I'm a new reloader and I had a surprising and concerning thing happen the other day. I made up a few sets of test loads for my hunting pistol--a Contender barreled for 7-30 Waters. I've reloaded occasionally for about six months now, but am still a neophyte.
I had made a total of 16 rounds, with four sets of four different measures of Varget over large rifle primers. When I got to the range, I found that 3 out of 4 wouldn't fire. Just a click. I was getting dimples in the unfired primers, but no big bang. I've never experienced this and it worried the crap out of me.
Here's what I think happened, but I'd like to talk it through to get any insight/feedback that you experienced reloaders might give. I have an RCBS hand primer and it's always worked okay. I've always been told that Lee and RCBS shell holders were the same and interchangeable. In this session, I had the Lee shell holder in the priming tool and had problems with the priming tool sticking and not working right. I couldn't figure out why it was being so finicky, but I eventually got the primers in. I think this may have been the problem, but I'm not 100% sure that it's the entire problem.
After my frustrating range experience (when I never knew if the gun would go off or not), I went back to my workshop where I have a bullet trap. I tried to refire all of my "no fires" and actually got two of them to fire. The rest would not. I started fiddling with the priming tool and switched out the Lee holder with an RCBS holder. All the earlier priming tool problems went away. I loaded five new rounds to test it out. The first four went off just fine but the fifth did not. Recocking and refiring did set off number five.
I was quite pleased with my troubleshooting, but #5 needing two strikes keeps nagging me. I expect 100% of my primers to go off when I want them to.
So, when you hear this story, what's your take? Was this a primer depth issue? Could that Lee shell holder have been making the primers sit too deep? I put a ruler across the bottom of the "no fire" rounds and couldn't see any difference between those, factory rounds and good reload rounds. If they were too deep, you couldn't tell from just eyeballing it. What am I missing here?
I had made a total of 16 rounds, with four sets of four different measures of Varget over large rifle primers. When I got to the range, I found that 3 out of 4 wouldn't fire. Just a click. I was getting dimples in the unfired primers, but no big bang. I've never experienced this and it worried the crap out of me.
Here's what I think happened, but I'd like to talk it through to get any insight/feedback that you experienced reloaders might give. I have an RCBS hand primer and it's always worked okay. I've always been told that Lee and RCBS shell holders were the same and interchangeable. In this session, I had the Lee shell holder in the priming tool and had problems with the priming tool sticking and not working right. I couldn't figure out why it was being so finicky, but I eventually got the primers in. I think this may have been the problem, but I'm not 100% sure that it's the entire problem.
After my frustrating range experience (when I never knew if the gun would go off or not), I went back to my workshop where I have a bullet trap. I tried to refire all of my "no fires" and actually got two of them to fire. The rest would not. I started fiddling with the priming tool and switched out the Lee holder with an RCBS holder. All the earlier priming tool problems went away. I loaded five new rounds to test it out. The first four went off just fine but the fifth did not. Recocking and refiring did set off number five.
I was quite pleased with my troubleshooting, but #5 needing two strikes keeps nagging me. I expect 100% of my primers to go off when I want them to.
So, when you hear this story, what's your take? Was this a primer depth issue? Could that Lee shell holder have been making the primers sit too deep? I put a ruler across the bottom of the "no fire" rounds and couldn't see any difference between those, factory rounds and good reload rounds. If they were too deep, you couldn't tell from just eyeballing it. What am I missing here?