primer question wet primers can they be saved ?

[badbob454]

i bought a bunch of recycled brass 300 lbs , with a lot of primed brass in a caliber i use.. ? @ 200-400 it rained on the brass and the primers got wet , before i purchased it. can they be saved by drying out ? any ideas? i fired 1 out of 3 and 1 fired 2 were still wet , did this to see if they were water tight / or should i pull and destroy the primers . anyone experienced at this ??

[Andrew Mason]

I have not done extensive testing,
But I tumbled a bunch of .308 brass in SS media, and then Deprimed it

Many of them got tossed, a few I found here and there, when I find them I smash them with a hammer

They always go off.

Not sure if this helps you or not.

[Lead Fred]

Here is my rule:

If I did not put the primer in, I dont know what it is, or how long its been there.

Out they come, every last one

[wch]

Here is my rule:

If I did not put the primer in, I dont know what it is, or how long its been there.

Out they come, every last one

+1, I'm with Fred.

[USMC87]

I'm with fred, If I don't prime it I don't shoot it.

[crowbuster]

Yep, not worth the trouble, junk em.

[Megiddo]

Here is my rule:

If I did not put the primer in, I dont know what it is, or how long its been there.

Out they come, every last one

How would you remove the primers? I wouldn't junk the brass... too hard to come by now-a-days.

[Cesure]

I would dry them, load some with light loads and use them strictly for target practice. I would keep track of what % didn't fire and I would be very careful about hangfires. If a significant percentage didn't fire, I would soak them all in water and deprime. If I only got a small % of duds, I would pull the bullets from them and try to fire the primer again before attempting to deprime the brass. I can understand the desire of some to stick to the rules, but I think the risk is minimal. They aren't likely to be too hot. They aren't likely to spontaneously fire. They are more likely to be too weak or not fire at all.

[Cherokee]

Deprime with regular sizer/deprime die, just be gentle in operating the press. Not very likely they will ignite but do be safe.

[mdi]

I have read that the priming compound is water soluble and if soaked and allowed to dry, they won't be damaged and work as usual. I'd check a few to see that all the compound is in place and dry and load 'em up, as long as they are non-corrosive...

[Case Stuffer]

Primers are a lot turfier than most would believe. Place the primed brass in a dry warm low humidity area with a little air circulation ( a food dehydrator works great) and they should be fine. I would not use them for critical duty but at the price of primers these days I would not discard them either.

I am currently using primers which I purchased back in the seventies which were not stored under ideal conditions and I have yet to have any problems at all.

[TES]

When primers are made on the squeegee plate the primer compound is purposely "wet" It makes the compound workable or safe to work with. So wet should not be a problem because that is how they are born.

[Walter Laich]

Let them dry and load a few--this will give you actual data on this batch of primers.
I would use them if test batch works but them I'm cheap

[tom357mag]

here is my rule:

If i did not put the primer in, i dont know what it is, or how long its been there.

Out they come, every last one


me too !!!!!!!!!

[SGTM9]

I had a can of primed brass get flooded. I dumped out the water shook out the excess and put them in rice for a few days. Everyone of them fired no issues.

[M-Tecs]

I was giving about 6 1/2 K of small rifle that had been under water for three days. I was given them to dispose of. They had dried by the time it received them. I tried a few just for grins. They went bang so I tested them for accuracy. They held under ½” MOA. They equaled or bettered new so I used them in my Prairie Dog guns. Out of the 6 ½ K I had about a dozen that wouldn’t go bang.

[1hole]

Spread your wet cases out in one layer in direct sun, let them dry for several days and then use them. Hardly matters what brand of primers they are, load them with midrange charges and have fun.

[MtGun44]

Priming compound is made wet and put in wet and dries in place. Theoretically it will
not be harmed if dried. However, it may have migrated so it is possible that reliability
may be compromised. I would NOT use it for serious purposes, but for target loads
while PAYING ATTENTION to look for weak rounds and possible failures to light normally,
should be perfectly safe.

If the world was fat with primers, not worth much, but times are hard.

Bill

[badbob454]

im going to dry in the sun for a few days on the roof of my suv. i will test 10 and give results if all fire i will load and shoot them at the range , i will pause after each shot and make sure i cleared the barrel after posting this i read on line of someone whom disposed of thousands of primers the guy took em home and dried them only had 2 duds in thousands of rounds this will be fired in a bolt so no possibility of firing too fast and shooting on top of a lodged boolit .. thanks for all your good advise i will post results later , oh these are 30-06 cases with the primers in them

[Lead Fred]

I just wear safety glasses, and deprime & size. Ive done 1000s, and never had one go off yet.

A bud, puts water in the case, and uses a wooden dowel to displace the primer, just like you do with berdan primers.

Seems like too much work for me

[1hole]

"A bud, puts water in the case, and uses a wooden dowel..."

Goodness, what a mess for doing a simple task.

I've been pushing out live primers normally and safely since '65. It never occured to me there might be a danger in a solid steel die that's closed at the top with a steel decap rod; and it still doesn't occur to me. Even if one did go off, it's just a tiny pellet of compound, not a stick of dynamite; if I was that nervous about reloading I wouldn't do it!

[jcwit]

A few years ago I dropped a sleeve of 100 primers in the cats water dish, thats 100 loose primers, not still in the plastic holder. I got them all out and let them dry on the window sill for a few days. They all went bang just as all the others.

As far as not using primers if you were not the one that primed the cases, why?
Use a reasonable load, not need to load to the max anyway.

[Cesure]

As far as not using primers if you were not the one that primed the cases, why?

Would it be easy to tell if pistol primers were inserted where rifle primers were supposed to be? That's the only "miss-primer" problem I could think of. I think you could tell after firing one or maybe just by pushing one out.

