Full Powder Squib

[RiggerJJ]

9 hours ago, hamiltonian said:

I feel lazy, now.  I only tumble brass with corn cob media until they are mostly clean and then put them in a plastic box and squirt Dillon spray lube on them.  I immediately dump them in the case feeder without even letting them dry.  I've loaded tens and tens of thousands of rounds like that and never had a squib.  The only problem is an occasional backward primer in my practice rounds, but they don't ignite.

Me too, totally lazy...and 100s of thousands of pistol and rifle ammo over nearly 20 years here with no problems

 

Really, you don't need to do all that stuff and mix all those witches brews just for clean brass, and decapping before cleaning is a total waste of time. Try dry tumbling, lube, and load. (Dry tumble again for 15 minutes to remove the lube). More time to shoot, no wet contamination possibilities...win/win

[Jim Watson]

I don't know what happened to YOUR load, but I have had two stuck bullets with powder present.

One was a factory load that had been heavily wetted, contaminated for sure.

The other was a light powder charge and a light bullet in .38 Special.  Coming up from low ready put the powder against the bullet, the primer flash just did not reach it; blowing it and the bullet partway down the barrel.  Unlikely in a stubby autopistol round. 

[Guy Neill]

The 38 Special can be a problem child even with standard loads.  The fairly large case volume combined with the low pressure limit can cause problems.

 

One company I'm familiar with added  a special test for the 38 Special ammunition - firing straight down - to ensure the loading would not result in BIB squibs.

 

I note Federal has a new (fairly) defensive 38 Special round using a wadcutter type bullet.  I expect this was to fill up the case volume, not because the bullet is inherently better.

 

SAAMI pressure testing specifies being certain trhe powder is next to the primer before loading into a pressure gun because this will give the higher pressure.

[Vmax606]

On 4/21/2019 at 5:34 PM, Ken6PPC said:

 

Well, I admit that I only use new primers, so...  

 

In any case, can you explain why a primer would (or COULD) ignite SOME of the powder without igniting ALL of the powder?  

 

I ran into this situation before, and the explanation is  ??

 

A few years ago when primers and powder were hard to find, I bought 10K of Tula LEAD FREE SP primers (that was all they have left) at the local gun show .

 

They were working fine during the summer in my 38 Super, but when the winter approached the load became very erratic ,  some shots were normal and some were very weak.

 

To confirm that, I went home and loaded couple hundred of the same rounds but with CCI primers and they all shot OK. Called their headquarter the next day and told them the story, they gave me 2/3 of the money back and let me kept the primers, still have a few hundred of them sitting around after selling most of them during the next summer to the local combat match shooters, and during that time they were happy to find any primers that go bang.

[mlmiller1]

On 4/21/2019 at 6:02 PM, ChemistShooter said:

I inspected the case. Looked fine as far as I could tell, threw it in the garbage anyway. Bullet was stuck in the lands exactly like my no-powder squibs.

 

I clean ultrasonically.

 

Procedure:

----Decap all brass in a Lee Challenger press with a Lee Decapping Die. (I like cleaning the primer pockets too.)

---Clean ultrasonically in three steps:

1. Two teaspoons salt, two cups vinegar, one tablespoon dish soap, 4 cups (or thereabouts) boiling water. Sonicate thirty minutes.

2. One teaspoon baking soda in 8 cups hot tap water. (Did this originally to neutralize the vinegar, but it turned out to clean too. Water turns black.) Sonicate thirty minutes.

3. Repeat step 2.

4. Rinse with tap water. Rinse with denatured ethanol to remove water and allow to dry overnight. It will be bone-dry.

5. Store empty cases in bullet boxes. They sit for at least a week before I use them.

 

Lubing procedure:

Slide a piece of cardboard over cases and turn over. Remove bullet box and inspect cases for blue streaks and cracks. Spray One-Shot into Ziploc. Seal Ziploc and rub bag to get a uniform coating on the inside. Pour 100 cases into bag and rub and tumble bag.  Dump cases in case feeder. This has been working fine for thousands of rounds.

 

Contaminated powder occurred to me but didn't seem likely given my cleaning and lubing procedure.

 

If it's not the crimp then I like Memphis45's theory. Piece of random crap on the primer.

 

Thanks to all.

 

 

There it is...  Hornady 1 shot.  Dig around forums you will find quite a few folks have had this issue.  I know I know.... people will argue it all day but let me say I had this problem before & when I threw away the 1 shot & started using another lube, its never happened again.  

Edited to add 2 things... 1 it happened several times in 1 large loading batch I ran(2000) & second, my bullets left the barrel but some of the light poof ones could be visibly seen going downrange.... iow barely cleared barrel

Edited April 24, 2019 by mlmiller1

[Ming the Merciless]

Hornady has two different "One Shot" sprays.  One is a case lube and the other is a CLP with a very aggressive solvent.  I have no idea what would happen if you used the CLP as a case lube.

[ChemistShooter]

On 4/22/2019 at 5:27 AM, Hi-Power Jack said:

When you say "the primer fired", did you hear it fire ?    Or, did you find the primer dented

upon inspection after the squib, and assumed it had "fired" ?

