Had a misfire in my .375 H&H yesterday -- first one I've ever had with a centerfire rifle handload.

Load was 270-gr. Hornady SP, 74.0 gr. RL-15, CCI 250 primer, new Rem. brass. Thought maybe I got a weak firing pin hit so I tried it a few more times then threw it in the dud can.

Any thoughts on the most likely cause? I am guessing the primer might not have been seated right; I don't touch them with my fingers so it's hard to see how I could contaminate it.

John

I had one a few years ago in my 7-08 and never figured out why. Maybe a bad primer from the factory? A piece of tumbler media in the flash hole? Pellet crushed during seating? The wifes curse for shooting that day insead of painting the hall

I had a "dud" last summer at the range with my .358 M99 and CCI 200 primers. I have been loading for 50 years and it was my first one.

I took this very seriously as those .358's are my primary woods rifles and must perform.

The firing pin detent was small and I determined that it was due to brand new brass that was not fireformed to the chamber, an old rifle with many shots thru it that might have a little headspace and the fact that I now qualify the depth on all primer pockets with a Sinclair tool and most of all because the CCI 200 primers are much SHORTER in height than other primers!

I am not going to use those primers with that rifle any more.

I don't have the official SAMMI specs on primer seating depth but even if I did that rifle needs special attention when all those things ganged up on me.

Believe it or not guys, sometimes its nothing you have done wrong and the primer just doesn't function properly. Pulling the bullet on such around may answer many of your questions, looking for evidence that the primer fired or not. I'm in the military and with lots of big magazines and linked belts shooting many more rounds in a day than most will shoot in many years, you would be surprised at how many primer failures there are out there.
They are incredibly reliable, but still do have a failure rate that is measurable. How you store your primers may also have an impact on the reliability.

regards,
Graycg

i had my old 721 missfire, never had one in42yrs of reloading. The gun was used when i bought it,i had been shooting it for a couple of years with no problemsthen all of a sudden. Just when i was going to let a frend use it one deer season, we went out to fire it so he could sight it in iwas telling him how he should get into reloading, then it happens... Itook the gun to a gun smith with the miss fire, to check it out. he checked my head space, took the bolt out dissmantled it cleaned it put it back together, loaded the miss fire in the chamber, took it out back and bingo! fired right off! Head space was good,It seams i put oil in the bolt, which is ok, then i stood it on end bolt face down to insure every thing got oild. no problem in it self, but first i should of dushed it out with gun scrub, then oil. The point being it could just need a simple cleaning. A lot of crud gets in to places you would not imagine. Only cost me 10.00 and got my head space checked to. Be for you try to tear into your bolt, better check first some need special tools or just scrub it good and try it again. GOOD LUCK !

I know this is a bit off topic but when do you declare a 'hangfire' a 'misfire'. I bought a M1A last year to start shooting in High Power (Service Rifle) and got started re-loading at the same time. After reading all the warnings about the possibility of slamfires I got a bit over zealous regarding the seating depth of my primers. I even used a caliper to make sure the primers were at least .004"+ below flush (I use a RCBS hand primer).

I went to the range with my first batch of handloads and had the VERY experienced range master look at the rounds and he told me they were plenty deep. I fired 20 rounds or so zeroing the rifle for the 600x3 scheduled for the following day.

With that as a back drop I proceeded to shoot my first club match and was a bit nervous anyway when I load the first round for record and 'click-no boom'. I just held the position for several seconds and having no way to strike the primer again (gas gun) I turned to my spotter (also VERY experienced) and he said to just kick it out and set it aside. I did as he said and went the rest of the match with no further problems.

I guess this is a long way to go about asking how you know if it's a hangfire or a dud. What was going through my head were the stories about rounds going off after being hit the second or third strike. I still don't have a good understanding of what would cause a delayed ignition (hangfire) and how long that delay might be. It makes me extremely nervous to extract a live round with properly indented primer and just call it a misfire. I tend to err on the side of caution and I'd appreciate someone telling me what causes a hangfire and when I can be 100% certain that it's safe to eject that round potentially exposing everyone to a very dangerous situation (ie the round goes off after it's been extracted. Sorry for the long winded post but this situation really does make me nervous and I hate things I don't completely understand.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thanks for your help.

X-Wind

I think, by definition, a hangfire only goes off late, and a misfire never goes off, or only will go off with a restrike.

As to what causes a hangfire, it's any kind of deficient ignition. As near as I can tell, the powder doesn't all start burning at once, and "fizzles" until the pressure/heat gets high enough, and THEN it burns nearly normally. Typical causes might be below-normal primer function, compressed powder loads with ball powder that are too old, or too much space in a really large case.

