Heads up: Apparent problems with Hornady primers

[Zhukov]

Guys: As ammo mod over on AR15.com, I have seen several threads discussing problems with Hornady ammunition and dud primers. The first one that came to my attention was for their FTX line of handgun ammo. During the last week, two more popped up, one for the 75gr TAP and 75gr OTM practice ammo.

It's starting to sound like these are not isolated incidents. I've encouraged the people experiencing problems to contact Hornady, and may start collecting lot numbers if they saved their boxes.

[DocGKR]

Hmmm....while it is possible for there to be defective primers, until a proper analysis is conducted it would be premature to speculate, as it seems like we have seen this before. Recall that after forensic analysis it was determined that the primers were in fact OK and the causes were actually folks with out of spec weapons and people who foolishly chambered rounds more than once.

A large SWAT team in this area had a failure to fire from an M4 with Hornady TAP ammo during an entry--fortunately no officers were hurt and the suspect immediately threw down his weapon when the carbine went click instead of bang. After the incident was concluded, the team went to the range and expended the rest of their carbine ammo and had one additional failure to fire. This same team had 3 Hornady TAP rounds fail to fire in training a couple of years ago. When Pat Rogers was teaching a class at a nearby agency, there were 5 failures to fire using Hornady TAP ammo. In all 10 cases, there appeared to be good primer strikes, but no rounds fired. On analysis, the ammunition had powder and checked out otherwise.



However, despite what appeared to be good primer strikes, two problems were discovered. First, when accurately measured, some of the primer strikes had insufficient firing pin indentations. The failed round from the potential OIS incident had a primer strike of only .013"—the minimum firing pin indent for ignition is .017". In addition, the primers on the other rounds were discovered to have been damaged from repeated chambering. When the same cartridge is repeatedly chambered in the AR15, the floating firing pin lightly taps the primer; with repeated taps, the primer compound gets crushed, resulting in inadequate ignition characteristics--despite what appears to be a normal firing pin impression. Once a round has been chambered, DO NOT RE-CHAMBER IT for duty use. Do NOT re-chamber it again, except for training. This is CRITICAL!!!

[Zhukov]

The re-chambering didn't seem to be an issue for this guy:

I had 13 rounds fail to fire, out of 100 shot, because of primers in the 55gr Hornady Training rounds I bought recently from Ammunitiontogo.com. The lot number was #3091957

I had similar issues with the 75gr Hornady Training rounds I bought from Scottsdale Gun Club, including the same failure to fire because of primers, and at least one popped primer. The lot number was #3090874

These rounds were brand new out of un-opened boxes, so no re-chambering. And this rifle has had the following ammunition through it with zero malfunctions in the past;

PMC Bronze
Prvi, 62gr 223/M193/M855
Silver Bear 55gr/62gr
Hornady red box 55gr (no issues, will try to find the lot number)
Radway surplus
Federal M193 black box
BVAC 55gr reman
Wolf 62gr/75gr

And I'm sure a couple others I'm forgetting

If it was just one guy, I'd agree that it might be the rifle or something else, but I posted about this specifically because I've now seem three Hornady threads in fairly short order across several types of ammo - including handgun ammo - that appear to be more than just coincidence.