Danger of Defective Primers — Primer Pocket Blow-Through
Think you can “get by” without protective eyewear? This story provides yet another example of why you should wear safety glasses every time you go shooting. You only have one set of eyes — they are much too precious to risk.”
Bad Primer Blasts Gas Through Side of Casehead
Our friend Grant Guess recently had a “close encounter” with a bad primer. An apparently defective primer caused part of the casehead on one of his rounds to blow out. This, in turn, allowed high pressure gas to vent through the damaged primer pocket. Take a good look, boys and girls. This is yet another very good reason to wear safety glasses. The cartridge was a 6.5-06, hand-loaded in necked-down Winchester-headstamp .270 Win brass. Grant reports:
“I had a blow-through between the primer and the primer pocket today. The action was really smoking and I got a face full of gas. This was a reasonably light charge. Thank God for safety glasses.
I should also mention that it appears there is a 3/64 hole that is halfway between the primer and the primer pocket. Like it burned a small jet hole through both of them.”
Could this happen to you? It just might. On seeing this damaged case, one of Grant’s Facebook friends, Chris D., observed: “Search the internet, you will see a lot of these pin hole ‘in the corner’ failures. Obviously Winchester has some issues with the LR primers.”
Careful Examination Reveals Apparent Primer Defect
After this incident, Grant examined the damaged case: “I pinned the flash hole and it is not over-sized or under-sized. The primer clearly has an area where it had a defect. At [50,000 CUP], it doesn’t take much of a defect to cause issues. There was a slight bit of pucker-factor on the next shot….”
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Tags: eyewear, Grant Guess, Primer, safety, Winchester
Had the EXACT thing happen to me recently. Was shooting my 6xc with Norma brass. Primer pockets are still nice and snug but the Winchester primer did exactly what is shown above. Burned a nice chunk out of my bolt face also.
I had similar situation. Send photos and description to Winchester and they will take action. Keep the parts, they will want to see them. Also see if you have the lot number of the primers.
Because of this situation I now record lot numbers of primers, brass, bullets and powder on my reloads.
had the same problem with Winchester primers………. cut boltface…..dealt with the company….. jacked me around for 8 weeks…. B.S….
DON`T USE WINCHESTER PRIMERS
I had it happen once. Not good.
Going to take a stab at the cause. It could be that there were fine stress cracks (very minute) in the cup from the forming process. Possibly the material wasn’t annealed properly before forming and that induced the cracks.
This has never happened before in shooting WLR primers for at least 40 years. The ONLY time that I have ever lost a primer was on a very high humidity day and with nickel plated cases. On an otherwise very safe load, I lost a primer with every pull of the trigger during a prone match. It etched the bolt face on my RPA at the time.
Being guilty of not wearing glasses in some prone matches over the years, I will N E V E R consider shooting anything without the best glasses available after this.