High Primers

Four High Masters (not high primers) John Zurek, Steve Reiter, Jim Henderson, Daryl Szarenski Desert Midwinter, Phoenix AZ, February 2009 (Click for larger image)

Note

The cause of the high primers is apparently not dirty primer pockets which is what this article is about. Although they may be a contributing factor, after cleaning the primer pockets and testing the resulting ammunition, things got worse, not better.

Ultimately, the cause proved to be the Aguila brass I've been adding to my brass supply after shooting their ball ammunition. The final installment is in The Great Aguila Purge of 2009.

But having forewarned the reader, there is still some value in the following article so I leave it otherwise "as is."

---

Around the time of this year's Desert Midwinter competition, I started getting some high primers, perhaps two or three per hundred rounds.

When the hammer falls on a high primer, instead of going "bang," it just pushes the primer further into the shell.

"Click."

If you then manually cock the hammer and pull the trigger again, now that the primer is fully seated, it usually fires.

"Bang!"

There's no problem with this in Slow Fire other than the distraction from your shot plan.

(Well, to be honest, there is the distraction of the smile on the face of the shooter next to you who saw that little tell-tale "jerk" that sometimes sneaks in on a mis-fire.)

In Timed Fire, if you're paying attention and keep your mind focused, the mis-fire can be corrected by quickly cocking the hammer and firing without too much degradation of the shot.

But in Rapid Fire it's an alibi, and only if you haven't already used the alibi for that match. If you have, then it's a missed shot.

Zero points.

That hurts.

At two or three high primers per hundred rounds, there's a good chance that one will come up during Rapid Fire.

So with the air conditioner now installed and running in the reloading room, it's time to find, and fix, this problem.

There are two likely reasons for a high primer, both happen when reloading. First not pressing home on the handle when seating the primer will do it. Or secondly, dirt in the primer pocket will prevent a primer from seating to the bottom of the primer cup.

In either case, the first hammer fall pushes the cup the rest of the way in and the second hammer fall makes it go bang.

An occasional "short stroke" of my Dillon 650's handle can sneak through but the operator has to be daydreaming for this to happen.

I try to have an environment where this is unlikely. First, no radio or TV are allowed while reloading. Second, there's no clock in the room to distract my thoughts. Third, I have several safety gadgets on the 650 that keep my attention focused on the machine and what I'm doing.

In a nutshell, I do pay attention to what's going on and if I short-stroke the machine, I know it. Short strokes don't get past me. Instead, I immediately stop, survey the consequences and then take the appropriate steps to either complete the cycle, or to remove the partially assembled rounds and set them aside for later disassembly.

A short-stroke is probably not the culprit.

My brass, on the other hand, is of mixed age, mixed brand and mixed history. And I've been reloading it for a couple of years.

It is, therefore, suspect.

The largest category is from commercially manufactured 45 ACP including a lot of Winchester, purchased at WalMart when I was first starting, and more recently a fair amount of Aguila because I don't (yet) make my own ball ammo. The Winchester, in particular, has been cycling through my brass supply for several years and although I don't count reloads, a dozen round trips isn't an unreasonable guess. (When I find a piece of split brass, odds are it will have a Winchester head stamp.)

TZZ Brass

But those are just two of the brands. I also have quite a bit of TZZ that has been scavenged over the years when shooting next to military teams who don't want their used brass -- thank you! And a lot of Federal from when I practiced at the Scottsdale Gun Club (ah, air conditioning!) that was, again, scavenged from other shooters who didn't want it.

Then, there's the new brass I've purchased, much of it Starline -- great stuff -- and which gets extra attention in the process to make my highest quality of reloads with this highest quality brass.

Finally, my supply of ready-to-shoot ammunition is almost zero right now. Between my business travels and the unusually warm April and May, I've fallen behind on making ammunition. As a result, most of my supply of brass is empty shells.

So, it's a good time to clean the primer cups in all my 45 ACP brass.

The needed tool was all of about three bucks and looked simple to use. I planned to put it in the electric drill, fasten that down, set it to a low speed and do each piece one at a time.

"How hard could this be?" I asked, smug in the view that I'd be done in an hour or two.

My first discovery was that I have a fair amount of brass.

No doubt others have several times my 2500 piece count but, nonetheless, when you start processing them one at a time, that's a pretty big number.

