ORIGINAL: BarnesX.308
Some of my primers are pretty old. I got a lot of hand-me-down stuff when I got my reloading equipment from a friend of my dad. So, I bought all new primers just in case. I can't remember if I used newer primers that I had bought myself or if they were older. The reloading stuff is up at the cabin and I won't be there for a while.
That being said, I seat my primers on the upstroke of resizing the cases. Sooooooo, it is possible that I had a little case lube on my fingers. I keep paper towels by the press and rub my hands constantly. I guess, after 11 years and possibly a 1000 loads, one got by?
I'm going to prime new cases for my old man andrelegate the batch I primed last weekendto the practice squad. I don't want my old man to miss a shot at a buck due to my hand loads. The rounds I loaded for myself, I will keep. I got my buck in archery so I'll be taking my chances with a doe
. Well, I also have a bear tag.
BarnesX.308,
I have never in my 15+ years of reloading had a dud primer. I have had rounds not fire due to the primer being seated to deeply(firing pin made no contact). I also never combine 2 steps into one. I am assuming that you are Full-length resizing so you are using a case lube on the outside of the casing plus a bit in the neck to aid the expander ball correct. Here is what I do. I will lube cases as I resize them. Onceall of the casings are resized I put them all into a case cleaner/tumbler to remove the case lube and to clean up the casings. Once they are clean I will then re-prime all cases at once then move onto power charges etc,etc. After the over seated primer experience I bought a bench mounted RCBS priming tool. The press mounted tool has way too much leverage and lacks feel when seating primers. With this bench mounted tool the primers are held in a tube and you never come in contact with them to run the risk of contamination. So yes you could have inadvertantly contaminated some primer with the case lube. Try resizing all of the casing, clean off all of the lube from them, wash your hands good with Dawn, then resize in a seperate step and see if this helps you with the duds.
Andrew