Thirty years ago I bought a thousand Federal 215 primers, used several hundred and left the rest on the shelf. A few years ago I used them up and in so doing discovered that they were extremely hard to seat. I recently purchased some new F215 primers and found them to seat with normal force. I have recently used CCI primers that were decades old and found them to seat very hard. I believe this hard seating is due to age, specifically I believe the nickel plating on the primers has oxidized over the years the oxide coating becoming thicker and making the primers harder to seat. For background information, nickel is applied to primers for appearance and corrosion resistance. The nickel develops a very thin tightly attached oxide coating shortly after application by plating to the brass cup. This atomically thin strong coating is what provides the corrosion resistance. This phenomenon is the basis for corrosion resistance for all metals that are corrosion resistant except for noble metals such as gold. I have recently purchased a stash of primers that will hold me for decades, I may never be able to use them all. I would like to keep them from becoming hard to seat and my proposed solution is to put them in an airtight container with oxygen abosorbers. Oxygen absorbers are commonly used for food preservation. One type consists of iron powder, salt and clay in bags. The salt and moisture contained in the clay cause the iron to oxidize which absorbs oxygen. These oxygen absorbers are available on Ebay, Amazon and elsewhere. Handwarmers such as Hothands work by the same mechanism and can be used as oxygen absorbers. I am interested in your thoughts on this subject.

Use the Dillion Primer Pocket Swage, it will open up the cases pocket enough you won't have to use excessive force to seat the primers in question.
I have to admit, this is a new problem that I have never heard of.

I have Fed, Win And CCI primers that are 30 years old and have only experienced the hard seating problem with CCI small rifle primers but only because they tended to run larger than the others, at least at that time. My primers are in their original containers inside an old refrigerator which has an old bag of desiccant in it.
Have you looked at them with a magnifier? I would think the oxidation would be visible.

Large primers or small primer pockets or both cause hard primer seating. I suspect most here have old primers, myself included and I have no primer seating issues related to the age of the primer. A few angstroms of nickel oxide is nothing.

I had an engineering project to pack all of my employers ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene components in airtight double sterile packages with oxygen absorbers.
Why was this a project? The poly parts were implants for the human body and they have to be sterilized. The gamma ray radiation causes crosslinking of the poly in the presence of oxygen. As a result the outer surface tends to become a little brittle and takes on a slightly tan hue. Neither are desirable.

The oxygen absorbers begin absorbing oxygen as soon as the package is opened so any left over after a package was opened were trashed.
Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company manufactured the brand we used. I talked to their engineer and they normally used 3X more iron oxide than was required to absorb the rated amount of oxygen. Our internal specification required 3X the rated amount of oxygen absorber. So we effectively used 9X the needed amount of oxygen absorber. Our packages were transparent and we used a tablet that was blue when exposed to oxygen and turned pink when the oxygen dropped below a certain level.
This material worked well in our application.
However it is a total waste of time for primers.

Buy a good micrometer and use it to check your primers.If you have hard primer seating look at the method you are using to seat the primers.

I used the same method to seat the hard seating primers as I used to seat the easy seating primers SR4759, a Hornady hand held priming tool. I have a good micrometer, I found no correlation between hard seating primers and large primer diameter. I used all thousand of the primers myself and some of them in the same lot of new 300 Win mag brass. 30 years ago they did not seat hard, recently they did. 30 years ago I seated primers with a Lee hand held priming tool, recently I could not seat them with a Lee tool without being concerned I was going to break it. I bought a much more robust Hornady tool for the purpose. The primers that were easy to seat in the Hornady tool were also easy to seat with the Lee tool.

Oxide coatings are typically 10 microns or more which would be 100,000 Angstroms, hardly a "few Angstroms".

Of this I am certain: 30 years ago these primers were not excessively hard to seat. Recently the were excessively hard to seat. The only difference is 28 or so years.

quote:

Of this I am certain: 30 years ago these primers were not excessively hard to seat. Recently the were excessively hard to seat. The only difference is 28 or so years.

Yeah, old age is a bitch.

Nickel plating is used precisely because it does not corrode or oxidize in severe service in the semiconductor industry. That includes exposure use to acids. I can assure you that you do not have .0004" of an inch of nickel oxide on your primers. You might have that much nickel but not that much oxide.

I do not think you can prove that your plating is causing the problems. I have used nickeled Winchester primers in nickeled cases for decades and that combination would be worse for galling during primer seating. Perhaps your brass is nickel plated also? I also have some 30 year old Winchester nickeled primers and I still use the same old Lee hand tools. Even if the Hornady tool is more robust that does not mean it has as much mechanical advantage as your previous primer seater.

