I was doing some shooting this weekend with my 6mm Rem, loaded with 95g BTs on top of 46g imr4831, R-P brass and Fed GM210 primers. This is the same 95g BT load I have been using for a few years. Brass has been reloaded 2 times and I have not seen any pressure problems with this load.

Second shot of the afternoon I got blasted with gas in face. I have never had this happen to me before with any of my handloads. I ejected the case and looked at the head of the brass. It was all black and appeared to have a pin hole in the primer itself. This hole was not caused by the firing pin. I shot a few more times, packed my stuff and left.

I got home, popped the primer out to look closer, and it had a tiny little hole on the corner of the primer.

Is this a fluke....what caused this?

You can see the hole on the upper edge of the primer, near the wall of primer pocket.


If you look closely you can see the hole in the primer, bottom left side of the primer.

It may just be a single bad primer. I have never seen anything like it. There appears to be the beginnings of a hole or dimple in the other side as well.

I have come across this problem only twice in 50 years, but it does hapen.

Try diffent box of primers and I'll bet the problem goes away.

Because of the smoke around the primer, I'm gonna say your primer pocket was oversized. The primer blew out of the pocket and when the case came back against the bolt face is when you got your pinhole. either one is not a good thing.

Your load appears safe so I wouldn't worry about it too much since it is an established loading but I would wear shooting glasses.

Could be a fluke, but should be noted as an extreme sign of over pressure. Backing off 1/2gr would be prudent. Fed. are known for their thin cup. I have switched to CCIBR for my needs, & they seem a bit more accurate thean the Fed. for me.

I have never had a problem until now. The smoke around the primer I believe happend due to the hole in the primer, but thats only a guess as I haven't seen this before.

I on;y have 175+ Fed GM210s left and I haven't seen them on the shelf in over a 1.5 yrs. so, on that note, I picked up a brick of R9 1/2's that I will probably use going forward.

backing off a 1/2 gr isn't going to hurt anything anyway, so I will probably do that too.

I've had this happen to me with one particular rifle. Even on loads that weren't near max. The bolt face had a slight depression that matched the perimeter of the primer. I figured out that the primer cups must have had some thin spots right at the radius. Switched to a different lot of primers and the problem went away. Tried the problem primers in another rifle, piercings dissapeared, tried them again in the problem rifle and about every 4th shot would produce a pierced primer. My particular situation was the result of the combination of the primer cups and the depression in the bolt face, as no other combination could reproduce the blowout. I might add that the depression was caused by a burr on the firing pin that consistently pierced primers. Fixed that problem as soon as I got a-hold of it, but it had already erroded a ring in the bolt face.

IMO Remington rifle primers don't deform or flatten as much as the other brands I have used.