Two relatively new Ruger hawkeye's have had three dud-misfires. They have done this with more than one primer manufacturer, and I've never had such a problem in thirty years of handloading. So I am guessing that the problem is the firing pin.

See the two following pictures of the same dented primer. The right primer of two cases is the less-dented and dud.


In the box it is the high middle case, because the cartridge is still full.


So how does one fix this?
I've taken out the firing pins and cleaned/degreased the strikers and the inside of the bolts. On inspection I see a potential problem with a little material that remains in the 1/4" hole just behind the collar for the extractor arm. The bolt on the left shows some of the bolt material partially clogging the hole. It is not clear if the material would touch the striker/firing-pin spring and assembly when the firing pin is released to strike the primer. Likewise, the dark bolt on the right shows a little metal material remaining in the same 1/4" hole.

Is this normal or does the metal material need to be cleaned out. How does one remove the metal?
Thank you for your help.

Firing pin protrusion is inadequate, trash in firing pin hole keeping the pin from hitting the primer, excessive headspace are the three possibilities that come to mind. Dissasemble the bolt and clean the channel, measure the protrusion, and make certain headspace is proper.

Firing pin protrusion should be .055" - .065", easiest enough to check. If tha tis OK I would lean toward headspace.

On headspace, both rifles are 'control-feed', so theoretically the extractor arm should keep the cartridges going 'bang'. Yes?

I cleaned the bolts and firing pins with mounted spring yesterday with KG3 solvent and used EEZOX as a lube/preserver.

I'll check protrusion tomorrow.

I have owned about 5 or 6 Ruger HAWKEYE African models and they have not misfired..

Perhaps you need to clean the bolt body out, maybe hard grease or crud of some kind and be sure and look in there with a light; perhaps the spring is weak: and maybe the cases are sized undersize or the chamber is oversized whatever that allows the case to move forward regardless of the control feed,

I find it suspicious that you have had the same trouble with more than one gun, and may indicate your not seating the primers fully, so keep that in mind as to your handloading, it happens..

It has to be one of these options IMO, otherwise you need a gunsmith.

Thank you, Ray. Actually it is DOUBLY suspicious because I have had a misfire with two brands of primers (Rem 9.5M and WLRM) and with two brands of cases, Hornady 375 Rug and QualCart 500 ARNyati, in two rifles. The 500 had one misfire in about 80 shots, the 375, two. This is a new phenomenon for me.

The primers are seated so that a faintest line of light is perceptible when the primed casehead is held against the priming tool handle (a straight edge). If no light is perceived, then the primer gets shoved some more . . . until it is a smallest smidgin "below-flush" level. This has been my practice for 33 years. The guns sat unfired in a safe for 16 months after being purchased used and successfully fired. The inner bolt assemblies were not degreased at that time, so sticky oil/crud in the striker-assembly/inner-bolt might possibly be a contributing factor.

CRF extractors do not hold the rim absolutely tight against the bolt face; there is always some slop to it, so, no, if you either have to little FP protrusion, or a little too much headspace, and some maybe hard primers, it won''t fire.
Check FP protrusion first.

Check your dies. If they are out of spec. and they push the shoulder back too much and you have excessive headspace. Don't ask me how I know. Ok, I will tell you. I had some 404 Jeffery dies made by Redding do exactly as described above. I took the rifle to South Africa on a Cape Buffalo Safari. My first shot at a buffalo facing me took the buffalo in the chest and took his heart out. However, the buffalo spun about and ran away. Thank God. I chambered another round and the "click" I heard sounded like hitting a anvil with a sledge hammer. This happened twice on two different animals. Upon my return, I sent the dies back to Redding. They found them to be some .039 out of spec. Thus setting the shoulder back some .039 more than it should. Hence the round had this much excessive headspace. I would have never expected this from Redding Dies, but it can happen.

Buena suerte,

Hoot

Firstly, I have owned and worked on enough Ruger rifles to know that the material in the hole is normal, it is a semi solid section of the bolt body.
Have you checked pin protrusion?
I like .060", but .055" is adequate, if less than this, the firing pin needs adjusting.
Have you blown out the bolt body with compressed air with the firing pin removed?
The reason I ask is that years ago I bought a second hand Rem 700 in 22-250, on several occasions I had misfires, couldn't figure out why, pin protrusion was fine whenever I checked it. Didn't discover the true problem until I dismantled the bolt and blew some compressed air in the body to remove the solvent I had it soaking in, when I did, there was 3 punched out primer cup pieces in the rag I was holding it with, they must have been the cause, after they were removed, it never occurred again.