My second discovery was that they all had old primers still in them and that, before I could clean the primer cup, I needed to de-prime all of them.

No, problem, I thought. I'll just run them through the 650 and let it do the work.

I put about 200 pieces in the brass hopper and started pulling the handle. The first station removed the primer and I then just let the shells make their way around through the other stations to the final bin. Cranking much faster than when reloading, I could do about one shell per second.

Okay, that's 2500 shells at one per second. Let's see, 60 pieces per minute that should be about 45 minutes, right?

Three hours and about 1900 pieces of deprimed brass later and even with the breaks that were getting longer and longer, my arm was tired. Very tired.

That's a lot of brass.

Broken 650 Ring Indexer

And that's when the ring indexer broke.

This part is beneath the platform and, as the platform comes down on the handle's upstroke, it advances the brass to the next position.

No ring indexer, no advance.

Fortunately, Dillon is just across town and, from time to time, I've walked in their front door, handed them a broken piece from my 650 and walked back out in less than five minutes with a new one, no charge, and been back home in an hour.

Except that it's now after 5:00PM on Saturday. Without checking, I'm sure they're closed.

Well, I can still clean the pockets on those 1900 de-primed pieces.

I put the cleaning tool into the drill's chuck and tightened it down, and then secured the drill in the padded jaws of the vice.

But the drill's lock sould only run the drill at full speed. (Damn. I bought the cheap drill!)

Hmmm, I mumbled, looking around the tool room.

Maybe a C clamp or ... ...

I settled for some stiff wire -- hmmm, this isn't real safe -- wrapped around the handle and holding the drill's trigger at the desired (slow) speed.

I'm starting to have second thoughts about continuing.

But how should I position the work? Dirty pockets to the left or right?

A quick experiment showed dirty to the left was best so I could pick up a dirty piece with my left hand while cleaning one with my right. Once cleaned, I'd pitch the clean piece with my right hand into the clean bucket, transfer the next dirty one, left hand to right hand, and continue the process.

Inspecting the result, I see that some primer cups still have carbon around the outer edge which is where the new primer needs to seat. That buildup is specifically what I'm after so, a few experiments later, I see I need to maneuver the brass around so the primer pocket cleaning tool scours the outer edge. Only then does the cleaning work like I think it should.

And 400 shells later, I see this is taking 4-5 seconds per shell. For the available 1900, that's ... uhm ... maybe two and a half hours with breaks?

Gotta fit in some dinner this evening, too.

Careful!

At last, my better judgement catches up.

I remind myself that I'm now standing very close to a rotating piece of machinery with something hard and sharp on the end.

And I'm tired.

And a little frustrated as well.

"Stop!"

I tell myself, "I can finish cleaning the rest of the deprimed brass tomorrow morning."

I remove the wire holding down the drill's trigger and throw it in the trash.

"I'll find something better -- and safer -- for this tomororow."

"And the rest of the brass will wait until I get the part at Dillon on Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. Or maybe I'll just call and have them mail it across town."

"And then after all that, I can start reloading again and see if cleaning the primer pockets really solves this high primer problem or not."

Phew! Buying finished ammunition at Walmart sure was simpler.

---

Addendum

Dillon 650 Partially Disassembled Broken Ring Indexer Removed

Many months ago, the two bolts holding the platform to the main piston had worked themselves loose. Dillon gave me the alignment tool and instructions to use before tightening them up again.

When I put in a new ring indexer, I'll need to repeat that process. So this morning I went searching in the "spare reloader parts" junk box for that tool.

And right next to the alignment tool was a "Spare 650 Parts" baggie, original and unopened from Dillon, and therein was a new ring indexer.

Hooray!

So today after lunch, I will put in the new part, align and then bolt down everything according to Dillon's excellent instructions. That will put the 650 back into operation and, with that, I should be able to deprime the last of the 45 ACP brass and finish cleaning the primer pockets.

I like finishing a job and that "Spare 650 Parts" baggie from Dillon is going to make that happen today.

Thanks, Dillon. You guys think of everything!

---

A Couple of Hours Later

The Results (Click to enlarge)

Done.

• The 650 has been re-assembled with the new part and everything has been adjusted to specification;
• All remaining brass has been de-primed; and
• The primer pockets in all my empty brass have been cleaned.

