Investigating Hang Fires in 6.5 Creedmoor

all right folks what you just saw are the hang fires that we experienced in our last video and we actually had to complete misfires so that's the purpose of today's video I want to investigate these hang fires I want to see if there's anything we can do to eliminate them and at least here for the first video in this investigation which it may end up just being one video I don't know it all depends on what we learned today but today's video is really going to be heavily focused on primers that's the most obvious cause because here's what so here's what actually happened and I'm very we're very lucky that we got the two misfires because it gave us some rounds to tear apart so we could see exactly what was going on the first thing are the two primers that came out of those rounds there you can see that they're blackened and they definitely went off and if we look at the powder you'll see there are these clumps this clumped up powder that on one side has a rusty reddish-brown look to it instead of the normal black like it started out now this reddish powder this clumped up powder came from the very bottom of the case whenever I pull it out the bullet dumped out the powder most of it flowed right out but the powder at the bottom down near the flash hole I had to tap on the cases to get these clumps to come apart and finally come out of the case so it seems like the primer went off the flash or the flame or whatever it came out of the flash hole and hit the powder that's where it turned rusty looking and clumped up but it just didn't actually ignite so a couple possible causes the most obvious is primers and that's going to be the main focus of today's video is trying a bunch of primers and seeing if the problem is widespread through many different brands and styles or whether it's possibly specific to the primer we were using but a couple other possible causes from one cold cold temperatures it was 20 degrees outside in our previous video today's video where we're going to go out and shoot some more it's going to be up in the 40s so a good bit warmer another possible cause is case fill in that last video we shot two powders we shot accurate 4350 which gave us no problems whatsoever this is a single base extruded powder our case fill was excellent we had an almost full case of powder and we had no problems with hangfire's whatsoever with accurate 4350 then we switched to video very in 550 this is one of their high energy powders this is a double based powder now like single base powder it's nitro nitrocellulose with additives and crap I'm sure but the base is nitrocellulose a double base powder brings in nitroglycerin this stuff from dynamite now we're still you know still just getting into 6.5 Creedmoor but i think i've had some slight hangfire's in the past but it wasn't nearly as obvious as it is here within 550 another powder we've shot quite a bit reloader 17 that's another double based powder so is that possibly part of it like the double based powders are just more difficult to ignite I don't know but here within 550 our charge weights were very small and we had a lot of excess case capacity right or our cases were just not nearly full maybe they were 75% full something like that so did that extra empty space in the case have something to do with it being difficult to ignite I don't know now we are using small rifle primers in 6.5 Creedmoor different brass uses different sized primers on the top here you'll see a piece of Hornady brass that uses a large primer and on the bottom is the Starline brass we've primarily been using that uses a small primer now if we switch to a large primer is the problem going to go completely away we're going to find out we're going to shoot some large primers today and I also want to try a bunch of different small primers to see if things get better or worse here are a whole bunch of primers what we've been used is the CCI 450 Magnum small rifle primer now a Magnum primer should be on the hotter side of things right so if this Magnum primer can't light it off I suspect that if we go with some standard primers like let's go with the CCI 400 this is the standard non Magnum version from CCI I would expect the problem to get worse we're going to test it some other primers we've got the only federal small rifle primers I've got are these AR small rifle match primers so we're gonna try some of those unfortunately I don't have any of the other federal small rifle primers I want to try the Remington seven and a half small rifle benchrest primers I want to try the s and B small rifle primers I have observed lower velocities with these especially in 300 blackout I think we tested them in 223 but I can't remember for sure how they performed but as far as I know this is a pretty cool primer right it's not it's not a hot primer it's certainly not a magnum primer I don't think I'm gonna test that guy we're going to test the Winchester small rifle primer the WS are I want to test the CCI brfore which is the CCI benchrest primer and I want to test the CCI number 41 which is the military type primer for 556 ammunition those are all of the small rifle primers I have on hand so I want to test them all we're gonna load up five shot groups with all of them and just go out and see what happens now I also want to shoot a couple large primers the first is the CCI 200 large rifle primer and the other is the Winchester wlr large rifle primer those are the only two large rifle primers I have on hand now for brass in the large rifle primers we are we're going to use the Hornady brass that you know that has the large primer pocket the other thing I've done is I went ahead and used a flash hold deburring tool to make sure the flash holes are nice and clean no burrs so we shouldn't have any flash hole problems the Starline brass we've been using with the small primers these have got pretty clean flash holes but just to be sure just to make certain I'm going to go ahead and take the pieces we use today and hit them with the deburr just for the heck of it just to make sure there's nothing going on there that might be causing us issues we're gonna use the same bullet from the last video the 140 grain Barnes match burners just because the dyes already set they