You have already proven in previous threads that you find goofy problems to obsess over and then post them here. When you do not like the input you go ahead against all advice and pack your 300 Magnum full of filler with predictable results.

You might like to read "Corrosion Engineering" by Mars G. Fontana and the various military and ASTM industry standards for nickel plating.

quote:

Originally posted by Suwannee Tim:
I used the same method to seat the hard seating primers as I used to seat the easy seating primers SR4759, a Hornady hand held priming tool. I have a good micrometer, I found no correlation between hard seating primers and large primer diameter. I used all thousand of the primers myself and some of them in the same lot of new 300 Win mag brass. 30 years ago they did not seat hard, recently they did. 30 years ago I seated primers with a Lee hand held priming tool, recently I could not seat them with a Lee tool without being concerned I was going to break it. I bought a much more robust Hornady tool for the purpose. The primers that were easy to seat in the Hornady tool were also easy to seat with the Lee tool.

Oxide coatings are typically 10 microns or more which would be 100,000 Angstroms, hardly a "few Angstroms".

Of this I am certain: 30 years ago these primers were not excessively hard to seat. Recently the were excessively hard to seat. The only difference is 28 or so years.

quote:

Originally posted by Suwannee Tim:
Of this I am certain: 30 years ago these primers were not excessively hard to seat. Recently the were excessively hard to seat. The only difference is 28 or so years.

I doubt you were using the same primer seating tool 30 years ago, so your perception of how hard or easy they were to seat might be colored by this, as well as 30 years of cerebral cobwebs.

I do recall that the very first primers I ever used in my reloading career were Federal 215's -- and they seated with significantly more resistance than the next box (of 100 in those days) I bought of CCI 250's. The difference was in the sharpness of the leading lip. The Federals of those days had a cup lip which was very sharp with little or no chamfer. CCI's (and others) had a tiny bit of chamfer so that they started into the pocket much easier. I have noticed that a recent lot of Federal 215's I've been using show no difference in seating resistance to other primers (except that the unplated Winchesters seat much more easily than any other.)

Bottom line: I suspect that it is the shape of the primer cup/lip which is the difference, and not oxidation or diameter.

By the way, I still have and regularly use some Herter's primers from 1968 (purchased to avoid the mail-order ban of the 1968 GCA. You see, some hoards can last for going on 5 decades ) The Japanese-made Herter's primers are nickel plated and seat as normally as any other.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
.......Bottom line: I suspect that it is the shape of the primer cup/lip which is the difference, and not oxidation or diameter.

By the way, I still have and regularly use some Herter's primers from 1968 (purchased to avoid the mail-order ban of the 1968 GCA. You see, some hoards can last for going on 5 decades ) The Japanese-made Herter's primers are nickel plated and seat as normally as any other.

This is the kind of thing I am looking for, first hand knowledge. I also welcome objective opinions. Storing primers as I am considering will be a pain in the arse and if it is not necessary then I don't want to do it.

Damn, I still have a few boxes left of old CCI primers from the late 50's or 60's... small pistol and small rifle.. I use them for my plinking ammo, and have not had one fail yet.

If they were stored properly, (dry and no excessive temperatures) they will last indefinitely.

quote:

Originally posted by Pa.Frank:
Damn, I still have a few boxes left of old CCI primers from the late 50's or 60's... small pistol and small rifle.. I use them for my plinking ammo, and have not had one fail yet.

If they were stored properly, (dry and no excessive temperatures) they will last indefinitely.

Quite true. I'm still using primers from the late 1920s-early 1930s. Never had one fail me yet.

I have Winchester primers in these packages and they all work ok.


these from Clinton's assault weapon ban shortage

and these from the late 60s


I also have a lot of Rem 6 1/2 in this type old package that have a $5.00 price tag. Lot of Hornet primers.

Here are some primers in packaging which newer/younger reloaders may not be familiar with. I use all of them successfully and regularly. If you'll note, the RWS primers are dated 1973, but the Herter's primers are older still.

Also note that the RWS primers are "Tested and Approved by the ARA" The ARA (American Reloading Association) hasn't been around in a long, long time. I could find no reference to it on Google. I'm not sure if it simply folded or might have been absorbed into some other industry group like SAAMI.

Keep those old primers with the larger diametre for your cases when the primer pockets starts to stretch. I had save 100 cases from the dumps by using some of those older Winchester primers. Their diametre was at least 0.004" larger that the new primers of today. Herewith I can get another 3-5 reloads from those cases.