Maybe Bad Primers?

[RetiredTater]

So the fiance and so went out for a date night on Saturday. Went to the range with pistols in tow and I had about 200 rounds of reloaded 9mm using Winchester Small Pistol Primers and 4.1 grains of IMR 700X powder pushing 115 train Berry round nose bullets. According to the Lee charts, 4.1 was too low, but Hodgdon and Sierra said it was just above minimum.

I had tested some out and it was fine out of my Taurus, but this was a different box of primers. First mag out of her 9, and had two FTFs with struck primers, and three FTEs. Swapped to my Taurus, had about same numbers of FTEs, and probably same for primers that had to be hit again. Taurus has DA/SA.

Had her switch to factory ammo and she did not have any issues.

FTEs I am figuring come from light charges, but the FTFs don't make me happy. I am going to load up another 25 with about 4.5 grains of powder (middle of the road charge) and another box of the primers, but am curious if the Winchester Small Pistols are known for having hard primers?

Did have one that even with about 10 trigger pulls did not fire. So held on and waited and nothing happened. Pulled it a part and it had powder.

I have never had an issue out of my .40 with these but it is a full-size. So anybody with more experience have the same kind of experience or am I just doing something wrong with my primers?

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[Rod Snell]

Reloads that have the primer left slightly high will misfire from the cushioning effect of the primer being driven it. Did you retry all the misfires?
The primers don't know how much powder is in the case, and should fire regardless of powder charge.

Did have one that even with about 10 trigger pulls did not fire.

That sounds like a bad or damaged primer.
Overpressure on a primer past touching bottom can damage the primer. Have to watch 9mm cases because some have a primer crimp that needs to be removed.

Touchy little buggers. And sometimes you get a bad one or three.

 

[dennishoddy]

As far as FTF and FTE issues, those are likely caused by your powder puff reloads. The main springs are factory installed to control the recoil of full power loads. If you want to continue to use low power loads, change out your main spring to a weaker model. The fact those issues cleared up when you swapped back to factory loads pretty much backs up its a spring issue.

 

[swampratt]

So dennishoddy you are saying the FTF is a low powder charge?

I would take the entire FTF round apart down to the primer and inspect the anvil and remove anvil and remove paper card under it and see if there is any explosive material under it..Take a good primer apart and see if the amount of explosive is the same..

Lot's of measuring,,that is what I would do and measure primer pocket depth on those rounds. Of course compare to the rounds that went off.

 

[furlong222]

a primer will fire in an empty case...

 

[dennishoddy]

So dennishoddy you are saying the FTF is a low powder charge?

I would take the entire FTF round apart down to the primer and inspect the anvil and remove anvil and remove paper card under it and see if there is any explosive material under it..Take a good primer apart and see if the amount of explosive is the same..

Lot's of measuring,,that is what I would do and measure primer pocket depth on those rounds. Of course compare to the rounds that went off.

Yes, the slide is short stroking and not traveling enough to pick up the next round. It's a common problem in semiauto's.

 

[swampratt]

So you are saying FTF is Fail to Fire because there is not any ammo in the chamber.

I assumed there was and it got a primer strike.. and he stated 10 trigger pulls and no fire on one round,
I assumed he chambered it each time and struck the primer with the firing pin 10 times and no ignition.

I assume a lot.


Now to the original poster i want to see some primer pictures..

 

[technetium-99m]

I've been through 40,000 primers and short of ridiculous light spring experimenting I haven't found a bad primer yet. Federal, Winchester, CCI, and Wolf.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

 

[dennishoddy]

So you are saying FTF is Fail to Fire because there is not any ammo in the chamber.

I assumed there was and it got a primer strike.. and he stated 10 trigger pulls and no fire on one round,
I assumed he chambered it each time and struck the primer with the firing pin 10 times and no ignition.

I assume a lot.


Now to the original poster i want to see some primer pictures..

FTF to me is a failure to feed. FTE is failure to eject. I'll hold to the spring problem in this case because all of the issues went away with factory rounds. We may just be talking semantics here with different understandings of acronyms.

I've been through 40,000 primers and short of ridiculous light spring experimenting I haven't found a bad primer yet. Federal, Winchester, CCI, and Wolf.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

I'm the same here. Tens of thousands of rounds with no misfires. I will have to say though that as I remove rounds from our range that are still live, with most being put into the live round containers, I do see primers that have been struck pretty hard, and they did not go off. I have a container in the man cave that holds about 20 pounds of live rounds recovered from the range. Most of the ones that misfired are European eastern bloc country ammo, and milsurp type rounds.
Its impossible to tell what brand of primer is in the reloads that I've recovered though.

That's not to say that there could have been a bad run of primers that the OP experienced.

To the OP, if you had a bad run of U.S. made primers, I'd certainly contact the manufacturer. They would want the rounds with the failed primers sent back to them for evaluation.
If they find a problem with them, they might send you some new, or give a gift cert to buy some more.

 

[DRC458]

I think the OP means Failure to FIRE when he says FTF, rather than Failure to Feed. At least, that's the way I read it.

"...had two FTFs with struck primers..."

That tells me they were already chambered and the primer was struck, but the round did not fire.