Ammo or Firearm?

[LDBennett]

Crawdaddy:

My guess is high primer. Flush seated primers is really not good enough. The anvil in the primer cup has to be seated on the bottom of the primer cavity in the case.

Some primer seating tools (press, hand, and otherwise) stop seating the primer before the anvil is fully seated in the primer cavity. The tool that lets you know where the primer really is, is the hand tool. You can actually feel the anvil hit the bottom of the primer cavity. That usually results in the primer being BELOW flush by at least a couple of thousandths. Anyway it appears noticeable lower than flush to the eye. You can easily feel that the primer is below flush.

Some press primer seating accessories have an adjustment to allow you to adjust the primer seating depth (My Dillon RL550B does).

As for the bolt having to be fully closed before the firing pin can drop, that is a function of the gun design and the tolerance for that safety feature. Bolt guns have various designs to assure the bolt is fully closed but there is a tolerance on how "closed" is closed. Some guns allow the trigger to be pulled when the bolt is not fully closed and others absolutely will not allow it unless the bolt is all the way down. You just have to make the shooter aware that he or she MUST push the bolt all the way down to the point that they double check that it is fully closed. What you described (bolt handle fully closes by itself when the trigger is pulled) is common. You can test that safety feature without a case in the chamber to see what the tolerance is for bolt closure.

LDBennett

[gdmoody]

I picked up the Ruger American yesterday on the way to work. When I got home last night, the first thing I did was check if see if it would fire with the bolt handle partially up. Of course I did this without any ammo but every time I would lift the bolt handle a little bit and pull the trigger, I heard what sounded like the firing pin falling but I can't say for sure because the bolt handle would jerk down to the fully closed position also. That could have been the sound I was hearing.

I mounted a scope and bore sighted it, then I took it out back to put a couple of rounds through it. In the excitement of shooting it, I forgot to test the bolt thing with live ammo. If I get a chance tomorrow before work, I will test that.

[JLA]

That bolt jerking down george was the cocking piece hitting the cocking ramp on the bolt and riding it home. That will cause misfires as well and could be the case here with crawdaddys rifle.

[soundguy]

i'd have to agree on different guns have different tolerances on what constituted a closed bolt and being able to fire.

i had to deactivate some unloaded but old primed 30-30 brass that a buddy gave me.. the brass needed to be sized .. not sure what it had been fired in.. but the empties would NOT chamber fully inmy savage 30-30 bolt gun.. I couldn't get the bolt handle ALL the way down.. and it would not fire at all... however.. i did manage to squeeze the cases into my marlin 336 lever gun, and while the lever didn't completely close either... with a lil hand squeeze pressure on the lever i could get it to fire and thus deactivate the brass so i could size them. ( that 336 may have had a more liberal chamber is what i heard as well.. )

in any case.. that non closed bolt lettingthe cocking piece move it and or a unseated primer may be the full issue.

last weekend I deactivated a fandfull of 222 someone gave me.. some of the primers were visibly too high.. most of those required 2 trigger pulls on my remmy 700 boltgun to get the primer to pop. 1 to seat, leaving a light impression,a dn the next to pop.

probably why the guy gave me them.. he may have been getting missfires and not knowing why and dumped his brass..

[gdmoody]

OK, I just came in from testing the partially closed bolt firing. I did it twice, I closed the bolt completely and then lifted it up about 1/2 an inch. On the first time, absolutely nothing, I did hear what I think is the firing pin going forward, that is the only sound, no boom. Take the cartridge out and look at primer, absolutely nothing, The second time, the same thing except the tiniest little firing pin mark on the primer (a lot less than your picture shows), so it could possibly be the bolt not closed all the way.

EDIT: Here is the picture of the cartridge, the primer strike is actually smaller than the picture makes it look.

[JLA]

I bet thats it George. You have to realize the shooter in this case wasnt trying to fire it with the bolt up as your were. It doens thave to be much at all and the cocking piece will catch the cocking ramp and slow the firing pin down.