shot reasonably well you know the groups from today's video we're going to shoot groups I'm gonna do my best to shoot good groups but it's not really about the groups right it's about the hangfire's and like I said we're gonna use vinegary in 550 and we're just going to take the middle load from the last video which was 37 point 5 grains he gave us about 20 460 feet per second in the last video so it's a nice light load very light load so if we run into varying pressures with the different primers like you know switching over to the large primers are we gonna see a huge jump in pressure and velocity possibly this load should be nice and safe and light so we won't blow our face off now one other test I want to do like I had mentioned these are I've still got seven rounds that we loaded from the last video we'll shoot these guys as well just to verify the problem in today's temperature now if we go out and these first seven shoot just fine that will lead us to believe that you know it was really just all temperature related but that's what we're going to do with these first seven and like I mentioned there's a ton of excess case capacity here with this powder so what I want to do so these are with the CCI 450 primers that we shot in the last video I want to load up five more rounds with the CCI 450 primer but this time I want to add a little bit of a case filler I've got some cotton here I've done a bunch of previous testing with case fillers in 300 blackout and it was a bit of a disaster this is cotton that's not really the best thing to use I don't think but I don't have any more polyfill you know which is a lot like cotton but it's a synthetic material that doesn't burn quite so easily but that's what I want to do is I want to take five rounds with the CCI 450 and just lightly put some fluffy cotton down in the case so that the powder so that we can be certain that the powder is getting held up against that flash hole nice and tight the way the clumps came out you know the powder clumps came out of the case I feel like the powder was probably up against the flash hole and I don't think the case filler is gonna make much difference but I want to test it anyway I'm a little bit worried about this test and actually I've got a commercial product hold on one second I'll go grab it here we go this stuff is called puff lawn I had bought this to try out in 300 blackout it's a lubricating ballistic filler and you fill up the empty portion of the case with this and it helps to combat the problems you would have with too much excess case capacity I'm a little bit freaked out about doing this in a high velocity high pressure cartridge like this you know a subsonic 300 blackout is a whole lot different than a 6.5 Creedmoor going 2500 feet per second so I'm afraid that displacing a bunch of case capacity with this stuff might raise pressures a ton and get me into trouble so I thought maybe the you know a little bit of fluffy cotton just enough to uh I'm not gonna pack it in there I'm not gonna pack it in there like crazy I just want enough in there so that we can kind of delicately take the round will single load them and make sure that we don't slam them into the chamber too hard and get the powder movement or whatever just enough to kind of keep that powder in place might be a waste of time but then again maybe not all right I've been rambling and I don't even know if I covered everything I needed to cover the charge weights I'm just going to throw the charges with my RCBS Uniflow powder measure I don't really care about precision we're at a nice light charge to where if I'm a tenth or two grains off it doesn't matter at all but this video for en 550 is a shortcut extruded powder and it actually meters pretty well I've already set the set up my powder measure and it was throwing them right on the money so I think we'll be just fine there you know this is this is a good opportunity like I'm seeing this as an opportunity because if you've ever tried to fix a problem we've all tried to fix a problem of one sort or another but the most important thing is being able to recreate a problem if your car makes a funny noise three days ago and since then it hasn't made any noises at all and you take it to the mechanic you've got about a 95% chance that they're not going to find anything they can't recreate a problem that you can't recreate right but anytime you've got a problem that is repeatable and consistent that's when you can change variables and get good feedback and I'm hoping that's you know the situation we're in right now I'm hoping this in 550 is just hard to ignite you know maybe it's going to need large primers so what but here with the small primers maybe it'll give us an opportunity to get a better idea of which small primers are the hottest or ignite double based powders the best I've done a lot of primer testing on this channel and it's always extremely difficult to get good reliable useful feedback from the data you collect so I'm hoping this is just gonna be the perfect scenario where maybe we can learn exactly which primers best 46.5 Creedmoor I don't know that's a lofty goal we'll see so what I need to do I've already got started I've got my ten pieces of Hornady brass that I've already flash hold the bird and chamfered the case mouth for our large primers I need to continue pulling out our small primer brass and doing the same so there's not much you know to see here with loading the powder measure set up the dies are set from the last video so we'll be on the range here in just a minute alright first of all let me see if I can get you a look at the case Phil yeah I'm really not gonna be able to it's just too hard to see but it seems to be about right there which isn't quite as bad as I thought it was but yeah looking down in there I think it's right about in there so these first five that I'm loading are the ones I'm going to put a little bit of cotton in to see it it's got a little a little tuft of cotton that a poke down in there just a little bit and then there we go so that should be enough to keep the powder pushed up against that flash all I believe so to try to keep these primers straight I'm just doing these five at a time I'm using my RCBS hand priming pull pulling out five primers moving