Up-side down primer

[encoreman]

I do pull bullets when they mount up. To dispose of the brass with live primers either correctly installed or improperly installed, I live a short drive from a creek,plunk is the sound made when they hit. I figure that is the safest place. DB ya gotta quit doin that with the primers, I will give you some to replace them, you might need them fingers in the future!!

[tightloop]

Wonder what the Big Mfg guys do with all their flipped primers.....

[Alan Meek]

I keep the rounds with the primer inserted backwards in case I ever need to shoot behind me.........

Alan

[johnhurd]

I live a short drive from a creek,plunk is the sound made when they hit.

So you like to share the danger with everybody eh Or maybe you only throw tne new NT stuff in the ground water.

Put me in the column of dismanting and using everything, been doing it since the early to middle 80s. If the primer was sideways great fun to punch it out and place it on the anvil and hit it with a hammer to hear the pop.

Don't know where you get the idea that primers are powerful enough to BLOW YER HAND OFF!

[Merlin Orr]

If the primer was sideways great fun to punch it out and place it on the anvil and hit it with a hammer to hear the pop.

Thats the same thing my buddy, One Eye'd Joe, does!

[Alan Meek]

Merlin is that One eye Joe before or after the primer accident?

[Nolan]

I keep the rounds with the primer inserted backwards in case I ever need to shoot behind me.........

Alan

I keep them in case somebody runs low on ammo at the next match!

Nolan

Edited March 22, 2006 by Nolan

[river-rider]

Discard it! I tried to "Kill a primer with water" I was making a dipper by adding a handle. When the heat hit the case the primer blew out of the case into my arm. Do not wait for a trip to the ER to have great respect for primers. There is nothing like having a ER Doctor touching your fingertips with a pin and asking do you feel this. Cases and primers are cheap, ER trips expensive.

[Black Mamba]

Flexmoney,

... you are dealing with heavy-metal salts like lead azide, ...

--Detlef

Actually, most primers are made with lead styphnate which can be neutralized by dropping them into a sodium carbonate solution. Lead azide reacts too easily with copper to form unwanted azide compounds.

[VeryBadshot]

Flexmoney,

... you are dealing with heavy-metal salts like lead azide, ...

--Detlef

Actually, most primers are made with lead styphnate which can be neutralized by dropping them into a sodium carbonate solution. Lead azide reacts too easily with copper to form unwanted azide compounds.

Humm......sodium carbonate....I know I have some of that around here some where....

[Matt Griffin]

I've killed ammo with WD40, I don't think it is debunked, but it apparently isn't universal across all primers/situations.

However, throw away the brass. I suppose that since the direction of thrust is pointed down through the case, the primer won't rocket out backwards at full force, but it isn't worth the risk. If one takes off pointed towards you, I'm pretty sure they'll zip right through any safety glasses you're wearing.

Of course, I base that on a story I heard about a guy trying to make dummy jewelry rounds and lodging a primer into his arm by trying to fire it with a hammer. May be an urban legend.

H.

[Nemo]

(insert my best Tommy Chong voice here)

Dudes,

This thread is truly vintage!

[SiG Lady]

Jeez, no kidding. I just NOW got around to reading this entire thread (where was I all past few years??!!) and it kinda answers the question I had about what to do with the very small number of flipped primers (in live rounds) I have sitting around... Didn't want to toss them in the public trash (and have some poor bulldozer operator at the dump get off'd on my account) or anything. Basically, I have so few I'll just probably stare at them another couple of years until a universally good solution comes up. But I'll be damned if I'll try and de-prime them. My eyesight is bad enough without losing it altogether. Yeh, it's tempting to try and salvage your materials, but to save $0.02 is absurd. Always step back and weigh the consequences.

And that's my $0.02......

Oh, and great thread, you folks. Really.

[wsimpso1]

OK, I never saw this thread before, but I can tell you more than you really want to know about primer mixes and structures. My first job out of college (1980) was as an R&D engineer at Remington Arms, and I worked on primers for awhile. I will try to stay with the thread.

Primary explosive for regular non-corrosive primer is lead styphnate. The other primary material is barium nitrate, and then there are some tertiary materials.

Oil can desensitize styphnate, but it does not react with any of the explosives. That means that WD40 and other oils may prevent your gun from firing it (and may not too) but if you give it a sharp enough smack, it will still fire. This might be useful for making a primer that is stuck less likely to go off while attempting to get it out...

If you want to kill a primer, it needs to hit plain old chlorine bleach. That is what was done in the ammunition industry to scrap primer and tracer mix for generations, and probably still is today. Bleach is also sprayed onto spilled primer and tracer mixes before sweeping them up. Bleach is a strong oxidizer and chemically destroys lead styphnate by oxidation. So if you have primers to dispose of, and you really want them neutralized, into a container of bleach it goes.

Something else about primers. In order to fire, a styphnate crystal must be cracked, but there is other stuff around all of those tiny crystals. So you need enough energy fast enough. The slower the load is applied, the bigger the forces needed to make it go off. So, handling live primers is always best done slowly. Vigourous handle movements are bad. Slow handle movements are better. Adding oil to the primer ratchets up the energy needed some more, but bleach ruins the primer.

What does this have to do with rounds loaded with backwards primers?

To be really safe, get the rounds bleach. In five minutes, you can tear down the ammo, salvage the case and bullet. Powder can go in the garden (it is good fertilizer), but it too is compromized by the bleach. Rinse the cases and bullets in clean water right away to prevent other ugly corrosion from the bleach. They are good for reuse.

Other options: You could just pull down the ammo, and decap with a very slow shove, but you still have a chance that the primer will go off, so I still do not advise this. But if you just have to go against all of this good safe advice, decap it slowly on a press where the primer pieces will be directed away from you when one does go bang. Other precautions include a drop of oil on the primer beforehand, keep kids and pets away from the area, hearing protection, and a face shield are good ideas too, but who are we kidding? If you seek risk and ignore our good advice, you are probably not going to take other advice either. All the same, there are many folks who have done it many times and have never had one go bang, but telling you go do it is like advising skipping the condoms or the seatbelt. Should something bad happen, it might be really bad. So, you have been warned.

Oh, industry wide, scrap whole ammo is destroyed by burning. Open fires a long ways from people work great, although most gun glubs just dump the few loose rounds into the bottom of the burn barrel, then add other range debris and light the paper at the top. The cases rupture with a pop, and it is pretty safe, but I would still keep people and animals back 50 yards until the fire is out.

Billski

[Skywalker]

My very short experience with upside down primers: I load .40" @ 178 PF with N320 and CCI primers.

On the range I managed to fire a round with an upside down primer: didn't notice it was that way, chambered it and pulled the trigger.

All I heard was a very tiny noise, exactly similar to a squib load, and thought "damn, missed the powder"; the slide didn't cycle and nothing was shot back to me.

Upon racking the slide to find out what went on, I discovered I had just fired an upside down primer: the firing pin did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the anvil got slammed into the cup, igniting the primer. But that's all.

I have also done the following, several times, with rounds with an upside down primer: pull the bullet, dispose of the powder, carefully and slowly decap the brass (on the 2nd station of my XL 650).

The primer can even be reused: I tested a few of them (maybe 6/8) and they all went bang.