Cheers.

Thank you for the help.

I've measured the protrusion of the firing pin and found 0.055 in the 500 Nyati and 0.057 in the 375Ruger. Both are probably +/- 0.003 since I used the slide of a dial caliper to do multiple measurements. However, it would seem to me that grit or grime is the most likely culprit.

for safety I am going to try a technique from GSC for setting sizer die to set my sizing die at the height where the case begins to find resistance when the bolt closes. However, because it is a dangerous game rifle I will come in just about .001-.002" from that point so that cases will be resized to the current chamber, yet chamber without resistance.

I'm not inclined to buy new springs and/or special lightweight firing pins at this stage.
Keeping the inside of the bolt clean is probably the highest priority.

quote:

Originally posted by 416Tanzan:
The primers are seated so that a faintest line of light is perceptible when the primed casehead is held against the priming tool handle (a straight edge). If no light is perceived, then the primer gets shoved some more . . . until it is a smallest smidgin "below-flush" level. This has been my practice for 33 years

Primers may not be the cause of the problem you are having but they should be seated firmly to bottom out in the primer pocket irrespective of how much light is visible or not visible. If the primer is not seated to the bottom of the pocket, some of the momentum of the firing pin is taken up with seating the primer before ignition takes place and in some cases this is enough to cause a misfire. The anvil built into in a boxer primer (visible as 2 or 3 legs just protruding from the underside of the primer cup) has to be seated on the bottom of the primer pocket and firmly seating primers so that this is the case helps to sensitize them so they will fire even with a lighter firing pin blow.

I load Berdan primers and similarly these have to be seated solid onto the anvil built into the primer pocket.

Well, I took apart the dud cartridge, removed the powder and bullet, and tried to re-fire the primer.

Success. Bang-pop, not too loud, even in a house.

The primer backed out about 0.020" from the casehead. That seems good to me and within 'go' 'no-go' expectations of headspace.

See the pic



On primer seating I always seat deep to the bottom. However, some primers do not seat deeply with the hand tool and it takes multiple squeezes to finally nudge the primer below dead flush. All the cases were either seated deep and bottomed out or else were so tight that it took great effort to get them below absolute level. I have more fear of crushing the primer than not seating to the bottom.

Since in this case the primer fired it was not really dead, so it was not a bad primer, nor an 'oily/sloppy' seating on my part, but apparently a light tap by the first attempt of the firing pin. So I am thinking that the problem was not headspace or pin protrusion but gunk in the firing-pin channel.

I will need to pay more attention to an annual cleaning of the bolt assembly.

NO, definitely not good; if the primer really backed out .020, twenty thousandths of an inch, (can't tell from the pic), then you have way excessive "headspace", (meaning probably your brass is too short). That is the cause of your problem. You are allowed .006 or so, not .020.

The evidence you've presented so far supports DPCD,s conclusion. You're setting the shoulder back too far. Might want to invest in a case gauge.

We had 500 Ruger P93s that had short firing pin channels. Rugers fix was to send two factory reps to ream them deeper.

Interesting perhaps but does not address the .020 primer protrusion thing.

My hawkeye African did that too. Put a heavier wolff firing pin spring in it and it solved my problem.
IIRC there are a lot of Ruger hawkeyes with this problem and this was the general fix.

Thanks, I will check into getting stronger springs before taking the rifles to Africa.

Looks like to me that the nice deep FP indent on most of your primers indicates another issue than the spring; but you go ahead and apply the fix that you deem appropriate. I know what I would do.

Have you tried factory ammo in the 375? Just wondering if there's any issues with that. If not, it may provide some clues.

The OP already provided us with a major clue; a primer that backed out .020 inch. That is a symptom for, not a weak FP spring, but a short piece of brass (or long chamber, which is unlikely) and is a recipe for misfires.
But, yes, checking it with factory ammo is a good idea.

quote:

500 AccRel Nyati

.
.020 protrusion after cap firing is a bit disturbing. Something to consider is that the 500 Accurate Reloading is sort of a dumb cartridge and has no belt and almost no shoulder. If its virgin brass the primer could very well be pushing the case up into the neck on detonation. The cap going off is quite a hammer blow. If it's once fired, unresized brass and headspace has been set I would try repriming without any resizing. If it still does it when headspace has been established at zero and a cap is fired then this is indeed the problem. If does not set back on a fire formed, but unsized case, but suddenly starts doing it again once the cases are sized then you have a bit of a problem. Either in your sizing die or in your chamber, .020 of excessive headspace is being created. Not dangerous of course. Unless something just happens to want to eat you. Then you might want to correct it. Unless you voted Liberal, in which case you should leave it just the way it is !