I have 12 quart-size yogurt tubs each with approximately 200 pieces of deprimed and primer pocket-cleaned brass ready to go.

The next step will be to reload that brass and see if the cleaning has solved the high primers problem.

But that's enough for today.

Right now I'm thinkin' Stella Artois.

Probably two.

---

Note

The cause of the high primers is apparently not dirty primer pockets which is what this article is about. Although they may be a contributing factor, after cleaning the primer pockets and testing the resulting ammunition, things got worse, not better.

At the moment, the chase for the source of this problem is still in progress.

Having warned the reader, there is still some value in the following article so I leave it "as is" but with this note attached.

Ed Skinner, 3 June 2009

Debt

Crew of Nemo

I am bankrupt.

I can never repay the debt.

What these men -- and women -- sacrificed is beyond my ability to restore to them. Indeed, it is without any doubt beyond my ability to comprehend what they gave up, what they lost, what was taken from them, and what they gave.

My wife's father is lower-left in this picture. He manned a waist gun in "Nemo", a bomber in the European Theatre during World War II.

Cotton, as he was called for his blond hair and complexion, gave up his young life. It could have been high above Germany. It could have been during a hopeless landing attempt at some English-countryside field. Or it could have been in a shelter during a bomb attack at his airfield.

Perhaps it is ironic that it was actually a diving accident while on leave back in the States.

But, does it matter?

Cotton was there at the lake trying to live in a few small days the joy and freedom he'd lost in so many ways. Temporarily returned for a brief release to the sane world of automobiles, Sunday school, weekends and, in comparison, a carefree life, we can only imagine the reckless, desperate release he felt, and that he tried to live.

Cotton's life was sacrificed for us. It doesn't matter whether it was at 15,000 feet over Germany struck by a piece of shrapnel or because he struck an underwater stump when diving a mere five feet into a lake.

So I try to remember on this Memorial Day those whose lives were lost as a direct consequence of the many wars, "police actions," or simply from manning the lines, and not just from enemy-inflicted physical injuries, but also from "shell shock" or from the escape from what they endured into alcohol, or from the decades of life spent in wheel chairs, veteran's hospitals, or in a back bedroom supported by a family who struggled to fulfill their needs, or whose future days hold little more hope than for a cardboard bed beneath some underpass.

Their lives, not just those of the dead, were sacrificed for us.

They gave up their futures, their chances for lives like those we now live but for which we, by comparison, have practically no basis for appreciating.

In my ancestry and in my wife's ancestry are those who obeyed the call, and who lost their lives in degrees from partial, to devestating, to complete.

Citizens of the United States of America Adriana, Gosia, presiding Judge

My daughter-in-law recently became a US citizen. Her father and I are the grandfathers of Adriana seen in this picture.

Mietek came to this country, alone, a couple of decades ago from Poland, exiled for standing up to the Communists. And only after many more years had passed -- after the fall of Communism -- were his wife and daughter able to follow, to come to this country.

Here, his daughter met and eventually married my son and, through them, our lives are now joined in this grandchild and in our citizenship. And I am honored to be a part of their family, a family that knows other circumstances but chose this country for their home, this country for their future, and this country for the future of our grandchild.

Mietek and I are amazed whenever we hear our grandaughter effortlessly switch between Polish and English, sometimes in mid-sentence, as her attention shifts between us. Adriana does this because she knows we understand best in two different languages. But it is also true that he and I bear similar unpayable debts to those who fought, sacrificed and died so we can enjoy this day, this family, this life and, most preciously, these freedoms.

Our debt is so profound, so far beyond the words "Thank you," that I can only ...

[Silence.]

Reloading Room

Reloading Table (Click to enlarge)

The newest addition is that air conditioner in the upper-left corner. With daily temperatures already over 100 in late May, it's what you may acknowledge as a necessity here in Phoenix Arizona.

Some other features you may notice will include the "L" brackets holding the brass feeder on the top of the Dillon 650 and clamping it to the wall, two walls to be precise. For whatever reason, when I would get cranking at a regular pace, the "tower" would start to wobble and eventually feed a piece of brass upside down. Depriming an upside down shell doesn't work. Indeed, it jams up the works pretty good. But with the head now glued to the wall as you see it, that no longer happens.

