Pre-prime or prime prior to loading?

[richs]

I have a Lee Loadmaster I use for 9mm, .40S&W, and .223 rifle. My biggest gripe with it has bee with the priming system, so I ditched it and hand prime every shell. It give me the chance to handle every shell and inspect for defects. However, I recently had several rounds that didn't fire, although many fired after hitting the primer a second time; but I had a hang-fire that delayed a couple seconds before discharging. No harm done, but has me wondering about issues with pre-priming.
I store my primed shells in plastic bags (100 shell groups) in a sealed plastic bin with silica gel packs. My questions, should I put a gel pack in each bag? Should I ditch the plastic bins and use military style ammo cans? (I currently store completed rounds in steel ammo cans with silica packs, labeled when I made the rounds.)

 

[Jackie Graham]

I pre-prime all my loads. I store them is plastic coffee cans and have never had a problem. You may have had some raised primers. Just make sure you are fully seating them. You may also want to look into using prepped brass. That may help with the priming issues. I use prepped brass on all my loads. With them sized, swaged and the case mouth flared I don't have any problems with seating the primers fully.

JMO

 

[Redleg]

It would seem that the same method used for storing primers in their original packaging would work for the storage of pre-primed. The problem may be more in the primer manufacturer as the thickness of the material varies and as long as you can hold certain processes to a set procedure you can eliminate the source of the error by the change of components.

 

[sparked1]

Some primers are harder to set off than others. I've had several light strikes with cheap Tula primers. Never with Federal or CCI except some of my pistols with lighter hammer springs won't set off the CCI primers consistently.

 

[kuduman]

Raised primers most likely. It happens.

 

[kuduman]

Also... I've bought primed brass many times. No issues.

 

[coach482]

Some primers are harder to set off than others. I've had several light strikes with cheap Tula primers. Never with Federal or CCI except some of my pistols with lighter hammer springs won't set off the CCI primers consistently.

Same with me.

 

[_Raining]

However, I recently had several rounds that didn't fire, although many fired after hitting the primer a second time;

I had this issue with my first set of rifle rounds which were hand primed and loaded the day before, the issue was that the primer was not seated deep enough. When the primer is hit by the firing pin for the first time it will seat the primer all the way and the second time it will set the primer off. This may or may not be your issue but it is something to consider.

 

[CarZombie]

I have to go with all the others saying it is a primer seating issue and not caused by pre-priming and then reloading. Two examples from me: I have pre-primed cases that have waited to be loaded for years (yes actual years) with out any problem. Second example, years ago when I moved from my parents home, I accidentally left a couple boxes of primers in an outside storage shed. These primers were subjected to years of south ga humidity, high, and low temperatures. When I found them, I decided to use them, but made sure rounds loaded with them were not mixed in with any rounds loaded with newer primers. No problems.

 

[kuduman]

Primers are harder to kill than you might think. The old advice was to put some penetrating oil in a case to kill the primer before decapping it, for safety. But it doesn't reliably work anymore. And if oil sitting on the primer won't kill it, nothing else you are likely to do will either.