I've been able to get the rifle out to the range again.

This time, in 9 rounds there were two duds. Both of the duds had shallow pin marks on the primers. Both were reinserted in order to try and fire them. Neither fired at the range.

Then at home I pulled the bullets and powder from both. I reinserted each case into the rifle and they both fired. with one a pointed down toward the rug, with the other, up toward the ceiling, just to make sure that gravity was not helping a marginal situation. BOTH shallow-dented primers fired! Both primers backed out of the case a little over .02" and for the moment I am attributing that to the primer explosion pushing the case into the chamber since there is no bullet in the neck to resist "sizing" the shoulder and neck from the firecracker thrust of the primer. And I don't think that I setting the shoulders back on the resizing, in the first place.

Well, I've just ordered two Wolfe 24-lb replacement springs, one for the 500 Nyati and one for a standard 375 Ruger that has misfired. From comments in this thread and elsewhere, I am expecting that the new springs will work wonders. There is also a Wolfe 28-lb spring, but I thought that I would go easy on this as a start.

I size for mostly a slight press-fit and in the event of a misfire (which I can't remember ever having in a center fire rifle) the primer cannot back out since the shoulder is pressed in the chamber.

My vote would be headspace, self inflicted or otherwise, but you've made up your mind that it's the spring on 2 rifles and there are lots of guys way smarter than me. There you go.

Good luck,
Zeke

Zeke,
the primer only backs up when fired in an empty case. An these are not new brass.

I think that I will try to fire a primer in a unsized, fired case. If that backs up then the primer backup is irrelevant to headspace. Hope to check this out within 24 hours.

Sounds to me like he don't want to listen to good advice.

You got a reloading problem and a stiffer firing pin spring ain't gonna help.

Thirty years of reloading and you have now just experienced this?? I suggest that while you are at it you change the striker spring retaining pin as well or else you might end up with other issues.I used a dowel pin.
[URL= ]dowel pin[/URL]

The old self induced handloaders headspace problem caused by improper sizing die use and or dimensions. Start neck sizing your cases. Pull the firing pin array out of the bolt after loading and check to make sure they will all close properly in the gun for any ammo loaded for hunting use.

Having the bolt not close is almost as bad as having the gun not fire. But not much.

quote:

the primer only backs up when fired in an empty case. An these are not new brass.

Mr Tarzan, You just announced and have demonstrated your problem; as stated many times above, you have/are creating excessive case to bolt space. When you shoot it, with powder and bullet, the case backs up against the bolt and the primer no longer protrudes. (Also stretching the case). When you fire it with only the primer, you demonstrate the issue, well.
You must fit/size the case to the chamber, as also suggested above by many.
Mr Shoot; I have no idea what you are saying, and it is not relevant to his issue.

The mystery is partially solved.

I just took a fired case and deprimed it without a sizing die. There was no neck sizing, no body sizing, just the original fire-formed case, without the fired primer.

Then I seated a WLRMagnum primer as I normally do with the Hornady Handheld priming tool. Appearance was normal with the primer seated just below flush so that a faintest sliver of light would show under a straight edge when held across the primer and against a light source.

I fed the case into the 500 Nyati (Ruger Hawkeye) with a relatively smooth feeding with the casehead properly controlled by the extractor arm.

When pulling the trigger there was no firing, it was a dud.
The bolt was re-cocked for a second try.
Again, a dud. No firing.
I extracted the case and then reinserted the case.
For the third trigger pull there was a distinct crack. The primer fired normally.

On extraction, it was noticed that the SAME backing out of the primer had taken place. But this was on a case that was fully fire-formed to the chamber.

Conclusions:

1. The backing out of the primer when fired in the empty case has nothing to do with headspace or with reloading technique. It is a function of the primer explosion forcing the case into the pressure-less chamber and neck area a far enough amount that the same explosion also pushes back on the primer and moves it about .02" to the bolt face.

