Need advice...

[375supermag]

I just started by winter reloading regimen and have a serious problem.

My reloading room is directly under the bathroom and the drain from the shower tub broke yesterday morning after I left for work and nobody knew it.

I have about 5000 primed handgun cases in various calibers in plastic containers that were filled with water for several (8-10)hours.

I am wondering if anybody has ever dried out primed cases and loaded them successfully.

I hate to de-prime thousands of cases but, am very uncertain if the primers will function if dried. If I reload them and they misfire then I will have to pull thousands of bullets and probably waste enormous quantities of powder.


At this point, I am leaning toward de-priming all of them, even though that means losing about 5K primers (not a small expense, but one I am prepared to accept).

Has anyone any experience with such a situation?

[tazman]

Water doesn't usually ruin primers. Allow the cases to dry completely(2-3 days) and load a few to check. I think they will work fine.
I had a brick of primers get wet(submerged) in a flooded basement and they worked fine. They were soaked for several days before I found them. I dried them out and loaded a few. They worked, so I loaded the rest and had no problems.

[Windwalker 45acp]

I will second Tazman's advice. Primers are much harder to kill than most people think. Let them dry for a week or so, or speed up the process with running the wife's hair dryer over them.

I am old enough to know that there are very few absolutes in life, but they should be fine.

You're fighting moisture in the basement and I'm fighting it in the attic... I know your aggravation.

[lefty o]

water doesnt hurt primers. let them dry out and they will fire.

[ReloaderFred]

When the primers were made, the priming compound is rolled out wet, and then the small pellets are punched and set into the primer cups while still wet. The anvils are inserted and the primers are allowed to dry after being assembled.

The bottom line is, these primers were manufactured wet, though with a solvent.

You don't need to load them to find out if they're good after they dry out. Just load some of the primed cases into the appropriate firearm and drop the hammer on a few. If they go bang, then you're good to go, without wasting powder and bullets to find out.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[JWT]

I would load these is small batches until you can determine the success rate. If you see a 1% failure and you have only loaded 200 at a time that's 2. 1% of 5000 is 50. If the failure rate is higher you won't be very happy.

I had a basement flood 2 years ago with 2000 primers in 2ft of sewage. Almost all survived.

[Tatume]

The bottom line is, these primers were manufactured wet, though with a solvent.

I think the solvent was water.

[ReloaderFred]

It may very well be water. I was working from memory, and it isn't quite what it used to be.

The failure rate of the wet primers did spark a memory, though. I have a small booklet from Western Ammunition from about 1937. Here is a quote from that booklet concerning the acceptable failure rate of primers:

"By specializing in all types of sporting ammunition for both game and target shooting, the ballistic engineers of the Western Cartridge Company have set new standards which have resulted in greatly improved performance. At a time when the standard of the industry for primers permitted one misfire in 500, they raised their own standard to one misfire in 10,000. One production run went to 121,000 primers before a single misfire occurred."

Now we see people post on the internet how upset they are with XY manufacturer because they got a misfire due to a primer, which most often is more the fault of the primer seating, rather than the primer itself. It's extremely rare to find a bad primer these days, but it was once expected that it would occur once in 500. I've reloaded well over 800,000 rounds of ammunition, and I can only remember having two bad primers in all those rounds. One had no primer pellet, and the other had no anvil.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[MUSTANG]

^^^^ +1

I have been finding quite a few (3 or 4 per range visit) rounds of various calibers that had primer strikes but not fired over the last 3 years.All appear to be factory ammunition, not reloads. Shooters ejected them and let them lay on the rifle and pistol lines where I picked them up.

These have been in .22LR, .38spcl, .357, .44Mag, 10MM, .223, .300Blackout, and .308. With the exception of 10MM and .300 Blackout (Do not have firearms in these calibers); when I ensured they were clean and attempted to fire them at later range sessions, they have all fired . I suspect that it is a combination of poor factory primer seating and light primer strikes in the firearms the were fired in the first time.

[tazman]

During the last 2 years I have picked up about 10 22lr live rounds with firing pin strikes. They all fired in my guns. No idea why they didn't work for the other guy.

[Windwalker 45acp]

During the last 2 years I have picked up about 10 22lr live rounds with firing pin strikes. They all fired in my guns. No idea why they didn't work for the other guy.


they spin those .22lr cases enable to coat the entire rim with the then wet primer mixture.... sometimes you still get voids in them. But, if you rotate the previously fired 22lr a bit, most times it will light.

[tazman]

they spin those .22lr cases enable to coat the entire rim with the then wet primer mixture.... sometimes you still get voids in them. But, if you rotate the previously fired 22lr a bit, most times it will light.

I didn't know that. I only knew they fired when I rotated them.
Makes sense to me now.

[dragon813gt]

During the last 2 years I have picked up about 10 22lr live rounds with firing pin strikes. They all fired in my guns. No idea why they didn't work for the other guy.

Only one strike? Whoever threw them on the ground didn't do their part. I always try a second time, rotate the case, if it didn't fire the first time. Most will fire the second time.

Back to the OP. If you don't need to shoot the brass right away let them dry out for a few weeks. All this does is insure they are completely dry. They will fire when dry.

[Silver Jack Hammer]

We should soak some primers in water, dry them out and test them.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

Several years ago I stored primers in a five gallon bucket that had what I thought was a tight fitting lid. I set it outside and forgot about longer than I should have. Turned out that the lid wasn't waterproof at all. I thought the primers were ruined but they all worked fine after I placed the primer boxes on towels and let them dry in the sun.

[lefty o]

there's no need to go thru all this we should try it stuff. priming compound is made wet, and its stored wet, and its worked wet. water does not hurt it.

[M-Tecs]

The water will not hurt the primer, however, since the cases are primed it will be much more challenging to get them dry. I would use a food dehydrator at about 110 degrees.

I have never tried drying a primed case but I have deprimed some wet cases and I was surprised to find wet fired primers at least a week after being fired.

[Shuz]

My reloading room is directly under the bathroom and the drain from the shower tub broke yesterday morning after I left for work and nobody knew it.

I have about 5000 primed handgun cases in various calibers in plastic containers that were filled with water for several (8-10)hours.

I am wondering if anybody has ever dried out primed cases and loaded them successfully.

I hate to de-prime thousands of cases but, am very uncertain if the primers will function if dried. If I reload them and they misfire then I will have to pull thousands of bullets and probably waste enormous quantities of powder.


At this point, I am leaning toward de-priming all of them, even though that means losing about 5K primers (not a small expense, but one I am prepared to accept).

Has anyone any experience with such a situation?[/QUOTE]

Yep! I had a similar experience; altho mine was the washing machine drain hose jumped out of it's pipe and flooded the laundry room, which was right above the reloading room. The water leaked down and soaked everything in my reloading room.
I dried the primers, thousands of them, by just wiping the boxes as best I could and opening the individual trays to air.
I then marked all the boxes "wet" and continued to use them until all were used up. Never got a misfire!
We now have a water sensing device with a loud buzzer, on the floor of our laundry room(different house tho), and I have cable tied the drain hose to the pipe. Won't happen again, now because my reloading room in this house is under our upstairs computer room!