BE CAREFUL AND ALWAYS WEAR YOUR GLASSES!
I was pulling some bullets and a primer went off! How it didn't ignite the charge I don't know but it scared the hell out of me and put
the respect of what we are all doing right back
fresh in my mind. Anybody else experienced this?

WOW!!!!! Glad you are OK.

Safe shooting
Doug

Was the primer a misfired one or a brand new untouched one?.......................DJ

I was pulling bullets from loaded ammo. Primer was live.

Ken Howell once reported this was not an unknown occurance on the 24hr campfire, and I believe here also, a few years back. He was accused of trying to scare folks and being a fool.....
Personally I haven`t seen it. I also don`t use one.

So is it possible to maybe ignite the primer from the anvil end? Could it have been a slightly loose fit then bounced hard onto the anvil?

First of all you should always wear protective glasses while reloading......Period.

I've disassembled hundreds of rounds with a Kinetic bullet pullers and never had a single problem. I won't however use one on a primer with a firing pin dent in it. All of the instances I've heard of before involved a misfired primer........................DJ

It is my understanding that without the case being in a chamber there will be noise but very little pressure built up.
In this case, was the puller destroyed??
How about some pics?

A kenetic puller does look a lot like a pipe
bomb. With a Berdan primer it is even closer.
While I have never set one off I do use the
collet puller when possible. Lots faster, neater, and probably safer.
Good luck!

I've never had a problem with a kinetic bullet puller, however I'm always leary about one going off, and I do wear glasses when using one. But, I prefer bullet pulling using a collet puller. The tips of plastic tip bullets get dinged up with a kinetic puller too.

Don

Just put a bit of padding in the end of the kinetic puller.

Yes, I have had that frightening experience, as well.

It was a number of years ago, and it took me a while to talk myself into using the darned thing again.

I was pulling some reloads for a friend. The ammo was a wildcat chambered for 6.5 X 300 Winchester Magnum. Pretty damned fast on the chronograph. But as most folks do with wildcats, he had loaded some shells that were too hot.

Little did I know, he had overloaded these cases before and the primer pockets where loose.
Well, sure enough, one of those primers bounced up and down in the pocket till it went off.

Scared the heck out of me! The primer went into the rafters in my garage but the powder did not ignite.

Sure will wake you up!

quote:

Originally posted by R Flowers:
Yes, I have had that frightening experience, as well.

It was a number of years ago, and it took me a while to talk myself into using the darned thing again.

I was pulling some reloads for a friend. The ammo was a wildcat chambered for 6.5 X 300 Winchester Magnum. Pretty damned fast on the chronograph. But as most folks do with wildcats, he had loaded some shells that were too hot.

Little did I know, he had overloaded these cases before and the primer pockets where loose.
Well, sure enough, one of those primers bounced up and down in the pocket till it went off.

Scared the heck out of me! The primer went into the rafters in my garage but the powder did not ignite.

Sure will wake you up!

That is terrifying....

I threw my bullet "slammer" away years ago. Now only use a collet in my press.

That's what happened, R Flowers. I think the primer pocket was sloppy loose and the primer, when it went off, blew out of the case head but did not ignite the charge. I use some padding in the puller to protect the bullet too but another thing I've noticed is that you cannot simply reload these pulled cases. You must resize them first because the neck gets out of concentricity from the bullet being pounded out.

quote:

Originally posted by R Flowers:
Yes, I have had that frightening experience, as well.

It was a number of years ago, and it took me a while to talk myself into using the darned thing again.

I was pulling some reloads for a friend. The ammo was a wildcat chambered for 6.5 X 300 Winchester Magnum. Pretty damned fast on the chronograph. But as most folks do with wildcats, he had loaded some shells that were too hot.

Little did I know, he had overloaded these cases before and the primer pockets where loose.
Well, sure enough, one of those primers bounced up and down in the pocket till it went off.

Scared the heck out of me! The primer went into the rafters in my garage but the powder did not ignite.

Sure will wake you up!

I think I'll add cases with loose primer pockets to those not to use the Kinetic Puller on!............................DJ

If you use the search facility here and over on www.benchrest.com, you'll see that this is not such a rare occurrence. There have been numerous incidents like this reported. Fortunately, they all have in common that only the primer is set off and not the powder charge.

- mike

Posted almost the same thing about 6 months ago. Primer went off but failed to ignite the powder charge.

I think I'll get a collet puller. Any suggestions on brand? I would think that you may not have to resize before loading again with the collet puller. True or will the neck tension be too light?

I use the RCBS version.

Do you resize after pulling the bullets Craigster?

quote:

Originally posted by Tyler Kemp:
Just put a bit of padding in the end of the
kinetic puller.