 

I've suspected (never proved) that I have had failures to fire with a dented primer

because the old fired primer had never been extracted during the reloading process.

 

Left the old fired primer in the case, loaded the powder and bullet, and No Bang.

 

At first, I thought the primer had failed - but thinking about it, I suspect it is more

likely that the old fired primer had never been extracted and replaced.

Gawd. You know, this is a possibility too. I do have the occasional piece of brass sneak through my cleaning process without being decapped. It really sticks out when I'm putting them in the bullet box, although it is not completely impossible I didn't see a fired primer then too. Can't tell if it fired or not. I have earpro on and my hearing has started to fade the tiniest bit.

Edited May 3, 2019 by ChemistShooter
added info

[ChemistShooter]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:50 AM, RiggerJJ said:

Me too, totally lazy...and 100s of thousands of pistol and rifle ammo over nearly 20 years here with no problems

 

Really, you don't need to do all that stuff and mix all those witches brews just for clean brass, and decapping before cleaning is a total waste of time. Try dry tumbling, lube, and load. (Dry tumble again for 15 minutes to remove the lube). More time to shoot, no wet contamination possibilities...win/win

I have a Weird Chemistry Reason for wanting clean brass. To get more powerful loads and more consistent loads. If you leave any of a waste product in the brass, the reaction doesn't proceed as far, i.e. less power. If you have varying amounts of waste product, energy yield will also vary.

 

I don't have any dry-tumbling equipment but will keep this in mind. Wouldn't there be a problem with tumbling media in the brass?

[lgh]

10 hours ago, ChemistShooter said:

To get more powerful loads and more consistent loads. If you leave any of a waste product in the brass, the reaction doesn't proceed as far, i.e. less power. If you have varying amounts of waste product, energy yield will also vary.

 

I don't have any dry-tumbling equipment but will keep this in mind. Wouldn't there be a problem with tumbling media in the brass?

Maybe this stuff matters for bench rest shooters but not really for gamer-type high volume loads. The cumulative reloading experience here at BE is probably way over 500k/year and most if not all do not get too worked up about a little dirt here and there. Any loss in accuracy is likely shooter related and not dirt related. The only problem I've had with media in brass is when I deprimed 5.56 brass before cleaning and media got stuck in the flash hole. PITA.

Edited May 3, 2019 by lgh

[OPENB]

I’ll share what I found when this happened last month. I wet tumbled 10,000 cases over several days. My drying process was to spread out the just-washed cases on a towel, then let a fan blow over them for a couple hours. I evidently loaded some rounds that still had drops of water in the cases. I had a squib where the primer popped, but no bang. Run the slide, powder everywhere, & next round won’t chamber. Stuck bullet. I used an RCBS collet puller (highly recommended by the way) and took apart 2000 9 major rounds. I had a lot of rounds with gooey clumps of powder, indicating moisture. If you wet tumble, make sure they are bone dry. 

[RiggerJJ]

13 hours ago, ChemistShooter said:

I have a Weird Chemistry Reason for wanting clean brass. To get more powerful loads and more consistent loads. If you leave any of a waste product in the brass, the reaction doesn't proceed as far, i.e. less power. If you have varying amounts of waste product, energy yield will also vary.

 

I don't have any dry-tumbling equipment but will keep this in mind. Wouldn't there be a problem with tumbling media in the brass?

The amount of dry tumbling dust left behind before loading will not cause any power or load consistency problem. It's just 9mm for gosh sakes...and it certainly would not have caused your contamination problem.

 

Your specific problem was more than likely the witch's brew you are cleaning the brass with not being totally dry when you loaded them contaminating the powder.

 

The old adage "keep your powder dry" still applies. I see no reason to add anything wet to the reloading equation, hence my reasoning for dry tumbling.

Edited May 3, 2019 by RiggerJJ

[ManOnTarget]

On 4/22/2019 at 6:28 AM, Hi-Power Jack said:

Could be a problem if the cases are still wet.

 

I have noticed some clumping of my powder if I start dropping charges into cases that are still wet but I have never had any issues with those not firing. I generally let them dry though.

 

Isnt the lube supposed to not interact with the powder?

[ManOnTarget]

On 5/3/2019 at 7:45 AM, OPENB said:

I’ll share what I found when this happened last month. I wet tumbled 10,000 cases over several days. My drying process was to spread out the just-washed cases on a towel, then let a fan blow over them for a couple hours. I evidently loaded some rounds that still had drops of water in the cases. I had a squib where the primer popped, but no bang. Run the slide, powder everywhere, & next round won’t chamber. Stuck bullet. I used an RCBS collet puller (highly recommended by the way) and took apart 2000 9 major rounds. I had a lot of rounds with gooey clumps of powder, indicating moisture. If you wet tumble, make sure they are bone dry. 

 

I just throw em in the oven on a cookie sheet @ 200 degrees for about an hour and that usually does it.

 

I also try and knock all the water off in a towel first. I find if I do this I get less hard water stains.

Edited May 18, 2019 by ManOnTarget
additional info

[OPENB]

I got in too big a hurry because I had 10,000 to do. But, I did get an RCBS Collet bullet puller, and semi-retired my hammer style puller.