that package over to the done pile install them like normal throw those five charges and then seat bullets in these fives seeding die still set from the last video so nothing really to see there and you know those first five with the CCI 450 those are the only ones that are getting any cotton the rest of these I'm not doing any sort of filler just want to make that clear all right those five go in the case and then move on to the next five and that's pretty much it so nothing exciting to see here so let's just skip forward and I'll see you guys out on the range all right folks welcome to the range we're shooting at 100 yards the dots are one inch in diameter this is our Thompson Center compass it's got a 22 inch barrel with a one-in-eight twist we're shooting through a Silencerco omega suppressor I've got a magneto speed chronograph on there and our scope is a 4 to 16 vortex we've got a little cleanup to do from the last video right there's seven shots that we never fired I want to go ahead and shoot them first that'll give us an opportunity to verify that we're still observing the problem we saw in the last video the temperature when I walked out the door was 40 degrees so it's right at 20 degrees warmer today than it was in the last video the amo has been sitting outside in the shade for about an hour and a half so it should have had plenty of time to cool down and get to get the temperature the first ones we need to shoot here are 37.5 grains of n550 we've got two shots left so let's get these knocked out and see if we can still observe the problem I think what I want to try and do I'm gonna move my microphone up here near the action so hopefully it'll pick up the the firing pin dropping before the gun goes off a little bit better than it did last time I know hang fire on those first two and it looks like we picked up 40 feet per second we went from 24 62 up to 2500 for this time this is gonna be a pretty lame video if we don't have any hang fires okay next up 38.0 grains there was one that was a hang fire yup that one hung just a tiny little amount as well and that fifth one was fine so what was that two of them or yeah I think two of them hung just a little bit out of that group alright now to our main story for today these first five are the CCI 450 primers with the cotton filler and 37.5 grains of in 550 so the cotton has gotten rid of all I don't feel any powder movement at all when I shake the case but just to be sure I'm going to kind of give these guys a little tap on the table make sure that the powder is settled down and then I'm going to carefully single load these guys before I shoot them now this has got me a little bit nervous I don't know what to expect here as to what this is going to do to velocity it should be right around 2,500 feet per second so we'll see if it spikes up here or maybe it'll blow my face off let's see what happens okay the velocity of that one was 26 17 so that is a hundred and thirteen feet per second faster than the same charge weight with no filler that's kind of pretty incredible now we did not get a hang fire so let's go ahead and keep shooting all right so accuracy was not impressive but we didn't have any hang fires at all that velocity is just crazy 25 94 so we basically gained a hundred feet per second by adding a little bit of cotton that was a pretty nerve-wracking test I'm not gonna lie I was a little bit nervous on that one all right now onto some normal tests next up is the is the CCI brfore we're gonna load these guys from the magazine and shoot them like normal so let's see what happens [Applause] a little bit of hangfire that time all right so we've had two noticeable hangers there with the br for velocity 25 22 a little bit hotter than the 450 gave us which is interesting so next up is the CCI 400 I got the tiniest little bit of hang fire on that one same thing on that one alright so that wasn't as bad as I thought it might be there were only two and they were very very slight they might not have even been picked up on camera velocity back down to 2500 which is what we saw with the 450 interesting it's what we saw with the 450 without the filler I should say all right next is the last of our CCI small primers the CCI 41 okay now that is extremely interesting same velocity 2499 by far our best standard deviation so far of six point seven and none of those hung at all some of these are very subtle like it almost takes me a second to process what just happened like did that hang a little or not all of those were zero delay no question about it went off no problem so very very interesting result with the CCI 41 all right so we're leaving the world of CCI and next up is going to be the Winchester wsr just to recap we didn't get any hangfire's with the 450 with the filler with the cotton filler but we did get some with a 38 grain charge we got some with the brfore and we got some with the CCI 400 all right so let's move on next up Winchester wsr all right I did not feel any hangfire's that time at all with the Winchester wsr so next up is the federal AR match primer let's see how it does wow really good showing for the federal a our match excellent standard deviation I didn't feel any hangfire's interesting so next up is the Remington seven and a half [Applause] all right our test is kind of falling apart on me here it's been 20 shots since I had any hangfire's the Remington seven and a half there kind of had a weird point of impact shift and probably our crappiest group so far so we've only got one more small rifle primer left and that is the s and B primer so let's see what it does there was a hang fire that was a pretty good one too yeah that one was pretty gross as well all right misfire want to let it sit here and cook for a minute I spent about a minute or so should be safe now hopefully moving right along and a second misfire alright it's been a minute or so hopefully we're safe alright three bad hang fires and two misfires not a good showing for the s and B now it's time to move over to some large rifle primers the first one is the CCI 200 so let's see what it does all right no hangfire's we did lose a little bit of velocity down to 24 67 but keep in mind we switched brands of brass so we have to keep case capacity in mind and all of that