What do you do to preserve your primers during storage. I know there are folks that purchase several thousand and use them over the course of several years. Do you put them in Tupperware, ziplock bags, hermetically sealed containers, etc.?

For years I've used a Tupperware type plastic tub for storing primers. Never had an issue.You can find them in a shape and size that will accommodate whatever number of primers you want to store.

I have 45 year old primers on the shelf in the back of the closet.

On a shelf in the factory box in a spare room of my house.

My vintage 1968 Herter's primers have had no special treatment and I hate to even recall all of the various hot, nasty places they have been stored in nothing other than the factory packaging throughout my college career (five different rentals) and all of my other places of abode since. I use them exclusively in a couple of rifles with a weak firing pin fall since they are more sensitive than some current production primers.

Can't recall any problems with my stock of 1973 RWS Sinoxids, either, but then I obtained them post-college so they haven't been stored in quite so many rat holes.

Then there are the yellow boxes with the red "W" . . . but then I have no real record of their age so I won't count them.

In US military ammo cans.

On a shelf where air can circulate. Been doing this for over 50 years now. Never had a primer/primers go bad.

I store my primers in a container with a open bottle of rice in it.

If you live in a dry climate it doesn't take as much care to keep things. There have been a few reloaders ask questions on this forum about how to keep dies and other tools from rusting. Some don't have the perfect location to set up their loading room. Sometimes it can be in a damp basement or even a garage. It this is the case and you lived in Washington state or anywhere else that the humidity is high you may have problems. In those circumstances a plastic tub is pretty cheap insurance. A metal military type canister would certainly work,however I would be concerned that if it was ever involved in a house fire the metal can could act like containment and blow up when it got hot enough.Maybe those cans are designed to relieve pressure, I'm not real familiar with them.

Good point on the metal canister. Primers or powder should never be kept in an enclosure which does not offer fairly easy pressure relief.

Simply keeping your reloading components in the same reasonably climate-controlled environment that you keep yourself in is the best way to assure their longevity. If for some reason that is not possible, then a wooden or cardboard container with a moisture absorbent inside is the next best solution.

quote:

.Maybe those cans are designed to relieve pressure, I'm not real familiar with them.

Nope.
I shot on an Army AMU in the early 60's and some of the team members carried their shooting gear to the firing line in .50 cal. ammo cans.

One of the team members had a carbide lamp in his box. One day while waiting behind the 600 yd line, his box exploded due to fact that acetylene gas detonates around 13 or 14 psi!

Fortunately no one injured,but we all drilled vent holes in our ammo cans after that.

Regards,
hm

Keep them away from heat and moisture. Primers have a much longer lifetime than gunpowder, but, I have read material that indicates that primers will dud out if exposed to high heat.

Primers are made wet,then dried, and a sealer is put over the primer cake. That tells me that you don't want them exposed to excessive moisture.

I'd never thought much about this particular issue before, except to lock them up where kids can't unite them with a hammer.

But what are the issues, compared with powder?

If you're a dangerous-game hunter, primers are extremely important - and many used to persist with mercuric primers, believing they were more reliable in the tropics than the new non-corrosive ones.

If a less-than-robust ignition were to produce some sort of pressure excursion, we could have a problem. Has anyone ever heard of this?

Though I've kept American primers in a wooden cupboard for decades, they have never failed to fire and have not produced any result I could complain about.

I have got some old, corrosive, French military ammo that often fails to fire, though, and that is a worry.

I know a guy who left them near his bench grinder - don't do that.

I store my primers in a cooler box with a jar of rice in it. I am still using primers from the early 1980's and had no misfires.

I never used any special storage procedures. Just kept them at room temp. I am still using "Western 8-1/2" by Olin from back in the late '50s. Working great for 30-06's.

I keep my primers and powder in my shed fridge, always have and never had a misfire once. I also have never seen a degradation in velocity from the powder over time as I did when powder was kept in a cupboard.
I get temps above 40ºC where I live in summer regularly, and then temps below 0ºC in winter. In the fridge, it's 4ºC all year round.
I read that it's swings in temp that degrade the brisance of powder and primers.

Cheers.

I keep mine in conditioned space (heat&air) and under a smoke detector.

I worry a lot more about primers than powder. There is much explosive powder in those little things.