question about primers

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Jack Shootza 50

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On another note about primers, some years ago I read an article about primers getting contaminated and the author of the article did experiments to see what if and how long it took to contaminate a primer to the point where they wouldn't fire. He tried water, oils and various solvents and I was amazed at the results so I did my own experiment, I had some mixed primers that I wasn't sure what they were so I used them in the test, I put five in a can of water and left them there for five days and then pulled one out and loaded it into an old 300 Weatherby case that I scrapped because the primer pocket was loose and pulled the trigger on the empty case and it fired, I did this two more times over the next two weeks and each time the primer would fire so I concluded this had the same results that I read about, next test was with ordinary motor oil but tried them each day after submerging and it took till the fifth day before one misfired, then I moved on to lacquer thinner and that took till the end of the second day before I got a misfire, The point to all this is if you have a bunch of "pulled down" brass and think you can de-prime them safely after soaking them in water for a little while, IT DON"T WORK! I been using the water trick for decades and never had one fire on me but after this I soak them in solvent for a week before trying to de-prime and I like to test a couple in a firearm before trying to do the rest just to add another measure of safety to the process. The manufactures of primers coat the explosive charge with a very tough coating to prevent contamination and it takes a lot to break thru it and get to the ingrediencies. If you think I'm bs-ing here I'm sure you can find articles on the web about this...good luck and be safe.
 

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