S&W Model 52-1 issue

[RandomShotz]

I was shooting my 52 at the range last night and had 3 misfires. The primer was dimpled but the round did not go off. I hit them again with the same result. These are reloads in Starline brass, which I have been using for several cycles without this ever happening before. I noticed that the primers were deeper than the ones that went pop, but that variability has always been there as far as I know. The strike was obviously lighter, but did not look like a light strike. I asked the RO to run them through one of the rental .38 revolvers so I could get the brass back (I did not want to chance using a ballistic bullet puller once the primers had been hit) and they did not pop in the revolver either. The primers are Winchesters which I have been using all along and are from the middle of the last case that I bought, and I've been shooting the standard 2.7 gn Bullseye behind a 148 gn HBWC.

Since I have had no problems with these components before over ~3,500 rounds, I am not sure what is going on. I completely stripped the gun last night and the firing pin has a very slight bit of peening on the back end, but I had noticed that before. The front looked sound and the pin is dead straight. The firing pin pin and spring were dirty but I don't think there was enough buildup to cause the pin to short stroke.

Do primer pockets get deeper with use, or is the firing pin becoming marginal? Will the firing pin from any other S&W fit the 52, or am I in trouble? Or is something else going on?

Roger

[Misny]

Too many variables, but since they didn't fire in a revolver, it may be that you had bad primers. Try shooting a box of factory ammo in your pistol and see how it performs.

[Bill Treanor]

If they didn't fire in the revolver, either, I would guess it was a problem with those particular primers.

[RandomShotz]

I hope it's not the primers because I have ~3600 more of them from this lot, but you're probably right.

I cleaned the gun thoroughly last night and the same thing happened this evening at the range. Factory .38 spl wad cutters are hard to come by under the best of conditions, so I can't try that any time soon. Bud's has some CCI small pistol primers (cartons only, one per customer and $40 each at that) so I bought a carton of those. I had bought a bunch of Remington brass a little while ago - range run, but I've trimmed and sorted them - so I'll try a couple of combinations of primer and case this weekend.

Roger

[gulliver62]

My experience with .45 primer pockets is they tend to get larger in diameter. I am not sure about deeper.
You said that it looked like the primers were deeper than others. Maybe check your loading setup for anything in the primer area. The might have been seated to shallow and part of the energy was spent pushing them further in. Just trying to come up with thoughts.

[RandomShotz]

I use the Lee hand primer and always make sure that the lever goes all the way when seating a primer. It is the same setup that I've used all along. The Starline brass was bought new and I have noticed that some of the primers seat more easily than others after having been used for a while, but none have been so loose that I was inclined to discard them. It seems extremely unlikely that any could have backed out under recoil but it is worthwhile to look at primer seating. I have some of the mis-fired rounds in the shop with me today and if I have time, I'll use an indicator to get a measurement on the depth. I can also sort some unfired rounds by primer depth and see if that makes a difference.

Y'know, I've visited some reloading forums and thought that the excruciating meticulousness with which some people approach reloading was a bit odd. Now I'm beginning to understand why. That, or I'm becoming a bit odd myself ...

Roger

[Dr. Jim]

Primer quality control may be slipping, I've recently had packages of primers in which a few of the anvils fell out when dumped into the primer tray. Needless to say the anvil-less cups were rapidly picked out and discarded. I don't recall which brand, lately up here we have been getting a number of odd European brands. If you disassemble a few duds, check that the anvils are there.

Cheers. Dr Jim

[RandomShotz]

I would consider that if I could use a collet puller, but they are wadcutters, so the only way to disassemble a dud is with a ballistic puller and that makes me nervous. I might try a hacksaw (gently), since I won't get the case back anyway ...

Roger

[Dr. Jim]

I can understand that, Roger, but I've pulled dozens of WC and SWC bullets with the inertial hammer when I've done something stupid (not turned the powder measure to the dispensing position). Never had one go off, and in your case you've already whacked the primer once or twice, so try one. If you are really really concerned spray a bit of WD40 on the primer and wait five minutes.

Cheers

[C. Perkins]

I use Remington cases only in my 52-1.
I clean the primer pockets and seat all primers to .010" +/- .002"
This gives a good crush/contact of the primer petals against the case to ensure consistant and proper ignition.

