Light primer strikes?

[DeadHandRed]

Hi All,

My first time casting up some 30-30 for my Win 94, about 50% of 30 rounds failed to ignite.



no hang fires.. all factory ammo fired fine. used a variety of brass in this batch as well.

this was a while ago now and cant quite remember the load but they had a medium load of trail boss in them and ive never had any trouble with the primers when using in my mosin.

im gonna go do some trouble-shooting but appreciate any your 2 cents worth..

Cheers,
Red

[btroj]

Powder used doesn't affect light primer strikes.

Could be primers not seated fully. The fact that factory ammo has no trouble makes me think it isn't a headspace issue. Could be a weakish spring on the hammer.

[DeadHandRed]

thanks btroj, a couple of times a re-cock and fire worked but not always. im going to pull the rest of the bullets and dump the powder to see whether all the primers were unfired..

[hornady308]

Did you feel any resistance when chambering the rounds? If so, it might be that the rounds weren't completely in the chamber, so the firing pin was pushing the cartridge further into the chamber rather than setting off the primer. I've made this mistake a few times. The second trigger pull usually sets off the cartridges as they were fully seated by the first trigger pull. If this is the cause, it usually means the bullets need to be sized down a bit more or the brass wasn't correctly resized. Good luck.

[DeadHandRed]

thanks hornady308, im going out tomorrow to take some new reloads, some of the faulty batch and maybe some factory for testing. appreciate the tips on things to look for while operating it. gold.

[nekshot]

i hope your not dealing with a angle eject. I fixed my ae that had weak hits but I don't trust myself to guide you over the internet. I think there is a good thread here on it or over on levergun forum you can be taken thru the process. It definetly is fixable no matter which 94 you have if it is a gun issue.

[DeadHandRed]

Hi, not AE nekshot. top eject. cheers

[KCSO]

Check for broken firing pin, they break in 1/2 and this causes light hits sometimes.

[Baja_Traveler]

I get that all the time in my 94 - always with Winchester primers. I think the Winchesters have a harder primer cup, causing the light strike in our 94's. I switched to CCI primers and the problem went away.

[RickinTN]

I would look for two things.#1) Primers not being fully seated. If this is the case the first blow finished the seating of the primer and the second actually struck a fully seated primer and fired as it should. #2) Headspace issue. Just because factory fired as it should doesn't mean there is not a headspace issue. It also doesn't mean there is a problem with the rifle. Headspace is not a single measurement, it is a relationship between the sized cases and the chamber in the rifle. If your cases were full length sized too much, which is easy to do and quite common in the 30-30 cartridge, you would have created an excess headspace situation. In this case the striker has to "reach" further than it should and thus takes multiple blows to strike the primer hard enough for ignition. If you sized your cases with the size die resting on the shellholder my bet would be this is your problem.
Good Luck,
Rick

[cbrick]

As a SWAG I would say Rick is correct with #2.

The factory rounds fired fine while half of yours didn't, suggests the factory rounds were properly sized while yours were sized too much. I know, rimmed case but this can still happen exactly as Rick described it.

Rick

[btroj]

Could well be excessive pushing back of the shoulder. That would also make for very poor case life- those suckers are gonna stretch and separate in no time.

[stocker]

Shoulder should not affect it. It headspaces on the rim. If actual headspace is out of whack then the shoulder could be used to correct the problem a bit. Is this rifle a newer one with rebounding hammer and safety?

[RickinTN]

Shoulder should not affect it. It headspaces on the rim. If actual headspace is out of whack then the shoulder could be used to correct the problem a bit. Is this rifle a newer one with rebounding hammer and safety?

I agree the shoulder "shouldnt" effect it because it "should" headspace on the rim. I can't tell you why but this is often not the case with 30-30 chambered rifles. One of the recommended techniques for loading for a Contender 30-30 is to size the brass only enough for the gun to close. Accuracy is usually increased with this method as well as reliability when used in lever rifles as well as Contenders. 30-30 brass also has a tendency to stretch quite a bit, especially with higher end loads. Using the "size only as much as needed" method minimizes case stretching and how often brass needs to be trimmed. Trimming brass has to be my least favorite operation in handloading!

Take care,
Rick

[btroj]

Exactly rick, shouldn't and can't are not the same. I don't touch the shoulder when I size for my 30-30. Never had a trouble only partially sizing for my Marlin.

So many things can cause this issue, it takes some dedicated detective work to solve these things most times.

[mikeym1a]

I reloaded some cartridges with a new batch of Wolf primers. after one hang-fire, and three mis-fires, I stopped using them. I broke down all the rounds, and inspected the primer. the misfires all were black, indicating that they had ignited, but apparently not enough to ignite the powder. It wasn't the powder. Used the same powder in some other cartridges with other primers. They all ignited. Anyone know anything about Wolf's reliability? They were the only thing available when I got them.

[stocker]

Doing the minimum amount of re-sizing required is the proper way to go and will compensate for some head space issue. No argument there. Even varying cartridge rim thickness can be misleading unless headspace is actually gauged and eliminated as a problem. I still want to know which variation of the 94 this rifle is. If it's recent production I would look very quickly at the hammer strut as they have been problematic in some other recent manufacture Winchesters and require a simple adjustment to ensure complete hammer stroke. I am assuming they use a forked strut similar to the Miroku 86's . Removing the stock and looking at the strut will tell you. If the design is different look elsewhere. I have never worked on these later models of 94's although I used the older ones more than you can imagine. Mis-fires have been a common occurrence in recent repro Winchesters which makes me consider the problem could be the same but it's just a WAG.

[popper]

I'd check the FP, some look off center, others don't, some appear deeper than others. I suspect not fully seated primers. I set my die so I HS off the shoulder, even for 30-30.

[ben lurkin]

Unless you pulled the hammer back and tried a second time; the casings in your picture do not indicate a light primer strike. A slight off-center primer strike won't hurt either. If some are and some aren't on center, it's usually the brass. Again, not a problem with what your picture shows. Unless you're gun's chamber isn't cut correctly, headspace off the case rim. This isn't a bolt action rifle.

I agree with the others, the primers are likely not seated all the way, you have a bad batch, or something like a petroleum product has contaminated them rendering them inert.

[DeadHandRed]

Thanks very much to you all, im still waiting for some decent weather to give it another go. seems like theres a wet front coming over us every weekend at the moment. thanks again and hopefully ill be able to put some grey matter into use from these things to keep in mind.