2. The duds are most probably being caused by an improper firing-pin strike, not be improper resizing.

Follow up:

a. A stronger firing pin spring may solve this problem. We may find out next week.

b. The firing pin hits the primer slightly off-center. This is a common occurrence in firearms, though with this rifle it may be exacerbating the weak striking force. At this stage I do not anticipate needing a new bolt and I am aware that off center strikes are sometimes caused by chamber roundness and by the line-up of the barrel with receiver. If the stronger spring solves the ignition, I will be able to live with the off-center firing pin strike because the accuracy of this rifle is already sub-MOA. This 6000-7000 foot-pound rifle does not need benchrest accuracy. Minute-of-guineafowl will work just fine on a buffalo or eland.

c. Nevertheless, I will carefully reload these Ruger Hawkeyes with about a masking tape thickness of space between the case-holder and the bottom of the dies. There is no sense in pushing the firing-pin to its limits if it has shown itself to be a weak hitter on some primers. Most of the rounds that I will take to Africa will be new brass, so this technique will be of limited efficacy.

d. I may restrict the 500 Nyati to Fed 215Match primers. I am almost out of them but still have over 100 from the last brick. The 375 is my wife's rifle and not a primary buffalo rifle, so it will have to prove itself with the WLRM's and Rem9.5M's that I have. (The 375 suffered a dud with both a Rem and a WLRM, so its spring is being replaced, too. Both rifles were from manufacturing around 2009.

Yes firing a round with a very light charge or I guess empty, will back out the primer.I can't believe you just now discovered this.

BTW CZ 550 striker springs are crap too.

Yeah, I suggested priming an unsized and fireformed case back on Dec 4 to eliminate the headspace or sizing possibility.

It's still misfiring on a fireformed and unresized case so that eliminates headspace from the gun or over resizing. There are only two things left. Something in the fire array is dragging which is unlikely in a Ruger, or it's a weak mainspring. Put a 200 gazzilion pound Wolff mainspring in it.

quote:

Originally posted by shootaway:
Yes firing a round with a very light charge or I guess empty, will back out the primer.I can't believe you just now discovered this.

I haven't been firing many empty-round primers, ever, and never with a non-firing problem. Still, it was the others in thread that were insisting that this was a serious headspace problem.


At least we're all on board now.

It has been my experience that Rugers have a minimal firing pin strike. When fire forming brass in wildcat chambers, I have used Ruger, Winchester, and Mauser actions. Never a problem with the Winchester and Mauser actions. Many problems with the Ruger. Same brass, same chamber reamer, same headspace.

I have seen a brand new Ruger misfire with correct factory ammo. The problem was an off center firing pin hole. When I contacted Ruger Customer Service about they immediately asked me to send it to them. They replaced the bolt and all was right with the world.

Just suggesting that there might be other places to look.

Rusty

Thank you, Rusty, for sharing your experience.

I surely hope that a robust spring will fix the problem because I've heard that Ruger will not work on altered firearms, even though I would only be wanting the bolt changed.

My bolt is now opened up to receive a .590" rim. Ruger would call that a 'no-no', I'm guessing.

Maybe I'll have Midway add the 28 lb spring to my back order.

By chance has the bolt face been skimmed when opened out to accommodate the .590" rim, that would increase head-space on its own.

Also the act of pulling bullets, dumping the powder and re-striking your dud cases which then fire can come about because pulling the bullets could well be pulling the slight shoulder on the case forward enough to take up some head-space.

Just as shallow abrupt shoulders can be easy to crush when seating bullets (416 Rigby a good candidate for this if not careful when reloading) so too will the same shoulders more easily pull than others when a bullet is pulled from such a case.

416T,this is probably not your problem, but I gave a Tikka rifle to my son and he changed the scope mount from the one that came on the rifle new. The new base had slightly different screw lengths that he didn't notice when installing it. He called me on the phone carping at me about this rifle being a misfiring POS. I told him to remove the scope base and try it and it fired every time, and that is when he realized his error in the screw position. It didn't misfire every shot but did occur on a random basis. FWIW

I wonder if the screws were pushing the bolt off-center. Otherwise, it's hard to explain the effect on the firing pin.

I've had three Tikkas over the years (my wife currently has the 270 and my son the 338) and they have all been shooters. You gave your son a quality gift. Now if only Tikka would come out with a 416Ruger, probably adding a secondary barrel lug, I might need to buy a fourth Tikka.

My Wolff spring and Menck Bolt Tool arrived today.

It was easy to replace the spring with the tool and the instructions.

I noticed one little thing that may be relevant. there is a small cocking-piece that is pinned to the end of the firing pin and sits in the rear bolt plug. Before I punched out the little holding-pin that holds the firing pin to the cocking-piece, I noticed that that pin was not perfectly flush to the small cocking piece. Is it possible that the holding-pin sometimes creates a little drag on the inside of that rear bolt plug?

when I reassembled the new spring, pin, and bolt, I could not get the holding pin to seat any deeper inside the cocking-piece. Should I take out the holding-pin again and lightly file the protruding head's circumference (.0003"?) so that it slides in perfectly flush or inside the cocking-piece?

Does the above make sense to anyone, or am I chasing something irrelevant?