Folks, years ago, back when Clinton was in office, I happen to be chatting with my gunsmith and a phone call came in from his phone tree. The old Pres was testing the waters for a 50 cent per primer tax. He immediately closed the store and started making phone calls. So, I left and drove over to my local gun shop and bought every primer he had in stock. I even bought primers for calibers I didn't have at the time, such as the 223. I figured I had a lifetime supply of primers.

Well, now it is 2014, Clinton is gray, the 50 cent tax died due to public outcry, and I am now running out of primers, so it wasn't a lifetime supply!

I will need to work up new loads of course, but are any of the new primers lead free or are they still the good old primer mix we have come to love over the years?

I searched this forum and checked a few primer sites but I didn't really find anything out. as near as I can tell, primers are still the same compounds.

same stuff

fulminate of lead, a heck of a lot better than fulminate of mercury! I ruined a good barrel on a Lee Enfield rifle that I really liked when I shot some factory reloaded ammo that had the fulminate of mercury primers. That was almost forty years ago and I still get aggravated when I think about it.

quote:

Originally posted by Luckyducker:
fulminate of lead, a heck of a lot better than fulminate of mercury! I ruined a good barrel on a Lee Enfield rifle that I really liked when I shot some factory reloaded ammo that had the fulminate of mercury primers. That was almost forty years ago and I still get aggravated when I think about it.

Are you sure it was the mercury fulminate that ruined the barrel? Or could it have been the various salts (such as potassium chloride) that were commonly used along with the FM in primers?

That's a genuine question...not a smart-ass response. I know mercury fulminate will ruin cartridge brass in a big hurry, but was not aware of it damaging barrel steel. When non-corrosive primers first came to the U.S. from Germany, they were commonly labeled "Non-corrosive, Non-mercuric". Riflemen had found out that the chlorate produced rust in barrels and the mercury destroyed brass, so distributors were assuring them that the "new" primers had neither.

I believe one of the active ingredients in primers now is lead styphnate, not fulminate of lead.

quote:

Folks, years ago, back when Clinton was in office, I happen to be chatting with my gunsmith and a phone call came in from his phone tree. The old Pres was testing the waters for a 50 cent per primer tax.

And that was even before every slack-jawed yokel had broadband access to enhance the spread of idiotic rumors.

The compound is not "fulminate of lead". It is lead styphnate. Primers using fulminate of mercury are not corrosive to barrel steel, but rather attack the brass cases, rendering them non-reusable. Potassium perchlorate primers are very stable and dependable, but do tend to corrode barrels.

Stonecreek, You can say what you want, but I was there when the phone call came in. That phone tree was strictly among gunsmiths. We don't need phone trees anymore, we have the NRA, CRPA, SCI and a host of other organizations that can text us and/or email us directly in far less time.

I disliked the lies & BS continually mouthed by Clinton, so I didn't doubt its authenticity. So I bought over 25,000 primers that day. And, if you do your homework or at least remember the dark days of Clinton, you will remember he did discuss a primer tax under the disguise of "paying for all the medical costs of firearms".

Buy Federal Primers and you will never go wrong!

The mercuric primers ruined the brass cases, not the bore. The potassium salts ruined the bore.
BTW, this is an example of primer hoarding brought on by hysteria. Nothing personal; no hate mail please.

"The dark days of Clinton" ? You've got to be kidding. Compared to the shit we've been getting from the Kenyan and his lying/corrupt administration for the last 6 years, they were bright sunshine. And it ain't over yet.

A few years ago Hodgdon or one of the manufacturers published an article about all the different primers and their relative effectiveness. The day they published it one of the manufacturers announced a change in their primer compound. The data was obsolete before anyone read it. They refuse to publish another such document because primers change constantly and too many people regard published works as the last word. CCI has changed some of their primers in the last couple of years, using different chemistry to get the same results. The newest primers are the low lead and lead free primers that are used in the "green ammo" for use in indoor ranges. Typically any primer will do the job but to be on the safe side use the same primer listed in the load data or start working your load up from 10% below the maximum with any change in components from those listed in the book.

Note: some powders in some cartridges should not be reduced 10% - H110 and W296 in the 357 magnum is one of those cases.

Well, "dark days" was a relative term. I agree, compared what is going on today, those days were more like cloudy overcast. The real Bright Sunshine days were the days when I bought my 12 ga pump and plopped it on my bicycle handlebars and rode across town to my home. Just don't expect to vote for Clinton when she waves the "I support the Constitution" flag.

Hoarding Primers ?????? Moi???? Guilty as charged. But do note, I found some primers the other day in my gun shop but I didn't bother to buy them. There is an upside to all this!

See this is the basis of my question - I had a feeling that primer companies were changing over to lower/less/no lead but I had no way of knowing for sure. Given some of the comments on misfires from primers that I have read at Midway, Natchez, etc, it prompted me to ask the question. I suppose PaulS is right, if the manufacturers switched to lead free, we wouldn't know unless they told us.

quote:

Originally posted by RobertD:
Stonecreek, You can say what you want, but I was there when the phone call came in. That phone tree was strictly among gunsmiths.

