Primer did not ignite. What now?

harbinger

harbinger

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HI all, Hope the holiday season is treating you right.
For the first time in 20 plus years I had a primer not ignite on me. It was seated properly and was the only one out of 50 hand loads of this particular batch. It was well struck by the firing pin and has a substantial "divot" closely resembling one a normally fired cartridge would exhibit. When it was fired we observed the usual hang fire procedure and after waiting quite a while longer removed the cartridge from the rifle. My question now is what do I do with it? Try to fire it again? pull the bullet? bury it in the yard? THrow it in the fire pit? (just kidding). Seriously though, this has never happened before and I don't have a tool to pull the bullet, can I just use pliers? Thanks for any help, I'm sure this has happened to someone else before.
FYI it was a magnum primer (cci 250 i believe (i'm at work so going from foggy memory), 54 grains of IMR 4350, Hornady 110 grain hollow point bullet for a .270win in Browning Abolt2.
 
If it were me, I'd go out and buy a new rifle to try it in, repeat until it fires :)

Kinetic bullet pullers are cheap!
 
It's time to open it up like corpse and figure out why it did not go boom - NCIS style!

Or just brake it apart.

Throw the powder in your garden, bullet back onto your reloading bench, case into a glass of water and then garbage.
 
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Take your die out of the press and put the cartridge in the shell holder and up through the empty hole. Grab the bullet with side cutters and pull the case down with the press handle. Dump and look at powder, deprime and look at primer.
 
GreenBob said:
...case into a glass of water and then garbage.
Click to expand...

What? Why would he trash the case? And he certainly should not be throwing a live primer (it certainly would still be live after a few seconds in water) in the garbage.

The OP should pull the bullet, deprime the case and examine the primer to see if it has any priming compound in it. If it does it needs to be deactivated. If it doesn't it can just be discarded.

Best way to deactivate the compound is to ignite it. A safe way is to put it in a metal can and heat the can with a torch. For one, I usually just put on eye & ear protection, set it on concrete and hit it with a hammer.
 
For those a bit "leery" about removing a potentially "live" primer, I was surprised how little drama is involved. I just turned down the decapping pin a lot further than it normally sits, and operated the press slowly, and the very much "live" primer just pressed right out. I found the "trick" is then to find it - I have RCBS press, so the "catcher" is more of a wish thing, rather than a "real" thing - so I went one case at a time - finding each live primer before going on to next case. Had warned my wife she may hear a "pop" - but NADA - I de-primed about 30 of somebody's hand loads from which I wanted to salvage the brass. I was considering running the emptied cases through my rifle to "pop" them off before removing, but thought I had read enough times about doing it successfully, that I wanted to try it. I did go at it with the expectation that there would be a "pop" - PPE, etc., but nothing untoward happened.

I did use an RCBS collet puller to remove the bullets - as usual, it worked just fine and the bullets, after a tumble in rotary tumbler, are ready to be re-loaded again.
 
A number of possible reasons:

Slow powder, light bullet, less than a compressed load. Primer did not create enough pressure to get the powder ignited. Most common with standard primers and ball powder. 4350 is not difficult to ignite, so probably not this issue.

Bullet seated long and engaged the rifling and kept the case shoulder off the chamber shoulder, cushioning the blow. Not likely with such a light bullet.

Oil in bolt and cold weather. A primer is ignited with shock (high velocity hit). Cold oil can slow down the firing pin. The dent shows energy, but not velocity. Squirt some G96 or brake cleaner through the bolt.

No powder in the case. If the bullet did not pop out of the case, this is a good bet.

Primer not seated deep enough to bottom out the anvil legs.

Defective primer.

Pull the bullet. (I use pliers and the die hole in my press.) Is there powder? Virgin powder? Means primer did not fire. Yellow or lumpy powder? primer fired but no ignition.

Deprime as normal and examine the primer. Did it fire? (Don't worry about the primer. You could not set it off if you tried.)

Please report what you find.
 
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I had this happen to me on some 460 S&W rounds. I thought I had a good strike but it turned out that I did not. It was in a revovler so I tighten the hammer spring put the bullet back in and boom.
 
First thing I would do is put it back in your rifle and pull the trigger again. Sometimes if the primer isn’t seated deep enough a second whack will ignite the primer and you know the problem.

If it doesn’t fire, pull bullet and examine.
 
Just happened to me yesterday, with one of Fed's "AR223" rounds. A second strike did nothing. Took it apart just now, and all looks well. 25.8 grains of powder, anvil looks ok. Not sure why it didn't go bang.
 
I had a hang up at the worst time possible. A few winters ago, i was out coyote hunting and the wind was perfect. I knew there may be a coyote eating on a dead cow in a frozen over dugout/dead pit. I climbed up the dugout bank to look over and sure enough, 25 yards away is a coyote half way into a rib cage eating away. I shoulder my CZ 527 and crosshair him and "click"....nothing. So i wait a few seconds in case it does eventually go off. Coyote is still eating. I raise and drop my bolt again hoping it would fire and "click". Now i am cursing myself holding the crosshairs on him and waiting what seemed forever until i decided it was safe to eject. I slowly back away and very quietly try to eject the shell. Sure enough, the yote hears and is 0-60 in no time. No more being quiet, I rack the dud out get a fresh one in. Never did get a shot off, and never did find the shell that ejected as it went flying into the deep snow somewhere (probably 30 yards away judging by the force i threw that bolt back). That was a cci BR primer. That "click" when its supposes to go "boom" sound is a sound that no one ever wants to hear. Out of thousands of rounds reloaded, that was the only one i had.
 
jimbo14 said:
Just happened to me yesterday, with one of Fed's "AR223" rounds. A second strike did nothing. Took it apart just now, and all looks well. 25.8 grains of powder, anvil looks ok. Not sure why it didn't go bang.
Click to expand...

I assume those are the same as their 1000 round bulk box .223 ammo, which I have had many failures to ignite with. Usually in bolt rifles, but sometimes in a "black" rifle.
 
:runaway: I can't say I've had too many dud primers over my time, except for some ugly old Yugoslav 7.92 surplus. When I get a dud, I keep the bolt closed, rifle pointed in a safe direction and wait a bit. I'll raise and lower the bolt and try a couple more. If no go, I take them home and pull the bullet, keep the powder in a labeled container. I reuse the powder and bullet in boxer brass. The dud cartridge goes in a bucket under my desk.
 
I would try shooting it one more time in the same rifle. If still a dud, I would take it home, remove bullet, empty powder, de-prime and recycle bullet, powder and brass...
 
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