Stabil Powder issue?

[Seabeeken]

Double base powders often stick together whether they are ball or stick. The nitro in them causes it. Lil gun and titegroup are horrible for this. Try a magnum primer, with the temp and decoppering coatings, it may make them harder to ignite.
If the powder is clumping in the container then it could be bad, especially if it smells bad

 

[cohunt]

How old was the Staball powder bottle? Sat on the shelf long time in humidity, ever opened before and sat there open?

staball 6.5 was just released in 2019, it can't be too old

 

[James DeTorre]

I load indoors. The powder was purchased just before Covid hit say 18 months ago.I i store powder indoors remote from my loading station and only have one container on the bench at a time.
I store ammo in garage which is not air conditioned.
The primers we're bought 10 years( a lot of them). It's all I have used in last ten years.
puzzling is that changing powder to RS BG and changing nothing else eliminated clickers so far.
I am going to pull apart all the remaining 7-08s loaded with Stabil 6.5 on my shelf.
Have some RL 15 and some RS BG as well as H4350 to play with.
PS 40 years on the handloading bench..I Don't mess around.

 

[cohunt]

Why not try a mag primer?

 

[James DeTorre]

Powder not clumping in container.

Pulled some older loads( 6 months ago) Non compressed load ,,.
couldn't get powder out with brisk tap on work bench.

I am not trying to bash any products. I like the way ball powders meter but if it's the wrong horse for course then so be it.

Thanks for all ideas, everyone.

 

[xsn10s]

I'd see if the powder in the cartridge that didn't ignite burns. If so then it was most likely a primer issue.

 

[jeremy.b]

So along the contamination line, any way something was left in the case during prep? Excess one-shot lube, too much soap with stainless pin tumbling etc?

And I'll second the check with Hodgdon, I suspect they'd be interested in helping solve it.

 

[105Coues]

Empty a dud round carefully. Then decap and look at the primer to see if it had ignited. This will tell if it's powder or primer. Probably 25 years ago I had one box of cci primers that had 3 rounds that didn't pop.

 

[okie22br]

It's the primers and not the powder. As what had been mentioned by others, CCI was notorious for bad primers back several years ago.
I would load 200 rounds at a time for one of my Match rifles, this was before PRS existed. And I had 15-20 failure to fire rounds out of the first 100 Rounds and would have zero failure to fires out of the next 100 rounds. Always had good firing pin strikes.
Switched to federal primers and never had an issue and have stuck with federal primers ever since.

 

[okie22br]

Ohhh and forgot to mention … I bet you figured out if you had a flinch or not when they didn't go boom !!!!

 

[Stevenstl86]

You mentioned you store powder indoors but do you also store the primers indoors? Can you post a picture of the primers seated in the loaded case that had clumped powder?

 

[Wrenches]

I'm thinking you have a primer problem. If the primer fired and the powder didn't you would have a bullet stuck in the barrel. I have removed bullets stuck in barrels because the reloader forgot the powder in one or more rounds.

 

[J-B welder]

I'm thinking you have a primer problem. If the primer fired and the powder didn't you would have a bullet stuck in the barrel. I have removed bullets stuck in barrels because the reloader forgot the powder in one or more rounds.

Almost did that myself just the other day. Seated the bullet in the very last round I was loading and looked over to see a pan full of powder. Oops.

 

[Just ken]

Did you store the rounds with the bullet down? If so, possible the power was all next to the bullet leaving a space between primer and powder.