Even so, the table is bolted to the rear and side walls. The table top consists of a sheet of 1" particle board with a sheet of 3/4" plywood glued and screwed to its top. Just exactly how that 650 gets to rockin' with all that is beyond me but, well, there it is.

Looking at the 650, you'll see all the bells and whistles from Dillon. I particularly like the powder checker but, in my paranoia, you can also see the side of the red battery tube that is hose clamped to the frame and the black "snake" coming from its end that carries the wires to the white LED that is aimed down so I can look inside each shell before setting the bullet on top. Yeah, I look at how much powder is in every shell, and Dillon "feels" for it too. And so far, no squibs. (Knock on wood.)

The mechanical balance on the table is the backup and double-check for the RCBS digital scale on the shelf. RCBS equipment is green, in case you didn't know, so that should help you spot it. Two tiny boxes just to the right of the digital scale are the check weights. Paranoia again. I turn the scale on 30 minutes before loading to let it reach a stable temperature. I then press its "Zero" button and then drop in the two tiny 2.0 grain weights. The scale should read 4.0 grains. (My wad load is 3.8 grains of Hodgdon's Clays; I check the scale as close to that as the check weights allow.) If the scale disagrees with the check weights, then I would have to stop and figure out what's wrong. That's where the mechanical balance would come into play. But so far, it hasn't been needed.

But with the new air conditioner, the timing of all this will have to change.

The reloading room is part of the garage and it's on the west side of the house where the concrete block construction soaks up the infrared all afternoon. When the sun goes down, all that infrared re-radiating into the garage and reloading room will push the interior temperature 10 degrees above the high at the airport.

The record high in Phoenix is 118. Add 10 and you'll understand why I haven't done much reloading over the past several summers.

And when I did reload, I've noticed that I had to adjust the powder drop with the season to get those same 3.8 grains of Clays. Without doing so, summer loads would have been about 0.2 grains lighter. I presume this is because the size of that cavity in the Dillon powder drop was changing size with the temperature. Whether it is the cavity adjustment screw (of UniqueTek.com's Micrometer Powder Bar Kit) getting longer in the heat or the cavity itself getting smaller as the metal sides adjust to the temperature, I couldn't say. I just know it changed about 0.2 grains with a temperature change of 50 degrees or so.

But now, my new plan is to start the air conditioner an hour ahead and go back inside, possibly for dinner with a recorded NCIS episode. Half way through the show, I'll pause it to run back out and turn on the RCBS digital scale.

With the air conditioner, I'm looking for that to be less of an issue. If it's not, I'll have to do some more sleuthing.

The black box on the tabletop to the left of the mechanical scale is the digital caliper. I keep two spare batteries in the box so I'm never denied its truth-telling. I've thought of getting a purely mechanical caliper as a double-check but, well, I've had no reason to suspect the caliper of any funny business. Not yet, anyway.

The rest of the stuff is typical for home shops and reloading rooms.

Oh yeah, you can see the spare license plate for the car hanging on the wall to the upper left. It's one of those geeky obscure codes and if you know what it means, then you're a significant as well as an "old time" geek yourself.

Under Table Storage

Beneath the table are my three buckets of brass, all 45 ACP. The left-most reads, "Clean 45 ACP (Needs Martindale)", which refers to the Martindale gauge through which I hand-pass each and every piece of brass before I reload it.

Well, there's one exception to that rule. I've been shooting some Aguila in my ball gun and that always comes to the reloader a bit fat. It won't go through the Martindale gauge in that once-fired condition. But after resizing, reloading with the lighter wad loads and firing, it passes. It seems to be reasonably good brass so I make an exception for it. But only for that one brand, and only after the first firing. Anything that fails the Martindale gauge after that is tossed.

The use of the middle bucket should now be obvious from its label, "Once Fired."

The right-most bucket is for dirty brass but I try to keep it empty. That is, the day after a match, I clean brass. It then goes into the "Clean 45 ACP" bucket to await the Martindale gauge. And after passing the gauge, the cleaned and gauged brass is stored in empty 1 qt yogurt containers -- they hold about 200 pieces each and are the right quantity to dump into the shell feeder on the top of the Dillon without jamming it up. Those containers full of ready-to-load brass are stored out in the garage in a cabinet with other supplies.

