Friday, April 22, 2016

I will be very glad to run out of these primers,

and I'll never buy the damn things again.  Specifically Tula.

Back during the drought, I ran across a case(5000) of their small pistol primers and grabbed it.  I was low, they were the first I'd seen in a while, so worth it, right?

Sort of.  Out of every 100 I've had about two that will not fire.  At all.  And usually a couple that'll fire on a second or third strike.  And twice now a real problem: a primer fires just enough to push the bullet out of the case and into the throat, but not enough to fire the powder.  Which means you need a rod to push the bullet out before you can shoot again. 

Possibly the powder?  Nope.  Very sure of this because the absolute WORST primers I've ever bought were some Tulsa small rifle.  Again, due to the drought and thank God I didn't get but 500.  The failure I mention above happened multiple times with those, and propellant from the same bottle loaded with CCI primers fired every time.  I got rid of the damn things.  The small pistol were relegated to 'non-critical uses only', there being too many left to just toss them.  So I'll keep using them, and make sure whenever I'm shooting ammo loaded with them I have a rod long enough to deal with this on the rare occasion this happens.

In contrast, of the I-have-no-idea-how-many thousands of CCI and Winchester and Federal primers I've used over the years, I've had ONE that failed to fire, that about a  year ago(probably due to pushed-to-the-limit production).

4 comments:

taminator013 said...

Sorry that you had trouble with the Tula primers. I did the same thing and bought a bunch of the small rifle ones during the drought. Luckily I had a good stock of all the other sizes and didn't need to buy any. I'll relegate the Tula's to practice rounds or try to get rid of them. Thanks for the info....................

Anonymous said...

I'm sad to say I had what I consider a worse problem with some WLP I bought toward the end of the shortage, they would crack and burn through at the fold of the cup. I pitted the breach face of a SA RO before I caught it policing up brass. Pissed me off. At first I thought it may be the load but after some rambling on the net I found lots of folks that had the same issue with certain lot numbers. At least I only bought 1k of that lot, later I came home with 5k WLP and I have tested that lot number with same loads I have used for 25 years with no trouble. I did use a parts box gun for the test. Sent email to Win and have yet to hear from them. I'll bet I have shot 30/40k WLR primers with zero problems but I have officially fell out with them right now. Since I can get them I've stocked up with CCI. I could have buggered up a Ed Brown I have just as easily as The SA. At least its only cosmetic and don't affect the operation of the RO at all. Its kind of a test pistol anyway. And the CCI's work so much better in the Vibraprime tool anyway.
Sorry for the ramble, I'm off this Friday and have the smoker going which requires some beer for the operator to reach optimum reading on fun meter.

Arthur said...

I've always gotten lucky - even more so during the drought - and just happened to visit Midway, or Natchez or a few other sites at the exact 30mS window when they had the CCI primers I like in stock and for a reasonable price. I've always had enough for my own use and a few extra for a friend.

I'd always immediately text my gunny buddy and by the time he got to the site they were gone.

But yeah, I've always used CCI primers and I don't think I've ever had a bad one. Even some of the rarely used ones I've had kicking around for years.

Firehand said...

Something like 15 years ago I bought a batch of reloading stuff at a garage sale that included a couple of boxes of CCI primers, old enough one had a price tag of $.79. I forgot about them.

Year or so ago I ran across them, and loaded some practice ammo with them: every round fired normally.