Fired development loads last evening and all rounds were loaded over Winchester WLRM primers. A total of 76 were fired. In that batch, 3 primers failed to go bang. After waiting a bit after each misfire, the bolt was activated and the loads were fired again. No bang again. After another wait, each cartridge was ejected and the bolt face checked for dirt/debris that could have interfered, nothing. Then these loads were reloaded and fired. One cartridge fired off as planned!

Well, this sucks. Now I have the remaining 924 WLRM's in the carton. At 3 per 76 not firing, I figure I've got 36.5 more misfires to go. I have sent a message to the folks at Winchester and will be very interested in their response.

Meanwhile, for those interested the lot no. is PFL253G And also meanwhile, any ideas?

Not knowing the exact details, I would say the problem is not the primers. I have never had that bad an experience with any primer, in fact I have only had one not go bang in over 20 years and that was because I seated it too deeply in the pocket. I reload thousands of rounds per year without a problem. If you are not hand priming with a hand priming tool like the Lee or RCBS, try it. I would not trust press priming although a lot of people do it with great results.

BraSyl-

A good friend was at the range yesterday, trying to diagnose a "problem". Seems that he is also having problems with Winchester primers, only his are WSR's. He is shooting them in his service rifle, and they're piercing. He usually shoots 25 grains of Varget, but had these loaded with only 24 grains, not stiff by any means. He fired them out of four different rifles, so I'd say it's not a rifle thing either. The primers would either pierce or crater badly. We chrono'd a few shots, they were well below max.

Rumor has it that Winchester has a bad run of primers out right now...

I have just about finished off my second box of winchester primers with not a single failure in either box. I use WLRM (7mm Rem mag) and WSP (357 mag). These were with several different powders and bullets. Different brass manufacturers also. Sorry to hear about your bad luck with these. I myself will continue to use these as they produce very good results for me. Good luck.

BraSyl:
Just a thought........could your sizing die be set to push the shoulder back too far resulting in excessive headspace? I have seen that happen, if not, sorry I asked.

Regards,
hm

Just came in from the range, was shooting Winchester 30/06 factory ammo, 168BST, last shot on the target,and it fails to fire, wait 20 seconds, open bolt, extract round, good solid firing pin strike. Retry this round again, same thing,click,wait 20 seconds, check round, deeper firing pin strike. Got home, pulled bullet,full case of powder, check flash hole, appears normal, very carefully deprime case, check primer,No anvil,or priming compound, just the primer cup.
Have over 1200 rounds left from the same lot number, will I find more?
When the 10 m/m came out,Had several cases that failed to fire(factory loads), checked everything out and found over 10 cases that had NO flash hole in the case, out of 1000 rounds fired that day. Was carrying this on duty, Along with 10 other S.O. officers, made us do some quick thinking, changed to my 357 mag Coonan, used Winchester factory ammo and have had no problems since. So I quess anything can happen with anything at any time.
Thank you,Don.

I am not as experienced as you guys, but I have reloaded and shot about 200 rounds so fra in my .338 Win. Mag. I am using IMR 4350 and WLRM primers in a Browning A-Bolt.

Two weeks ago I had one shell misfire. I did not try working the bolt and firing again. I simply extracted the cartridge, took it home, deconstructed it and threw away all the components.

I was not aware this is uncommon, although I have never had a misfire in 35 years of shooting factory loads.

kk

Thanks all for your help, thoughts and ideas here.

larrys - I use an RCBS hand primer. I don't recall anything abnormal when priming the cases.

hm1996 - This was new .30-06 brass fireformed to .30-06 AI, cleaned and full length sized. I would think that if I had screwed up and set the die to far down, more would've failed due to the shoulder being pushed back. The loads that misfired occurred at random.

I kinda think the rest of this carton of primers will be relegated to fire-forming chores only. I wouldn't be able to tolerate a failure in the field.

"I would think that if I had screwed up and set the die to far down, more would've failed due to the shoulder being pushed back. The loads that misfired occurred at random. "

Not that this is the case with your loads, but I was pulling bullets on some M2 Ball ammo and seating 168gr Matchkings for shooting short range matches (200 yd) in my Mod. 70 Tgt. The GI primers are probably harder than most commercial primers and the ammo was at least 30 years old, but had proven (up to that time) 100% reliable.

After pulling the bullets, I ran the cases through special sizing die reamed to produce proper neck tension in my rifle w/o expander ball before seating the matchkings. This die normally resides in my Dillon but used a single stage press for this operation, therefore moved the die and re-adjusted.

Started experiencing an occasional misfire and noticed somewhat lighter firing pin strike. First thought, was that a combination of the old, hard primers and perhaps FP spring weakening on the pre-64 Win was to blame. Since I had been loading for 50 years, it never entered my mind that I could have fouled up.

Well, immagine my surprise when I discovered that
I had, indeed, been setting the shoulders back just a tad, resulting in excessive headspace.

So far, I have never had a bad primer result in a misfire, but I'm sure that it does happen.

Regards,
hm

[ 05-21-2003, 20:12: Message edited by: hm1996 ]

Are you guys refering to the newer gold/brass colored primers? If so I have heard lots about them. Nothing good. The old silver primers were just fine my me.

Mine were the "new" finish, gold ones.

HenryC470,
yes,there was more than a failure to fire, In every case(10 different weapons,all SW 1006), when the primer was struck, all primers fired and drove the loaded round into the chamber with enough force to jamb the unfired loaded round into the throat/bbl leade and tie up/jamb the pistol from working. When weapon was safely cleared and stripped down to check WHAT HAPPENED? we found that the primer pocket was damaged/expanded and appeared liked a 70,000 psi+ overload and the primer would fall out of it's pocket.
Being the Dept's armourer and rangemaster, everything was checked for damage in or on the weapon (none found), I would then fire a clip full of ammo, everything was ok until the next round failed. Same results every time, we shot duty ammo for all range quals, needless to say, all scores were below the average for all shooters that day. This was the last case of that ammo brand we bought.
It is surprising just what a large pistol primer can do when contained and the force has no place to go! Recoil impulse is noticed/observed even by novice shooter.
Thank you,Don.

That'd piss ya off (or worse) if one had a factory load on a safari like that one. No good!