Military rifle primers
 

Very new to me but one forum stated for the AR and M14 rifles there are a necessity to prevent pre-ignition. Any truth to that?

BTW for reloaders, Hi-Tech Ammo has a SS109 and .308 FMJBT for a great price. I just picked up 3,000 of each. This will be Dillon Time.

Military primers are harder than commercial primers.

IIRC, many of the military weapons, including most self-loading and almost all full-auto small arms (to include the M14 and M-16 series), use a floating (inertial) firing pin. You can see that the pin makes contact on the primer of the unfired rounds during cycling.

Now some commercial primers are harder than others. I do not recall the sequence, but if it worries you, you can find out and select the least sensitive for loading in the weapons with the floating firing pins.

I have never had a problem with the commerical primers in many thousand rounds of reloading, but I suppose it would only take one firing in an unlocked weapon or while loading to ruin your day.

HTH.

TR

"Maybe" and "probably not". I don't worry overmuch about the firearms "crisis du jour". The internet "experts" are all over the place on this subject. Most of the accounts appear to be based on a few genuine instances of weapons firing out of battery, a lot of hyperbole, and the usual "repeated ad nauseum until it has become generally accepted fact". Objective analysis has shown most of these incidents to be caused by faulty weapons (filthy dirty, bad headspace, or broken components i.e. firing pins w/protrusion) or lousy QC of reloaded ammunition (usually protruding primers and out-of-spec headspace).

Most military rifles have an inertial firing pin that floats freely within the bolt. The force of the bolt closing will sometimes impart sufficient momentum to the firing pin to dimple a primer. ANY PRIMER! Check for yourself the next time you clear your rifle. If the weapon is clean and the firing pin moves freely, it's inevitable. Primer manufacturers know this and make allowances. Grab 10 rounds from different manufacturers, chamber them all, and each one will have slightly different imprints. It's not a big deal, primers aren't so sensitive that a sneeze will detonate them.

If you're concerned, you have two choices: shoot only military ammunition; or order milspec primers for your reloads. (CCI makes extra money selling their contract overruns packaged for civilian sales - check Midway) Otherwise just watch the QC for your reloads (NO PROTRUDING PRIMERS! and proper headspace/trim to length) and keep your weapons properly maintained. I would recommend discarding brass after NMT 4-5 reloads, semi's abuse it a lot more than bolt actions. Head separations are annoying, NTM dangerous.

I need to check the suppliers a little more often, your Hi-Tech Ammo link was already out of stock. :(

HTH - Peregrino

TR and Peregrino,

Thank you very much. My thinking was similar to both of yours. I never had have problems either.

You might try calling Hi-Tech, a friend said they did not list it on their site either. The guy at Hi-Tech told me about the .308 when I ordered my SS109s. For the type of shooting I do, the pulled and resized bullers works for me. They also look really good, though you can see some marks.

Hollis:

I have chronographed commercial military primers and they are good for blasting but not so good for accuracy. The biggest velocity spreads I have ever seen are using CCI military primers. A good 25 fps to begin with and it goes downhill from there.

As for the pulled bullets you have -- how were they 'resized'? Just curious as I have the capability of doing the same but have never needed it with any pulled bullets I have retrieved from surplus ammo.

Gene

Thanks for the Heads up on Military primers. I have never used them.

On the pulled bullets, I don't know how they are pulled and resized. I use them for plinking or shooting where accuracy is not a issue.

The company is Hi Tech Ammo. I would have to ask them.

On accuracy, I think I will load some up and take them to the range. See what they do at 100 and 200M.

Hollis

Actually the CCI #34 and #41 milspec primers aren't using harder cups, but rather different anvil geometries (relative to commercial primers) making them harder to detonate and needing a firmer strike by the firing pin.

Some commercial cups do vary, but they're all brass and not hard per se.

Chris

Chris:

Wow -- going back a few months on this one. I agree. I have heard enough discussions about primer thickness to make me believe they all have the same thickness and or hardness. I have no clue about the geometry of the anvils but I do know that the CCI military primers are pretty lousy in terms of consistency. I believe that the issued primers are more consistent in fact!

Gene