More recently, I've suffered a spate of high primers, perhaps as many as 1 per 100. I shoot and reload the same brass a lot and someone suggested that after a half dozen firings, the primer pockets may accumulate enough crud to prevent the primers from seating correctly. So today I bought a primer pocket reamer and will spend a couple of hours going through everything. [Boring!]

On top of the middle bucket you can see a plastic jar labelled, "Bucket O' Primers." There's about an inch of water in the jar and damaged primers go in there. In a different posting here on this blog, you can read of my researches into deactivating primers but, in a nut shell and depending on who you ask, water will do it, but only until the material dries out again, or oil will do it, or won't, or it just can't be done. These reports are from the companies that make them! My "final answer" came from a Phoenix Police officer who said he soaks them in water until trash day, puts them in the trash wet and hopes they make it to the city dump before reactivating.

Interesting.

The baggie you see to the right contains 38 Special brass. Only my snubbie shoots that caliber and I don't (yet) reload for it. Someday I'll have a nice K-38 for Bullseye and will need that brass but, for now, I'm just collecting.

Work Table

Here's the final part of the area. This is where I clean guns, fix lamps, break small irreplaceable plastic parts and so forth.

On the extreme left you can just barely see the Lyman single-stage press I occasionally use, mostly to shrink that once-fired Aguilla brass. The press is attached to the board you see and the near end is held to the table with that large, rusty "C" clamp. The far end is held down by a screw through the board and into the work table below.

You can see a couple of bottles of Dillon's purplish brass polish on the shelf but most of the other items are standard fare for anyone's home workshop that's been accumulating tools, bolts and odd parts for a couple of decades.

Off to the left is storage with most of the items being put there years ago and forgotten. Worse, of course, is the storage shed in the backyard. We haven't seen the boxes in its deepest parts for more than a decade. And then there are the items stored in the attic above the garage we put in there when the roof was off but can't get to now. We don't have even the faintest of clues about what's up there.

But that's another story.

Keep 'em in the black, ya'll!

NRA Annual Convention, Phoenix

Good morning!

The wife is still on the fence about going downtown today. Yeah, it's gonna be hot but the light rail is supposed to be punctual so we'll sit in the car until it's almost time for it to pick us up at the park 'n ride lot near Christown Mall. Then, it's $2.50 each for the round trip (day pass same as two rides) to the stop right next to the Convention Center downtown. I have the maps and the schedule right here.

Her admission to the convention will be $10.00 but, for me, as an NRA member I get in free. I remind her to look at it as entertainment. (Update: She gets in free based on my membership!)

"Where else will you be able to see such an intense concentration of Libertarians with a few Republicans thrown in for seasoning?"

And I mention that today's free "Refuse to be a Victim" session is at 1:00PM. I'd like us both to attend that. And the "Methods of Concealed Carry" at 2:00PM just down the hall also looks interesting but probably not for her. (She could use that time to check out the convention floor and find a set of grips for her as yet unknown carry that'll match her mood -- that's how she packs for trips, by the way. "I have to take all this because I don't know what I'm going to feel like wearing each day." Okay, maybe a couple of sets of grips -- to match her mood of the day.)

I'll be stopping by booth #2406, Eagle Grips, to look at their ESS3s for my S&W 36 snubby that I'll have in my pocket -- my AZ Concealed Weapon Permit will be in my wallet just behind my driver's license.

And I'll be watch for Paul Huebl whose http://www.crimefilenews.com/ blog is one of my regular morning reads -- Paul's supposed to be wandering around the convention, perhaps today. It'd be a pleasure to shake his hand.

But time's a wast'in. I need to cut the grass before the temperature hits 90 and then get showered and ready to go to the convention.

---

Phoenix Light Rail and Star Gate Transfer Station (click for larger image)

... Later

A lot of firsts today!

• First ride on the taxpayer-subsidized light rail.
• First NRA Convention I've attended.
• First time I knew Phoenix has a Star Gate (see to the right above).
• First time the wife went to anything gun related. (Well, that's not 100% accurate -- she did go to the range with me once years ago but she read a book while I took a lesson from Coach Pat, God rest his soul.)
• First time we've seen the new Convention Center -- and, Wow, it is nice!
• First time my NRA membership card got me anything free -- not that I'm complaining, just observing -- and the wife got in free because she was with me. Not bad.

