Thread: Winchester primer fail

An experienced reloader mate contacted me the other day with a serious problem.

He was loading some 7-08 bullets with 139s & 2209 for some young guys.

He was extremely concerned that the starting loads did this.



I'm not sure how old the primers are, but you can clearly see where they had pierced on the edge of them.

I think only two or three did this & they have gas cut the bolt face

I showed him some images off Google of exactly the same thing.

He got some different primers so will be good to go.

What primers did you suggest, I've been told that some makes are slightly larger?

I rememeber this happening to me. You told me the same thing about google. Happens a bit which is a bugger cause I still have a few thousand here

That would piss you off with something in the scope

Nasty.

I have had that happen three times with Winchester LR primers in one packet. Tossed what was left and have gone to another brand. They still fire ok but make a mess of the bolt face. It is the brass coloured ones that fail. Never had any problems with the silver ones.

Originally Posted by Shearer

I have had that happen three times with Winchester LR primers in one packet. Tossed what was left and have gone to another brand. They still fire ok but make a mess of the bolt face. It is the brass coloured ones that fail. Never had any problems with the silver ones.

Yep I went off the Winchester ones years ago when they changed from Silver to brass.

I use mainly Fed 215 & CCI 450s now.

Originally Posted by nor-west

What primers did you suggest, I've been told that some makes are slightly larger?

They don't need to be larger, they just need to not get a hole in them.....

Thanks for posting this also happened to me. People tried to tell me i was overloading when i knew i wasnt. Confused the fuck out of me. Now my bolts a mess. Thanks winchester u fuckers!

Brass that's had the primer pocket swaged wrong will also do this

Originally Posted by Spanners

Brass that's had the primer pocket swaged wrong will also do this

Swaged?

Originally Posted by Spanners

Brass that's had the primer pocket swaged wrong will also do this

What he said

The Dillon super swage is the worst for it as the cases lay down and if not perfectly adjusted ramp on 1 side of the pocket and do exactly what posted in the pic
My 223 Tikka boldface is pocked to hell from it
Brass getting dumped

Hi,

We just noticed this in the last few weeks. We have had numbers of these fail in moderate 308w loads recently in target shooting, So 1~3 failures per bag on 12. It looks like the current winchester primers are crap. Try a lighter load, we dropped from 45gr 2208 to 44.5 and find we seem to be mostly ok. If we go hotter to get out to 1000m though we get more failures.

Originally Posted by username

Thanks for posting this also happened to me. People tried to tell me i was overloading when i knew i wasnt. Confused the fuck out of me. Now my bolts a mess. Thanks winchester u fuckers!

Yep we caught it in time, luckily not damaged any club guns. I'd suggest going to the seller of the primer and asking for a new bolt.