Sellier & Bellot Small Pistol primers - trouble!

- and mine were loaded through a Dillon Square Deal B. I checked at one point, noticed a raised primer so I went back through, gave 'em all the finger test and re-seated all I could feel any sort of raise to. But those were .44 mag's on the Hornady L&L AP; zero issues with the Dillon.

There too, the S&B brass is usually the main offender - they put their primers in TIGHT! I swage my S&B .44 primer pockets as a matter of course. But I use CCI and W-W primers on the .44, never had a problem with either. 'Course, the .44 has a BIG hammer!!! (629-1)

No complaints at all about S&B 9mm's, we've likely gathered two coffee-cans of them this last couple years and they've never given us a problem. In fact, this reloading session I tried a couple chrome empties with some weird Cyrillic headstamp - found out the hard way they were Berdan's, lucky I didn't snap my decapper pin, usually the only chrome 9mm's I find are W-W and I'll take all of them I can get.

"SHE" and I have a sedate pastime to share during our 'declining' years - picking brass off the range! ;)
 
To the O.P. - dismantle some of those duds and look to see if there is little or no primer compound in them.
I had this happen last autumn using S&B small pistol primers. Fortunately, I had only used a few hundred before taking a range trip and discovering that about 20% were duds. Primer cups were empty on most of the failures. I'm guessing that Sellier & Bellot have non-existent quality control.
The moral of the story is that you only get what you pay for - my son called them Eurotrash...
 
K-C said:
To the O.P. - dismantle some of those duds and look to see if there is little or no primer compound in them.
I had this happen last autumn using S&B small pistol primers. Fortunately, I had only used a few hundred before taking a range trip and discovering that about 20% were duds. Primer cups were empty on most of the failures. I'm guessing that Sellier & Bellot have non-existent quality control.
The moral of the story is that you only get what you pay for - my son called them Eurotrash...
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Well, that certainly sucks. I've been fortunate with mine so far. I think I'll look at my remaining boxes for content though. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Let's revive old thread.
What is your recent experience with S&B small pistol primers?

I recently loaded a batch of 9mm on LNL AP with S&B SP primers, bought them just several month ago.
In the first 200 rounds fired I got two misfires. This is with my M&P 2.0 and this baby has eaten several thousands or all kind of factory ammo and my reloads with CCI primers and fired all misfires from by buddys' CZ75 and Glock 17. These two misfires were the two first misfires in the whole pistol service life... I can't blame the handgun, I can't blame primer seating as all rounds were inspected after loading.. QC issue?

Those two don't look like light strikes at all to me..

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I just finished 10K and bought another 20K. They run in everything except my revolvers.

High primers? Did it take a double strike?
 
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Just finished the last 1000 of 5k. There was one bad round out of that didn't fire. I'm ok with that. I'm not competing so a few extra $$$ works for me.
I'll buy some again without any thoughts.
 
4n2t0 said:
I just finished 10K and bought another 20K. They run in everything except my revolvers.

High primers? Did it take a double strike?
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I did not try second time, both failures were during the match and later I did not have this opportunity. With this batch I individually inspected all rounds so highly unlikely high primers. I have just removed both primers and it seems that both has priming compound in place. I guess it's either way too hard even for my M&P or other type of defect. Now as I googled it, apparently it's not uncommon with S&B SP. So training rounds only from now on.
 
Horilka said:
I did not try second time, both failures were during the match and later I did not have this opportunity. With this batch I individually inspected all rounds so highly unlikely high primers. I have just removed both primers and it seems that both has priming compound in place. I guess it's either way too hard even for my M&P or other type of defect. Now as I googled it, apparently it's not uncommon with S&B SP. So training rounds only from now on.
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They weren't too hard for your M&P 198 other times, lol. I still think they were probably high primers, especially in the Geco brass. Next time try striking them again to confirm. Could you have gotten two faulty primers? Sure, but it seems weird since all other rounds performed as intended.
 
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I use them in my S&W MP 9mm. No problems at all. Seen a few 1000 now. The 19-5 eats them right up also.

The only time i have ever had an issue with primers was when i didn't dry my cases long enough after a good wet tumble.
 
4n2t0 said:
They weren't too hard for your M&P 198 other times, lol. I still think they were probably high primers, especially in the Geco brass. Next time try striking them again to confirm. Could you have gotten two faulty primers? Sure, but it seems weird since all other rounds performed as intended.
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I am definitely gonna try second strike next time. However from my experience with primers "too hard or too soft" it's never for all of them, nobody can manufacture primers with 100% identical characteristics, they are within certain threshold of course, but not fully identical. It's all about small variations of "hardness" threshold vs striker force threshold. And when latter don't fully overlap former is when you get "primers too hard". Thanks everyone for feedback and suggestions.
 
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