But it was crowded, very crowded.

The newspaper said they were expecting the largest crowd that's ever attended an event at the Phoenix Convention Center and, judging from the registration line, the hamburger line, and the line at the air rifle range, yeah, they probably did just that.

Yours truly and Paul Huebl

The one booth I wanted to find was that of Eagle Grips. The floor plan had them in #2406, a relatively small space not far from one of the entrances.

But as luck would have it, I was holding the floor plan upside down so we walked half way across the arena before checking a few landmarks and re-orienting the map. We'd walked unseeing almost directly past it.

As we returned, I spotted it from twenty yards when I saw Paul Huebl's toothy grin.

Meeting Paul was one of the reasons I had come to the show and, as if by magic, he was in the only booth on my shopping list. (I should add he'd put me on to these grips in the first place so maybe his familiarity with their product and his being in their booth wasn't quite so miraculous.)

Walking up, I introduced myself and we shook hands. I introduced the wife, talked about blogging, my wife's smile started to sag, we talked about grips for snubbys, my wife started to look around ...

So we quickly drafted her to take pictures of Paul and myself with both his and my cameras. And after two exposures on each, Paul got busy with other readers of his blog and we moved on.

One of the bigger lines was for Ted Nugent.

Well, I thought to myself, with such a great first meeting with Paul, let's go shake hands or something with Ted Nugent.

Ted Nugent

"There, did you see him look up in our direction, dear?"

Waving, "Thanks, Ted!"

Man, what a great pal.

Uhm, what should we do now?

"I'm tired," my wife said. "How about if I sit over there in that chair and you go see the exhibits for a while?"

God doesn't make 'em better than the one that married me.

So I wandered the floor for a while. I bought tickets for a couple of different raffles, listened to salesmen hawk their wares and shove brochures into my hands that later went into the recycle bins, dropped the hammers on a couple of S&W revolvers, asked the young lady in cowboy clothing why the Ruger factory in Prescott AZ doesn't give free samples when someone just stops by to see what they're working on today ... but all I got back was a smile.

Still, it was a nice smile.

NRA Store

On the way back to where my wife had been patiently waiting -- I kept my perambulations to 30 minutes, I'd like you to know -- I took a quick turn through the NRA Store.

They had some new items I hadn't seen a few months earlier when I visited their museum in the Washington DC area but, somewhat expectedly, the prices again seemed just a tad high.

Mind you, I don't mind supporting the NRA. I like what they're doing.

And on my Washington DC visit, I did buy an NRA baseball cap -- Made in China -- and also an NRA emblazoned wind breaker -- Made in Vietnam.

But I normally prefer to be a little more direct in my gift giving and not muddy the waters of "value" by paying more for something than I felt it was worth.

So I looked but bought nothing and headed out to where I'd left my wife sitting in a very comfortable looking chair.

Walking up I asked, "Ready to go?"

We reached home an hour later and we were both drained from the walking and the heat. The weatherman says it was 102 at the airport but downtown at the convention center with those tall mirror-like buildings and big expanses of concrete and asphalt, it surely was another 5-10 degrees hotter.

Dinner was take-out chinese washed down with several glasses of water.

Hours later, sitting in the dark with only the glow of the 52" LCD TV and a taped episode of NCIS, we were starting to feel mostly recovered.

But I'm goin' back tomorrow. There's more to see.

The wife will, undoubtedly, stay home in the cool house but, oh yeah, I'm goin'.

It's huge and really nice, and so very, very different from the junky, dirty gun shows. There's carpet on the floor, good air conditioning, clean rest rooms, new guns and equipment in expensive displays.

Besides, I need some newer catalogs.

I need one from Brownells, Champion's Choice, Midway, Cheaper Than Dirt, IMMR, Hodgdon's, Springfield Armory and, of course, Smith & Wesson. I could also pick up some brochures on black powder long rifles, shot guns and high power rifles, and maybe one or two on smallbore. I saw the Clark booth and, at the other end, the one for Kimber. (I wonder if Dave Salyer or Ed Masaki are here?) And there was that one really interesting display of Kentucky long rifles over on collectors row. I wonder what it feels like to heft one of those into position?

Yeah, I gotta go back.

So many guns, so little time.