Primer Test

I have examined the fried cases under a magnifying glass.

The cases are God Cross match cases - made for me by Hornady. They were virgin cases, but not Winchester as I previously stated.

The firing pin dent in the Remington Magnum primer is shallower than the others, suggesting a harder cup.

One of the Winchester Stnd primers has a pin hole blow out, and there is a dark ring around that primer. This is (was) a known problem with Winchester primers.
pqF7nJK.jpg
 
Ganderite said:
One of the Winchester Stnd primers has a pin hole blow out, and there is a dark ring around that primer. This is (was) a known problem with Winchester primers.
Click to expand...

Did that blow out damage your bolt face? Years ago, I had a primer blow the same way while shooting a Sako 22PPC. It torched a nice little hole in my shiny bolt face :mad:. The primers were an old lot of CCI 400 primers I picked up at a gun show. The original sticker was $12/1000, so I'm guessing they were 70s vintage.
 
Winter shooting can be a fraught thing, as increasing pain from the cold is a distraction until numbness takes over. Accuracy may be rather variable during all this.

I concluded yesterday while having to take a glove off in order to finagle some .22LR into a magazine that perhaps winter is more of a season for cartridges large enough to handle with thick gloves.

Thank you for the report; it assesses the various primers in a clearer light and dispels some presumptions I'd had about which were bad vs good. I wouldn't have trusted the newfangled Ginex but now they're worth a look, and meanwhile the tried-and-true Winchester may not be as reliable as assumed.
 
Otto V said:
Did that blow out damage your bolt face? Years ago, I had a primer blow the same way while shooting a Sako 22PPC. It torched a nice little hole in my shiny bolt face :mad:. The primers were an old lot of CCI 400 primers I picked up at a gun show. The original sticker was $12/1000, so I'm guessing they were 70s vintage.
Click to expand...

I just looked. A ring has been burned into the bolt face.
 
Ganderite said:
I have examined the fried cases under a magnifying glass.

The cases are God Cross match cases - made for me by Hornady. They were virgin cases, but not Winchester as I previously stated.

The firing pin dent in the Remington Magnum primer is shallower than the others, suggesting a harder cup.

One of the Winchester Stnd primers has a pin hole blow out, and there is a dark ring around that primer. This is (was) a known problem with Winchester primers.
pqF7nJK.jpg
Click to expand...

That, in most cases, was a sign of over pressure. Even when the load is within pressure limit, other factors may contributed to over pressure, for example, a bore that does not get cleaned for too long, or a carbon ring at the throat, or case length exceeding the max, or jam seating depth, may increase pressure tremendously.
 
Gun123 said:
That, in most cases, was a sign of over pressure. Even when the load is within pressure limit, other factors may contributed to over pressure, for example, a bore that does not get cleaned for too long, or a carbon ring at the throat, or case length exceeding the max, or jam seating depth, may increase pressure tremendously.
Click to expand...

That may be true, but this was not an over pressure. Weighed charges in virgin brass. Note that the primer cup is not flattened and the velocity of that round was 2747 - quite ordinary
 
Winchester primers have been known to blow out when not over pressure. Typically they would send you a gift certificate to replace bad product. That was pre Covid so I’m not sure if they still do that. I had a bolt face badly pitted so I’ve stopped using Winchester primers
 
hobophobe said:
Hopfully the bad winchester primers aren't the old white box ones that are silver in color. I have a 1000 of those I haven't touched.
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The ones I had were the current (I think it’s still current) blue packs with copper coloured primers. I had a brand new Remington 700 bolt pitted like Gandarites picture. That was it for me. About the 3 or 4th time it had happened in about 2000 LR primers.
 
billdick said:
I've ben using Sellier and Bellet lately as they were available before the big dry up. They work well. I like that it says rifle, pistol, revolver proving they are interchangeable
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Not EXACTLY interchangeable. Pistol primers have a softer cup. Magnum pistol are a little harder, and rifle primers are a bit harder yet. I don't think magnum rifle are any harder but I can't be sure. The harder the primer cup, the higher the pressure it'll take. If you used a regular pistol in a high pressure rifle load, it would almost certainly blow a hole through where the firing pin struck it. This is why the .454 Casull load data specifies a rifle primer.

As mentioned, pistol primers are slightly shorter. You may be able to use a rifle primer where it would normally be pistol, but the gun could possibly have light strikes, and I would slightly hesitate putting them in a tube mag.

During the ongoing shortage I saw there was a real shortage of large rifle and large rifle magnum. I bought some more large pistol magnum that I could use in my 45-70, as I would be loading it to low or moderate pressure and could thus stretch my large rifle supply out. One fella found that the large pistol magnum were slightly hotter than large rifle, which I wouldn't have suspected.
 
all of my lr primer loads were developed with winchester lr.the ginex primers look to be cooler.should i start with less powder and work up or try same powder charge and check for overpressure and velocity changes or do i need more powder to make up for the cooler primer?
 
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