magnum primer be hard enough compared to milspec primer cups?

A curious note is the Manual(is this a copy of Springfields manual??) says rifle made to fire NATO spec 7.62 ammo,and to use only this, while the firearm itself is stamped .308WIN. I guess thats the importation of military calibers restrictions at play.

The M14S by the way eats everything thrown at it and I can pick the brass up pretty much in one area, all forward slightly right. I love the M-4, but this is my Rifle for sure.:)
 
The M14 is hard on primers. All the documentation I have regarding handloading for the M14 suggests strongly to use hard primers. In my experience and arguably, CCI makes the hardest primers, followed by Remington/Winchester, with Federal being the softest that I know of.

CCI makes a regular Large Rifle primer (CCI 200) that have worked very well for me. CCI also makes NATO quality primers (CCI 34 or 41) with a supposidly harder cup then CCI 200 but I can never find any of these for sale.

As far as factory ammunition, I do not know who may have the harder primers equal to CCI. I would, if shooting factory ammo, try to find a manufacturer with harder primers to prevent a pierced primer.

Also, in case you were unaware, when you slip in a mag and close the bolt, the free-floating firing pin will gently 'tap' the loaded round. If you do that adn then remove the cartridge from the chamber you will see a small diviot in the primer where the firing pin struck. This can be an issue leading to 'slam fire' where the rifle goes off when the chamber is closed if the primer is too light or if they are not properly seated while handloading.

One last thing, sometimes 'junk' gets caught in the hole on the face of your bolt that could prevent the firing pin from retreating into it. Obviously this can lead the rifle to auto fire and is very unsafe. Always take a quick peek at the bolt face as I sometimes find little bits of brass caught in mine.

Sorry for the novel, hopefully the answer to your original question is in there somewhere :redface:
 
I had one pierced primer in about 3000 rounds. That was with DA 64 that I had 2 crates of. It did the same thing as you described and left a small gas pit on the face of the bolt just off to the side of the firing pin hole.
 
SA Milsurp, all the time. No issues with Norinco or IVI Milsurp, factory or CCI primed reloads.

M
 
The suggestion to use hard primers is to reduce the chance of slam firing. This is not related to pierced primers.
Don't know how fast you were firing, but 80 rounds throuogh a .30 rifle could get it pretty hot.
 
I just shot 80 of those same S&B 150's yesterday and my rifle loved them.
Hope to reload this years brass this coming winter, sounds like hard primers are what we want.

I love how easy it is to collect this brass, as you mentioned. I was practicing prone & kneeling from the same spot and when I was done, I quite literally picked up all 80 cases from the same spot. They had formed a tidy little quarter-moon about 24" to the right and 12" forward. :p
 
Mauser GDog said:
I love how easy it is to collect this brass ... I quite literally picked up all 80 cases from the same spot. They had formed a tidy little quarter-moon about 24" to the right and 12" forward. :p
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:eek: My rifle pitches the brass EVERYWHERE!!! I usually have to spend about 10 minutes hunting down my empties and have been considering a brass catching net. you are one lucky fellow.
 
Thanks for the help guys.

I didn't fire the 80 S&B rounds in one setting. I fired about 50 of the 150 Lapua FMJs as well. I load the little 5 round mag from strippers and shoot each 5 round group as fast as I can accurately recover,which is about every 8 to 10 secs. I like the sling under tension and my hand jammed under it. seeing as we can only use 5/20 rounders anyway,I see no use for it and the strippers work flawlessly so I keep the little 5 round mag in.
 
RememberTheSomme said:
seeing as we can only use 5/20 rounders anyway,I see no use for it and the strippers work flawlessly so I keep the little 5 round mag in.
Click to expand...

I was able to load an sks w/modified 5x round stripper clips, faster than I could swap out my 5/20's in the M14 this weekend. Little discouraging :mad: and a lot easier to carry.
 
If you load a round into the chamber and don't fire but insteads cycle the round out you will notice a dent on the primer. This is because of the free floating firing pin. Hence why all bolt's that have this type of firing pin all should use the harder primers to adviod slam fires. As to finding the CCI hard primers they are useally a custom order at Reliable Gun but many other gun store's should be able to get them in also. Plus is you are on the east coast talk to Chemist as he gets them in from time to time also.
slushee said:
:eek: My rifle pitches the brass EVERYWHERE!!! I usually have to spend about 10 minutes hunting down my empties and have been considering a brass catching net. you are one lucky fellow.
Click to expand...
Time to get the Doc to modify your spring in your bolt. As I too had this issue untill he niped & tucked a couple of coils off my extractor and ejector now they all fly in to the same pile 2 feet away.
Mauser GDog said:
I was able to load an sks w/modified 5x round stripper clips, faster than I could swap out my 5/20's in the M14 this weekend. Little discouraging :mad: and a lot easier to carry.
Click to expand...
I notice this too. So that's why on 2 of my M14's I kept the stripper clip on them and now it's almost as quick as my SkS.
 
I use Winchester primers in my M1A and have never had a slam fire or pierced primer.

I did however experience a slam fire years ago with Portuguese Milsurp ammo.
 
I use CCI 250 (magnum) primers in mine. I also keep the bolt clean and free of junk. (kids old toothbrush works really really well...and it's cheap too. It's also a fine ending for those expensive little brushes, payback actually)

Never had any issues so far, and I've put through at least 500 reloads, not to mention factory rounds.
 
As long as the primer is seated properly you shouldn't have a problem. I good step to follow on unknown brass is to uniform the primer pocket just in case. A primer that hangs out too much will ruin your day. BUT I still like to use the CCI #34 primers
 
Thanks again. Looks like the CCI 34 is a security cushion in the M-14. I see alot of guys getting good results from Olin WLR primers.
Just for comparison after searching through all the brass in my ammo box from the Norc, I found about 20 from my BLR81. The firing pin indent is not much larger than the Norc bolt closing mark......LOL. Just kidding but wow those BLR81 strike light.:)
 
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