I guess a misfire is any kind of weapon or ammunition malfunction that results in "no bang at all" or "feeble bang (primer only)." In either case, I was taught to keep the weapon pointed downrange and count to thirty, and then to eject the round and look for bore obstructions.

I have some recent experiences with hangfires, and I got them on videotape for review. I was working up from starting loads in .505 Gibbs cases, and about half our loads hangfired. Once we'd worked up to where the cases were nearly full, the hangfires stopped. Now we use foam to fill up the extra space, and we get no hangfires even with starting loads. This is not something you need to do with a .308-sized case.

Our hangfires with new components were in the neighborhood of a tenth of a second. On the tape you could hear the click of the striker, and then perhaps .10-.15 sec. later, BLAM! I have heard that old ammunition sometimes takes slightly longer than that to go off.

From the shooter's point of view this is quite disconcerting. It's sort of like the bottom dropped out of the back of the trigger and you don't have a floor, and there's this feeling of dread like you are falling and it's going to hurt when you get to the bottom. I understand why this bothers you, and you'd prefer to avoid burying the primer and/or parts of the case in others. A primer will go only halfway through your arm from a case with no powder and no bullet if it strikes a bone in the middle (Guns and Ammo; stupid things people have done with ammunition).

John Frazer, I assume you took the dud home and disassembled it?? I once let a friend use my tools to reload himself some .308's, which he took bear hunting. When he got back, he had several duds, and was quite disturbed. He said the three dud were the first three rounds he had tried to fire at a bear, and if the fourth one hadn't fired, he would "have done been et by the b'ar"!! I don't know about that, but when I pulled the bullets, fully expecting bad primers, I was astonished to see that the bases of all three bullets were covered with carbon black!! His primers had worked fine, but he had left the powder charges out of the three duds!! He was lucky a primer had not blown one of those 200-grain bullets up into his barrel, or round no. 4 would have disassembled his rifle!! We disassembled the remaining 16 rounds he had loaded, and he had left the powder out of about half of them!!

I have used over 15,000 Winchester WLR primers (in the past 5 yrs), never had a dud.
Got 1000 pcs of Federal 215 once, of the first 300 i had two duds, and gave the rest away!
Went back to Win WLR.

Well, John, next time take it apart. It MAY reveal why it didn't work! If it was a bad primer, I'd scrap that lot of primers, and maybe change brands! If it was just an omitted powder charge, the cure is simple. Just look into all cases once you've got them charged, and before you seat the bullets. I've left the powder out of 'em a few times myself, but caught the omission before I seated the bullets (I look for omitted charges AND double-charges!!)

Does everyone feel comfortable disassembling a round that misfired? I'm nervous enough on the two occassions that it's happened in my short stint at reloading. Would you use an inertia bullet puller? or press mounted? Would you de-prime a struck primer that didn't go off? (as opposed to looking down into the case )
Once the primer is out, presumably from pressure exerted on it by a decap pin, how do you tell it's a 'bad primer'. I feel like I need to add that I'm a rookie to all my posts but somehow I think it's probably quite obvious .
I think what makes me nervous about even handling a mis-fire are the stories I've heard about rounds going off after the 2nd or 3rd strike implying they are still sensitive primers and the inertia puller or decap pin may be all it's waiting for... Thoughts?..

XWind

What make of rifle is your .375? You said you were shooting new brass, twice, one in a 6mm and another time in a 25/06 both Rem. M700 the new brass was short in the headspace and the small extractor hook on the Rems. would not hold the case against the bolt face. The primers were somewhat dented but that was all. Solved the trouble by seating the bullet into the rifling to fireform the brass.

John Frazer, reasons for misfires. 1. old oil in bolt, slowing firing pin strike,more often in cold weather, can happen in a brand new gun also. fix =spray with wd40 or clean bolt.2. no powder. 3.H450 powder and other powders that are coated, may not light even with a mag. primer in cold weather.I have pulled bullets and saw that the powder started to burn then quit.243winxb

I guess I didn't save the round to pull apart because I figured it was most likely the primer, and couldn't think of any way to see the primer.

Pulling the bullet with a collet puller would be safe; guess I ought to get a .375 collet for next time. Can't imagine that I didn't pour powder. I weigh all charges and only loaded a small lot in that session.

Recent bolt work by a totally qualified gunsmith and known good headspace, as well as the fact that all other cartridges fired and this one didn't fire on a second try, suggest no mechanical problem.

The primer definitely didn't go off. I've had squib loads and know what those sound like. It was a quiet day and no one else was shooting at the time.

John