Oh, forgive me! It would be impossible to float a baseless rumor among gunsmiths. And thank goodness for the internet. You can't put anything that isn't true on the internet, you know.

Absolutely correct. In fact, I'm still waiting for my palm sized, 40 KWH nuclear power generator to come in the mail.

One small word in favor of some hoarders...

I used to buy primers at the local gun show ever time I showed up. At that time, (early 2,000s) they were selling W-W LRP & SRP for $12 per M...once in a while F210s or F205s at the same price. (Once I even got F215s at the same price.) Over the years I ended up with maybe 100,000 of them. When the primer shortages hit, I was able to help out my local gunshop owner friends by selling them 90,000 primers at very little more than I paid for them. If I hadn't bought and put them aside, there would have been NO primers available locally for even the month or so they had those. Me, I've still got maybe 8 or 9,000 for my own uses...LRP, LPP, SRP. & SPP.

Alberta: By definition, you're not a hoarder. You simply keep a large reserve. If you were a hoarder you would still be sitting on those 90K of primers and buying more off of Craigslist at $50 per thousand.

Similarly, I've "loaned" a gun dealer friend of mine several boxes of .22 LR so that he can furnish at least a box of shells with each .22 rifle or pistol he sells. It has facilitated several sales for him which might not otherwise have occurred. In a few months when the craziness has subsided, he'll pay me back the borrowed shells and I won't come anywhere close to exhausting the multi-year supply before that happens.

Another advantage of buying excess primers on sale, as with powder, is savings. I look at the prices I paid during a close out at my old gun shop: $10.95 per thousand of Federals!!! I am still working from that sale.

AC, I assumed it was the primers that made my nice, shiny rifle bore into something that resembled the surface of a gravel road, but no, truthfully, I don't know for sure it was the primers. If it wasn't the primers I have no idea what could have caused it.

I had read that the active ingredient in non-corrosive primers is fulminate of lead and just repeated this. If, as has been stated, is untrue I apologize, as I am not a laboratory analyst by any stretch of the imagination.

luckyduck, it likely was the primers, which were corrosive. british ammo is known (at least on the inetrnet) for having very corrosive primers. the .303 ammo used chlorate primers.

mercury primers went out after black powder did.

quote:

Originally posted by Luckyducker:
AC, I assumed it was the primers that made my nice, shiny rifle bore into something that resembled the surface of a gravel road, but no, truthfully, I don't know for sure it was the primers. If it wasn't the primers I have no idea what could have caused it.

I had read that the active ingredient in non-corrosive primers is fulminate of lead and just repeated this. If, as has been stated, is untrue I apologize, as I am not a laboratory analyst by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sure it WAS the primers, just not their mercury fulminate component. Corrosive primers are STILL used in some countries because of their very good record for long, long, shelf life in loaded ammo. That's the primary reason the U.S. military stuck with the FA 70 primer for at least 40 years after the civilian market was using NC/NM primers. We had many millions of rounds stockpiled at any one time, and no one wanted a bunch of old (no longer dependable) dud primers in combat.

Corrosive primers were still used in some U.S. civilian factory ammo until the 1960s...particularly even in civilian factory match ammo for the .30 calibers. And many of the military surplus primers one used to be able to buy here were definitely corrosive. So were some of the old-stock sporting primers one would pick up at garage sales, estate sales, and at gun shows.

One of the other barrel "agers" found in primers until maybe 45 years ago was a high content of what was essentially ground glass....it served the same purpose as a striker surface does on a box of stick matches. As most know, glass is primarily made of the same material as common sand. Firing sand down one's bore is not recommended, even in minute amounts.

And even though it wasn't really sand, "glass hard" is a term derived from, well, glass.

So, if you run across a batch of really old primers for cheap, it's okay to use them, but it's wise to clean the barrel with hot water ASAP after firing. Water will dissolve and wash away the corrosive salts if they were corrosive primers.

The old steel-corrosive potassium chlorate was a favorite with both target shooters and the military both because it provided a consistent and dependable flash, and it was very stable and long-lived. Just clean your bore after every shooting session and you'll never have any trouble (as if many of us are that disciplined!)

Lead styphnate, the compound currently used in almost all modern primers, can be made just as dependable and consistent; so far as the clock has thus run (70 years or so), it also seems to be very stable and have a long shelf life (I'm still using some primers from the late 1960's). Its only drawback would be the very miniscule amount of lead it puts into the air, which only comes into play in an enclosed range.

If you watched the recent popular TV series "Breaking Bad" you might have caught the episode in which chemist/drug cooker Walter White temporarily passes off a chunk of fulminate of mercury as crystal meth to some drug dealers, then holds them hostage with it after demonstrating how a small piece of it tossed against a hard surface makes a very big bang.