Mikecr
Well-Known Member
tlk, I agree with AJ, and with Speedy's tips provided by BOSS.
You might notice several items Speedy mentions that affect striking, and each of these, unknown, might lead someone to an erroneous notion about an issue(like 'bad' primers).
Many reloaders(I think) trial & error primers as part of load development. For some reason this or that load likes Feds, or CCIs, or Wins.. But a poll would always return the spread in use, and weak in trends. For example, there would seem no 'best' primer for 6br as a cartridge.
I always wondered why about this abstract, until I was forced to adjust/tune the striking on a gun. A setscrew slipped on my firing pin(cause) resulting in a big step change in performance.
I did not know the cause immediately, and chased my tail on this for ~a month.
One thing I did in troubleshooting, which made no sense really, was change primers, and I found with this that the gun went back to shooting well -for a while, then it fell apart again in a couple weeks. Lucky for me it failed to fire once, even though primer indention matched rounds that fired just fine. That's two different primer related events and therefore NOT a primer issue. It had to be the trigger, or an issue in the bolt. Trigger issues are beyond me, so I set that aside and dug into the bolt & found that I could move the firing pin in it's cocking piece by hand(with a good bit of effort). And worse, there were no markings on the hardened pin(which is why I didn't find it earlier), making it very very hard to determine where it needed to be set.
I took careful measurements on pin protrusion from bolt face, and trial & error tested with group shooting at the range. What a PITA.. But I managed to recover a best setting with my backup primer choice, and then I went back to original primers and started testing all over.
This is where I recovered fully and with better performance than ever, but the settings for one primer ended up being different than for another.
What I learned from this is that a gun may favor one primer over another due to striking of them.
That striking sufficient to fully indent, and/or reliably fire primers,, may not be 'best' at all.
Breeze over Speedy's tips from the perspective of striking.
Consider also more things that affect striking, with each of his relevant tips slid under a microscope.
It's no wonder we trial & error primers, and that we share different results.
You might notice several items Speedy mentions that affect striking, and each of these, unknown, might lead someone to an erroneous notion about an issue(like 'bad' primers).
Many reloaders(I think) trial & error primers as part of load development. For some reason this or that load likes Feds, or CCIs, or Wins.. But a poll would always return the spread in use, and weak in trends. For example, there would seem no 'best' primer for 6br as a cartridge.
I always wondered why about this abstract, until I was forced to adjust/tune the striking on a gun. A setscrew slipped on my firing pin(cause) resulting in a big step change in performance.
I did not know the cause immediately, and chased my tail on this for ~a month.
One thing I did in troubleshooting, which made no sense really, was change primers, and I found with this that the gun went back to shooting well -for a while, then it fell apart again in a couple weeks. Lucky for me it failed to fire once, even though primer indention matched rounds that fired just fine. That's two different primer related events and therefore NOT a primer issue. It had to be the trigger, or an issue in the bolt. Trigger issues are beyond me, so I set that aside and dug into the bolt & found that I could move the firing pin in it's cocking piece by hand(with a good bit of effort). And worse, there were no markings on the hardened pin(which is why I didn't find it earlier), making it very very hard to determine where it needed to be set.
I took careful measurements on pin protrusion from bolt face, and trial & error tested with group shooting at the range. What a PITA.. But I managed to recover a best setting with my backup primer choice, and then I went back to original primers and started testing all over.
This is where I recovered fully and with better performance than ever, but the settings for one primer ended up being different than for another.
What I learned from this is that a gun may favor one primer over another due to striking of them.
That striking sufficient to fully indent, and/or reliably fire primers,, may not be 'best' at all.
Breeze over Speedy's tips from the perspective of striking.
Consider also more things that affect striking, with each of his relevant tips slid under a microscope.
It's no wonder we trial & error primers, and that we share different results.