I wrote a whole page article of reloading for the model 52's the other day as I promised I would, but when I went to hit send, it all went away.
So now I will attempt it again one of these days.
(I really hate when that happens :(

Clarence

[Gort]

Use Federal primers, they use different chemistry and a thinner cup. They are more sensitive and much easier to ignite. That is the only primer that will reliably ignite in PPC revolvers that have very light hammer strikes.
Gort

[RandomShotz]

Dr. Jim -

I have pulled live wadcutter rounds before, but the dysfunctional primer gives me pause. Most likely, the primer is a total dud or would take a serious and direct whack to set it off. But the possibility that it has simply been pushed closer to the edge of detonation, though exceeding small, could have consequences exceeding large. As for WD40 neutralizing primers, I came across a thread on another forum where members were discussing whether or not it was safe to remove a backwards primer with a depriming die (can you guess why I was looking that up?) and suggestions for neutralizing the primer were offered, including soaking with WD40. Ultimately, someone posted a communication from a primer manufacturer saying that there is no way to safely neutralize a primer by soaking it with anything. The manufacturer may have just been covering his kiester, but I leave that for the more adventurous to test.

Clarence -

The hand primer does not have a way of controlling primer depth. I checked a batch of loaded Starline brass and it seems that there was a bimodal distribution. Most of the primers were .014-.015 below depth but a small number were .010-.012. I marked those and will see if they go pop this afternoon.

Oh, and sorry about that reloading paper - I have also lost some positively brilliant writing that would have been significant contributions to world literature to the wastes of cyberspace. The frustration has left me unable to write at that level ever since. ;)

Gort -

Under the current hoarding-induced component shortage, choice is severely limited. Powder Valley has been out of stock and not taking backorders for some weeks now. I was looking for large pistol primers a while ago and the only ones available were Tula. Despite their poor reputation for consistency and reliability, I bought 3 cartons out of desperation; even they have since become unavailable. I think the only reason Bud's has a small quantity of CCI primers is because they don't generally carry components so no one was looking there. Once primers become available, assuming I'm not too old to hold a gun by then, I may try Federals although Winchesters are generally considered soft and, up until lately, reliable.

Oh, and I inspected several trays of the Winchester primers and there were no missing anvils or other visually apparent defects.

Thanks for all the replies - I may know more about the problem this afternoon.

Roger

[John C]

I'd just pull the bullet. If the primer didn't go off with a direct firing pin strike in a pistol, it's probably not going to go off. Obviously, you should be wearing eye and ear protection.

The jarring of the inertial bullet puller does not put strain on the primer. If it did accidentally go off, the burn would be contained in the puller. When a round go off outside of a gun, the bullet (the heavier part) stays pull and the case goes flying, but not very far, and with low energy. This is not to say that it's a good idea, but it's not like having bullets flying around your garage.

If there was any priming compound in those primers to begin with, the pellet is by now fractured and in the gap where the anvil should be.

I would not saw into the case to disassemble. While I'm sure you could do it with no issues, should the round should light off, you'll get a jet of case out of the hole you just cut in the case.

This is a genuine bummer. I feel your pain. Good luck!

-John

[RandomShotz]

Okay, so this is what happened yesterday. As I mentioned before, a handful of cartridges were sorted according to primer depth - there were 7 that were shallower than the other 20 in that group. I also made up 25 loads each of Remington and Starline brass with CCI primers and 25 of Remington brass with Winchester primers. I did not have time to load more, and with a prior failure rate of ~10% I figured that would be enough anyway.

Every mother-lovin' one of them went bang.

Jim C - I'll pull the croppers later today and see what they look like, but I have a feeling that there won't be much to learn from them either. With any luck, it was just a hiccup in the primer mfg process and there won't be any more problems. I'll go back to the Starline/Winchester combination, but maybe sort the next 100 or so by primer depth just to keep an eye on things.

This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts at work, too. Some device will stop working, I'll take it apart, find nothing worn, broken or otherwise wrong, put it back together and it works. It's almost like it was tired of being taken for granted and just wanted a little attention ...

Roger

[Dr. Jim]

Murphy always likes to get his fingers into the issue! I too know the 'it quits, disassemble check, reassemble, works perfectly' paradigm!

Cheers

[Rover]

You guys have just never learned the power of "holding your mouth right."

[RandomShotz]

Dang! I knew I was missing something!

[Dr. Jim]

And never thinking about the tiger!

[RandomShotz]

And never thinking about the tiger!

Great. You just gave me another thing to not think about. Thanks.

Roger

[Misny]

The only time I've had problems with primers is when I didn't fully seat them using my Dillon 650. This was with Winchester primers; loading 45 ACP.