[1hole]

"Would it be easy to tell if pistol primers were inserted where rifle primers were supposed to be?"

For large primers, yes.

[jeff423]

I was recently cleaning the lint out of the inside of the dryer when I found a live Large Pistol Primer in the bottom of the dryer - meaning it had gone through the washer and dryer. I loaded it in a shell without powder or bullet just to see if it would go bang - it did. I also tried a new primer and the noise level was about the same so I think the "washed" primer would have done fine in a live round. Not very scientific, but interesting.

Jeff

[Cesure]

"Would it be easy to tell if pistol primers were inserted where rifle primers were supposed to be?"

For large primers, yes.

So for the .30-06, there would be no real concern about the wrong primer type, just the primer performance. I suppose somebody could have loaded old corrosive primers but that seems pretty unlikely.

[gcollins]

Let them dry, if you have the time, take a hair dyer and just keep going over and over again, and just do it as much as you want. [B]If they are pistol cases, I would do as I mentioned above and load a few and you will find out![B] A year ago or so i had a long talk with a nice man that lives in Cal., I am sure who he works for or if this is a second job, he get's a couple calls a week, to come to someone house and clear out old reloading equipment and componets, he was to destroy the componets and to clean up the tools and selll them for the family's or the widow. In our talking, he mentioned that he had done a job a year ago, this basement got flooded along with reloading tools, and componets . He got everything out and moved to his shop where he will clean up the RT's and he was to destroy the powder and pimers.He told me that there was 10,000 Winchester primers and he just couldn't just throw them away, he said he got them all out of there boxes so they could dry out. He told me that he has allmost shot 3,000 of those primers without having a bad one! I have some primers that were made in the 60's and I have used them without any problems. They were Old Alcan, I might of used all of them or not!
G

[dilly]

If any of you have ever scanned the threads that come up when someone asks if primers can be reloaded, the instructions given include having the primer compound wet into a paste and then dried. I bet if they dried THOROUGHLY, they would be fine. Just a hypothesis.

[EDG]

You might be able to dry them with a vacuum chamber and a vacuum pump to evaporate all the water.
I don't think you would be able to get all of the water out otherwise. Due to the hassle involved in getting them really dry I would just deprime them with due care in a standard decapping die. Do not let the unpopped primers collect in large quantities. If one pops it might set some of the others off.

[badbob454]

ok i started by testing wet primers shot 6 ,1 out of 3 did not fire.. , waited 3 days none misfired out of ten . waited 1 week ... loaded 10 rounds lead bullet with 17 gr. wc820 in my 3006 primed brass , all went bang shot ten more un loaded all shot with the same virocity as i would expect of new primers ... summary , these arent good enough to depend on in a life and death situation , but good enough for the range . but ill bring a rod to clear the barrel just incase a primer just pops one into the chamber , this happened making subsonic loads no problem pushing it back out .. thanks friends for all the replys , and happy shooting ... badbob

[bart55]

just deprimed adn deconstructed a couple of thousand carbine rounds that had been under water for a while ,dried the primers for a couple of weeks and loaded them in a bunch of 38sp plinker rounds .So far( 300 and counting )they all fire fine . I am as the Scott's would say thrifty!

[badbob454]

ok long time since i started this thread , as to date i have shot @ 2000 primers that were soaked for a few days dried them out on a warm summer weekend , i have shot nearly all of them and have experienced no missfires , i did have 2 that the anvils fell out ,i didnt try to load them /... i also pressed using a decapper over 300 and all pressed out dry and safely i just used a slow easy downward pressure to push them out , some did round out , but when i put em back in a new brass they flattened out and no missfires , send me your wet ones if you dont trust them ... i will be happy to dispose of them 4 U thanks for the great responces .... bad bob german

[LUBEDUDE]

Like others have said, primers are very resilient.

I have primers that were outside all winter exposed. I loaded, and they worked fine !!!

[scpaul]

I'd be afraid of squib loads or double detonation,can't remember the correct phrase but if it happens it usually at least damages the weapon. As far as being mfg. wet, are you sure they're wet with water not some other fluid? I'd decap them with a universal de-priming die so it can't build pressure. I know they aren't cheap or easy to get any more, but is it really worth just 1 potentially bad problem. I have heard that soaking primers in oil (type?) will neutralize them. I've never needed to try it. Sorry/Good luck whichever it is, Paul

[LeftyDon]

Let's see, primers cost about $4/100 and you have 300 to 400 cartridges that have unknown condition primers. So to save less than $20 in new primers you want to load 400 cartridges with powder and bullets (plus the time to generate them) and hope that all is okay. You want to put up with fail to fire, squib loads and GOK's how many other problems because you'll have an extra $20 in your pocket. Seems penny wise, pound foolish to me. Good luck.

[M-Tecs]

bad bob german

As you have discovered primers are very resilient. On two separate occasions I have been given a total of 7K plus primers that have been under water due to flooding. One batch was underwater for three days. After proper drying they all went bang. I did some accuracy testing with them and they were more accurate than the same brand that didn't get wet. They were all used in my prairie dog rifles. Total I had 7 or 8 that didn't fire.

[Shiloh]

Dry them and try a few. If they work, use tem for plinking, casual shooting, or practice.

Shiloh

[R.Ph. 380]

How would you remove the primers? I wouldn't junk the brass... too hard to come by now-a-days.

Put them in the oven at 400F. That'll tell ya if they're good or not. Course then ya got to get the kitchen cleaned up and aired out before the wife gets home. How do I know? WEEEEELLLLLLL.......................

[MtGun44]

Sounds pretty familiar.

Bill