Click rather than a boom.

Charlie

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I had two misfires today while shooting my M70 30/06 at the range. They were handloads from 2009 that consisted of new Winchester brass, Hornady 150 grain FMJ bullets, 52 grains of IMR 4064 powder, and Winchester WLR Large Rifle primers. Both cartridges would not fire with repeated firing pin strikes. Both primers were dented deeply enough that they should have fired. I pulled the bullets when I got home and deprimed them. The primers had compound in them and looked fine. I might try to light one with a torch tomorrow.

I wonder if I got a bad batch of primers. I loaded a bunch of ammo with the 5,000 primers I got in that lot and am not sure which batches of ammo they are in. The thing that reinforces my idea of a bad batch is that I had some hangfires and one squib that did not ignite the powder but pushed the bullet barely into the lands of one of my 45/70 rifles several years ago. It was one of my loads using IMR 4198 in moderate loads from the Hornady manual. I suppose those primers could have been from the same batch since WLR was about all I had on hand at that time.

I suppose I should check the dates on my loads from around that time and use them with caution, but 5,000 large rifle primers can last me a long time. I also might start using the CCI primers I have on hand in my rifle loads.

I hate it when I pull the trigger and it goes click.
 
Could it be possible that the primers were not fully seated? The anvil must be pushed into place by being seated to the bottom of the primer pocket.

Out of a couple thousand, I've only had a couple of "clicks" with WLR primers. One was in a gun with a known history of light strikes, a second strike did set it off. The other was a bad primer, no compound in it.
 
I have had clicks with primers not seated all the way, but they always fired on the next hammer fall after the first strike seated them all the way. Specifically those were in 45 Auto with Winchester cases and Winchester Large Pistol primers. The problem went away when I groomed and cleaned the primer pockets and hand seated the primers. These primers did not fire after repeated pin strikes.

edit: I just put a torch to one of the primers and got it to fire. Is it possible that I crushed it when seating it?
 
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