What is this supposed to do, apart from protect the bullet point?

So, in all the world, as far as we know, no one has suffered any injury with a kinetic puller.
Pardon me if I don't panic. But yes, I wouldn't do it with out glasses. But this goes for putting them in also.

Holding the hammer straight and true would stop any neck deformation, but if some want to resize good for them, but some say neck sizing with an expander button will send 'em wonky anyway.

There is no way you can hold the hammer straight while pounding out a bullet! I loaded some without resizing and rolled them on a glass table and about 20% were visibly non-concentric.
What does the expander ball do to screw the concetricity up? Should they be sized without it?

quote:

Originally posted by rcamuglia:
Do you resize after pulling the bullets Craigster?

I partial full length size them just to be sure.

The next question:

Did you get the stain out of your shorts?

Longshot

Sure did. That Wipe Out really works! Had to leave it in overnight though..........

OH man, that is unnerving! I've always wondered about that myself.

Were you getting carried away with walloping it out, or were you just tapping away when
"surprise" happened?

quote:

Originally posted by rcamuglia:
There is no way you can hold the hammer straight
What does the expander ball do

Well, I don't mean straight as such, but straight as it hits. Like when hammering a nail in straight.
So, with me, a small uncrimped cal will come out with one heavyish whack , look to see if it's moved, one medium, and one more light tap.

A light projectile in a small neck shouldn't have much sway (pun). Again with the 500gr projectiles, light taps because of the weight/momentum/kinetic energy available.

So, no matter for me a bit of a bend. Once I chamber it it's sort of straightened.

Many of our learned AR posters dislike the expander ball because they reckon it will/may pull the neck out of allignment slightly.
There are ways to set it, and get around it or use Lee collet neck sizers. But if you don't use it with usual dies the neck probably will be too tight to seat a bullet.

My way is to ignore the problem, as the Lee didn't improve accuracy for me one iota.

C O L L E T puller!

When it happened I was pulling 180gr Accubonds from .300 win mags. I guess it was enough weight and angle to screw up the concentricity of the necks.

Yeah well, some of us have trouble driving in a nail. You should have seen me trying to hit a railway spike. The foreman soon put me on drilling the holes. As the brace was eccentric my holes were straight.

quote:

I think the primer pocket was sloppy loose and the primer, when it went off, blew out of the case head but did not ignite the charge.

That is a guess, a best guess. However I think it is equally plausible that the primer was overly sensitive and the impact set it off.

We are so used to having insensitive primers, and dud primers, but seldom do we encounter an overly sensitive primer in a context where it can be identified. I think this could be one of those incidents.

quote:

If you use the search facility here and over on www.benchrest.com, you'll see that this is not such a rare occurrence. There have been numerous incidents like this reported. Fortunately, they all have in common that only the primer is set off and not the powder charge.

- mike

Maybe that's because all those that had the powder ignite are either too dead to report or too blind to use a computer.

Back when I was an indestructable 25 year old I pounded out thousands, mostly from surplus military ammo to recover the bullets. It's simply not worth it anymore.

I quit using one of those "slammers" years ago, but never had a primer pop with one.

Something it seems no-one is curious about, except me?? What brand of primer was it? I am curious if one brand is more prone to such things than the others. For example, Lee says NOT to use any brand butt CCI in its priming tool. Federals are sometimes described as "softer" than other makes. And Federals are the ones I try to use all the time, if I can find them for sale.

It was a WLRM in a Winchester case

Hey RBinNM! Where do you reside? I'm in Albuquerque.

Over about 38 years I have pulled a few hundred rounds maybe....never set one off.

I have used the hammer to pull THOUSANDS of bullets with no misshap -- YET. I bought a moutian of loads from an estate of an old guy that lived at the load bench.I pulled all the bullets and sold the components on E-bay before to commies went anti gun. I now have a collet type puller for most rifle bullets but still use the hammer for pistol, 444 and 45-70. I still buy reloads for cheep and break them down for components.
I resize EVERYTHING.
I also have punched out gobbs of unfired primers and use them in plinkers with out a single misshap OR missfire!! Push them out slow in a decapper die and ALWAYS wear safety glasses.

I have had an intersting thing happen when using my kinetic puller.
After hitting it a few times,the bullet will start to move ,but will not be out yet,or so it seems.Closer examination will show a few grains of powder out of the case...but the bullet is still in the case.Only thing I can figure is the bullet comes out of the case ,and rebounds back up and goes back into the case mouth,leaving some powder in the puller.It has happened a few times,sometimes quite often.

Sure, so while the bullet is going to the bottom of the hammer, only a few grains manage to come out?? Well, if you say so.