weird Hornady primer pockets.

[Milky Duck]

Figgured this is near enough best forum to place this.
Right ho...so Ive heard tell of unusual sized primer pockets before,from chap in states,Ive struck crimped pockets in a lot of the recent ammunition batches and figgured it was because of the superpreformance stuff running hot,the boffins might have decided to prime it all on same line.....
anyway the other day I loaded up some of the slightly shorter .45/70 cases with winchester magnum primers and had hard time getting them to seat deep enough... I have a funky old bench mounted priming setup that works very very well but semi munted a few primers trying to get then seated deep enough...sure enough out at range 2 needed more than one strike to set them off....
anyone else struck this???and what was the solution??

[MarkP]

Do you have any pictures of the head of some of the cartridges showing the primer and primer pocket?




The dimensions would be somewhat difficult to verify without special measuring tools. May be able to get close on pocket depth with rear blade of a caliper. Diameters will be difficult.

[Milky Duck]

I will have a measure up...but 99% sure its the same issue as fella on huntingnut had struck.

[Milky Duck]

https://www.huntingnut.com/index.php...wtopic&t=14862

[stubshaft]

I guess I'll have to keep an eye out on any once fired brass I buy.

[Reg]

It would appear that the primers are crimped. Evidently it helps to hold everything together with the higher pressure. A liability thing no doubt. No problem. Decrimp or ream them.
Have been using these cases since about when they came out with not a problem.

[Milky Duck]

yip I understand the crimped thing,seen it in .308 and .270...the .45/70 isnt crimped..but yeah will try the whirl of deburring tool on next lot and really hone the bum of primer pocket with scraping tool and see what happens.

[john.k]

I know one thing,Hornady 45/70 brass jammed in my Marlin from some extractor bind up issue.......never had any problems with Win and Rem 45/70............may well explain why the Hornady brass was left on the ground at the range.

[DocSavage]

Had a similar problem with some Remington 45 auto rim cases thought I need a nee firing pin on my 625 turned out the primer pockets need to be reamed.

[Soundguy]

Figgured this is near enough best forum to place this.
Right ho...so Ive heard tell of unusual sized primer pockets before,from chap in states,Ive struck crimped pockets in a lot of the recent ammunition batches and figgured it was because of the superpreformance stuff running hot,the boffins might have decided to prime it all on same line.....
anyway the other day I loaded up some of the slightly shorter .45/70 cases with winchester magnum primers and had hard time getting them to seat deep enough... I have a funky old bench mounted priming setup that works very very well but semi munted a few primers trying to get then seated deep enough...sure enough out at range 2 needed more than one strike to set them off....
anyone else struck this???and what was the solution??

hornady 45-70 in general seems to be very non uniform brass. For one thing.. they are short.. that can be worked around.. the biggest problem I have seen with the hundreds of pieces that I have are the primer pockets and flash holes. I guess the guy that works at hornady that drills the flash holes in must do it by hand and doesn't have a jig and just manually lines up each piece.. and uses a hand drill or bit and brace to do it. I have had to run a primer pocket truer and flash hole reamer into each one otherwise I get bent decap stems.. I have about 5-6 tubberware containers of hornady 45-70 brass.. It's unfortunately all I have now.. but by far it is the worst I've ever seen.. though aguilla is a close second.. their primer pockets tend to be very very tight.

[BLAHUT]

When I get a new batch of once fired 45/70 or any other brass, I now ream flash holes / primer pockets so they are all the same. When I order new brass, I only buy starline never have a problem with starline brass.

[Martin Luber]

I had their 308 brass and couldn't seat primers. They make pretty scrap. Too bad

[Minerat]

I run into it with 17HH cases too. About every 3rd one is hard seating, new or factory once fired.

[samari46]

Could be that some of Hornady cases may or may not be made here in the USA. S&B has long advertised that they make ammo for some U.S. firms. That may explain the non spec primer pockets. Frank

[dale2242]

What Minerat said.
I have a friend that had staked in primers in factory 17 Hornady Hornet cases.
I t appeared in his case that the primer pockets were made too big and the primers had to be staked to hold them in.

[Brassmonkey]

Last round of 30-30 I did was hornady brass even after working the pockets the primers took a lot of effort to seat. Not a fan of hornady brass.

[wilecoyote]

Could be that some of Hornady cases may or may not be made here in the USA. S&B has long advertised that they make ammo for some U.S. firms. That may explain the non spec primer pockets. Frank

while the out-of-spec primer's holes are correctable with the Sinclair pr.pocket tool, unfortunately the S&B manufacture would also result in a different overall brass quality.
I suspect something like this happens here to our (?) G.F.L. rifle cases.

[nicholst55]

hornady 45-70 in general seems to be very non uniform brass. For one thing.. they are short.. that can be worked around.. the biggest problem I have seen with the hundreds of pieces that I have are the primer pockets and flash holes. I guess the guy that works at hornady that drills the flash holes in must do it by hand and doesn't have a jig and just manually lines up each piece.. and uses a hand drill or bit and brace to do it. I have had to run a primer pocket truer and flash hole reamer into each one otherwise I get bent decap stems.. I have about 5-6 tubberware containers of hornady 45-70 brass.. It's unfortunately all I have now.. but by far it is the worst I've ever seen.. though aguilla is a close second.. their primer pockets tend to be very very tight.

I would bet money that Hornady's flash holes are punched, rather than drilled. Almost all brass has punched flash holes. If they're drilled, you pay extra for that feature. Unfortunately, Hornady's brass is generally pretty poor stuff.

[yeahbub]

I've run into the somewhat shallow primer pocket problem in brass from various sources I had laying around. It takes unusual effort to seat them flat or below case head. I use the Lyman primer pocket unioformers on a run of brass like that when I run into a few, and am surprised sometimes at how much brass it sometimes carves out of the bottom of the pocket. They're uniform after that, though. and primers seat some .005 below flush.

BTW, a trick I've been using in general is to anoint the pockets with Emmert's lube melted into a cotton swab and seating primers in sometimes tight diameter pockets is much easier and I can easily feel them bottom out.

[MarkP]

Does anyone have any pictures of the primer pockets? Fairly certain the pockets that look staked in are made with a (2) piece bunting die. a one piece die has the stem that creates pocket on the die and also creates a nice smooth radius from the cartridge head to the primer pocket. I am assuming the stem broke on the one piece tool and they salvaged it by converting it into a two piece bunting die. The text on the face of the die was fine and they did not want to toss it. The small stem in the converted die compresses when heading the case. The machine operator is probably only looking at pocket depth and pocket diameter. By doing so the radius can get pushed below the face of the cartridge head. The tool should get sent back to the T&D shop to be adjusted or discarded. Nearly impossible to get a nice smooth radius when using a two piece tool. I cringe when I see this. This is the classic chasing pennies while dollars are falling both back pockets. They spend more money and time converting the one piece that creates an inferior case than that just using a new die. Maybe they chose to do that for supply reasons, I doubt it they did it years ago.

Also the cartridge case flash holes are punched on a pierce & prime machine. If the cases are sold as un-primed they still go across that machine and primers are not installed.

Pictures and drawings below:



See radius on magenta pocket punch




This is a once piece die -- pocket stem is part of the larger die face.