Misfire Ratio's

PointBlank

Well-Known Member
How often does everyone else get misfires with factory ammo? Is it common or unheard of?

Just had my first misfire with Federal Powershock in my 6.5x55 after about ~500 rounds of the same brand ammunition, just pulled the bullet and it has a full load of powder just a defective primer. Cost me a Muntjac this morning! could only come home with one instead of two :)
 
Out of around 1000 CCI primers used, I had one which misfired. Looked like a very light strike on the primer, once decapped the primer cup looked full with primer compound so couldn't hit the anvil. It happened to be soft point which I snuck into the chamber on a range where I shouldn't have been using them. Just wanted to make sure they grouped with my target rounds. Eagle eyed range officer saw me going through the misfire procedure and picked up the soft point. Luckily he is a top bloke and nothing more was said. Sods law.

Bought a gun once which was supplied with some handloaded ammo he had been using. One round didn't have a charge in it. Broke the golden rule, could have easily been an overcharge. And no the primer didn't put the bullet into the lands, the complete round ejected.
 
How often does everyone else get misfires with factory ammo? Is it common or unheard of?

You made me total up several decades worth of strikes. A misfire hasn't ever happened in near 20 thousand rounds over 10 calibres, but only a few hundred of this total was commercial ammunition given as freebies which I refused to pay for. No doubt if the ratio was different I would have been unlucky much sooner.

My FAC has stayed unsullied and clear of contamination for at least the last 3 Renewals. Honestly, I think the only way to guarantee repeatability of the full cycle each time every time is to make your own product.

No matter how expensive your rifle and optics, anyone tends to appear a bit stupid when their bang stick doesn't go bang because they haven't bothered with the final step in the chain. That's always a possibility when relying on someone else's work.
 
I had two dead primers in 40 years. It was a Remington many years ago and most recently, a Federal. I have lost count of the number of rounds of CF ammo I've fired -couldn't even offer a guess- but the percentage would be incredibly small.

Rimfires? Lot's of Remington duds.~Muir
 
I had two dead primers in 40 years. It was a Remington many years ago and most recently, a Federal. I have lost count of the number of rounds of CF ammo I've fired -couldn't even offer a guess- but the percentage would be incredibly small.

Rimfires? Lot's of Remington duds.~Muir

Ditto. The daughter currently has some Remington .22 ammo in which 1 in 10 fail to fire. Many years ago Eley .22 ammo also used to be unreliable but they changed their priming system and seem to have solved that problem. I have also come across some blinds in old ex-military cartridges in the past but these have been very old ammo that has not been stored correctly so no real surprises there.
 
I had two dead primers in 40 years. It was a Remington many years ago and most recently, a Federal. I have lost count of the number of rounds of CF ammo I've fired -couldn't even offer a guess- but the percentage would be incredibly small.

Looks like I just had bad luck if they are that rare, I would have thought it would have been more common. :confused:
 
You're sure it was a defective primer? I've had a few misfires caused by the bolt not being fully closed, thus weak strike on primer. Full contact on lugs etc. just missing the last few degrees on bolt closing. Now that I think of it it's happened on only on gun, I guess I need to take apart the bolt and compare to some other design.

Also weak extractor design, shallow shoulders on cartridge and over-resized factory brass can create similar situation. The cartiridge escapes the firing pin by a few tenths of millimeter and thus weak strike. 9.3x62 Tikka rifles with some (batch?) of factory ammo are notorious for this. Workaround is to reload and full length resize only the needed amount, so the brass is better fit to chamber (but chambers easily).
 
probably about half a dozen in total, four of which with rimfires, two with centrefire. One of the centrefire rounds went after i recocked the action and tried again, suspect the bolt was partially lifted the first time so not the ammos fault. The other CF round appeared to have a dud primer that never went off
 
Ditto. The daughter currently has some Remington .22 ammo in which 1 in 10 fail to fire. Many years ago Eley .22 ammo also used to be unreliable but they changed their priming system and seem to have solved that problem. I have also come across some blinds in old ex-military cartridges in the past but these have been very old ammo that has not been stored correctly so no real surprises there.

I got the bug to do some testing of bulk-packed .22LR ammo about 7 years ago and Remington had an average of 11 % duds for 1100 rounds tested. At the time I was astounded that on the rimfire forums the term "FTF" (failure to fire) was not considered a condemnation of a particular ammo. Being a real avid rimfire hunter I was taken aback; I'd hate to crawl through some cactus to get the perfect shot and be rewarded with a 'click!' when I pulled the trigger. These guys took it in stride as part of the RF game. Between that test and one I was hired to do on Sub Sonics in which Remington performed so horribly that it was dropped from the testing, I have quit Remington 22's entirely. ~Muir
 
I think since 1982 or so I've shot around 100,000 rounds of factory loaded shotgun shells and I would say less then a dozen didn't go off !
On the other hand since 1982 or so I have reloaded probably close to 500,000 shotgun shells and I can say that maybe 30-50 of the primers didn't go pop in these .

For centerfire rifle factory I don't shoot alot of that and cannot honestly say I remmember a round that didn't go off , and again on the other hand I've probably had a dozen or so rifle primers not go off in the last 30 years out of maybe 40,000 - 50,000 rifle rounds .

For centerfire pistol rounds including the 357 and 44 MAG's in rifles I don't remmember any primers not going off in factory and reloads , and that humbers probably around 10,000 or so .

I do however remmeber getting some Remington brass one time that out of a bag of 100 I found THREE with the flasholes not drilled !

As to rimfire I don't shoot much of that anymore maybe a brick a year . But it does seem to me I see a misfire each time I shoot a box or two . generally all the rimfire stuff I shoot is the Winchester brand or Eley . But to be honest with the rimfire misfires I always asssumed it was the rifles fault maybe a light strike or some such .
 
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