Quote Originally Posted by georgerkahn View Post
I, too, was looking for (small rifle) primers and in the very back of the cabinet I store them in I found a full box of CCI small pistol primers. I bought these 2nd hand at a garage sale in the early 1970s... They're at least 55 years old. For kicks and giggles I loaded fifty H&G cast bullets in .38 S&W Special cases, using some Bullseye powder and these primers and took them to range, complementing a S&W Model 64 revolver I had not shot in a while. My very first shot was a "click", and I opened cylinder to see primer was dented. After a few expletives and with nothing to lose, I tried the 2nd.. the 3rd... and all the way to 24 shots: ALL fired flawlessly. Again, I re-inserted that first case -- and this time it fired. My guess was the initial fault was the revolver's? Anyhoos -- 25 shots to shoot 24 of 24 rounds using 55+ year old CCI Large pistol primers!
My (recent -- early this summer) experience.
My thoughts are -- at worse case -- like on my first shot -- you'll get a "click". Then, you just need break down your loads and reassemble with primers that function.
geo
Obviously I can’t prove this, but would postulate that in the one cartridge that didn’t fire until a second hit the primer was seated just a tiny amount shy of deeply enough and the first blow finished the job. Otherwise, the revolver may have needed cycling to get the dust off.

My most extreme treatment of primers tale was a couple of bricks that got rain soaked on the loading dock of the local distributor. They were very iffy a couple of weeks later in our tuned PPC revolvers when we tried them in, so I just threw them on a shelf and forgot them for 30 years. During the primer scare recently I tried them in some 9mm cases for my S&W Model 39 and they all worked perfectly. Go figure.

Froggie