stuff so a lot of factors in play here as we switched from the small primers to the large primers alright five more shots to go our last primer is the winchester wlr alright we have got a lot to think about so let's get back to the bench and get to thinking about it okay so our results were not quite as dramatic as I was hoping for or what I expected I think we're going to need a follow-up video but there's still a good bit that we've learned the first thing I pulled apart one of the misfires we had it's the exact same failure as we saw in the last video the primer went off and the powder at the base of the cartridge is discolored and clumped together it's exactly like the pictures I showed you earlier so I'm not going to waste your time showing you pictures of that the test with the cotton case filler I don't know what to think about it for one thing I'm not gonna be messing with that anymore it really kind of freaked me out so it didn't have any it didn't have any hang fires it didn't have any misfires and we saw that big jump in velocity of like 80 feet per second but I'm still not sure whether so did it not have any hang fires because the because of the positioning of the powder like you know the powder being held tighter against the flash hole or was it from the air getting displaced out of the cartridge or you know the effective case capacity being reduced and that somehow making for a better environment for the powder to lie I'm not sure and I don't really know of a good way to test it further and I don't really know that I want to test it any further it's definitely not a learned long-term solution in my case I have zero interest in using case fillers of any type in you know high-velocity cartridges like this like I had mentioned earlier so I don't really know what to do with the information about you know the case filler ones lighten up okay I don't really know what to do with that info I'm not sure how to interpret it let's have a quick look at the groups speaking of the case filler that was by for our worst group of the day it was one point nine eight inches and I'm not that surprised about that because as I was reading up I you know I showed that puff flan stuff earlier where'd it go there it is I showed this puff flan stuff earlier and reading on their website a little bit and stuff they did mention that you'll see poor accuracy with boattail bullets a lot of times so I guess that you know wad of gunk behind that boat tail bullet just jacks with jacks with the way it flies and screws up your accuracy so not a huge surprise there beyond that there was a three-way tie for the worst group at one point four three inches the Winchester WS are the Remington seven and a half and the CCI two hundred primer all shot one point four three inch groups the two best were the CCI forty one at a point eight six inch group and the federal a our match primer at a one point zero one inch group this is not not a particularly good load right it's just not but it served our purpose well velocity varied a little bit you know taking away the filler one that was twenty five ninety four the next highest was the BR four and then the four hundred the forty one the WS r and the federal AR were all right at 2500 feet per second and the remington seven and a half and the in the S&B primer were about twenty feet per second slower now the large rifle stuff in the Hornady brass we have no baseline to work from here we can't really directly compare it they were a little bit slower at twenty two twenty four sixty seven and twenty four seventy seven but I don't really blame the Prime here they both had good good standard deviation numbers a nine point three and a five point one and back to our small primers our best to our best group with the the CCI 41 also had the best standard deviation of six point seven so we had a six point seven and then an eight point seven down here with the federal AR then the worst was with the w sr but met down to the whole point of the video with the failures the ones with the red circles are the ones where we had failures the the CCI 450 with the filler didn't have any failures but the 450 gets a failure from the previous video and the first seven shots we took in this video where we had where we had problems so CCI 450 is bad the CCI brfore we had to hang fires the CCI 400 we had to hang fires and then the s and B we had to misfires and I think all you know these all three of these were hanging fires all the others were fine though no surprise with the large rifle primers I would have been shocked if the large if the large primers had a problem so on the small primer side of things we're left with four good primers the CCI 41 the Winchester WS are the federal a our match and the Remington seven and a half so how do we further test these in the next video I think we need to go lower with temperature we need a follow-up video we need to get these things in a freezer get them down to around zero and see how they perform at freezer temperatures and we'll do the same thing with our two large rifle options I think there's at least one of these primers that got lucky and snuck through and I think it's probably the Remington seven and a half there were a couple shots when I was shooting this guy where I thought it might be a very slight misfire but it really wasn't enough to call it so I'm thinking in the next video we take the temperatures way down I think the Remington seven and a half is gonna fall on its face but that's that's just a guess at this point so another thing I've been wondering is about the flash hole design the the Starline brass has a standard sized flash hole you a standard decapping pin will go through the flash hold no problem now the Lapua brass for 6.5 Creedmoor also uses a small primer pocket but it has a very small flash hole it has an extra small flash hole and I've been trying to think through what the effects of that would be and you'd have to think like a primer has a certain amount of fire flame or flash or heat or whatever the hell it is that a primer really puts out and you would think that a smaller flash hole I'm wondering if that concentrates it more in one area where with the larger flash hole it's more spread out and I'm wondering if you know a double based powder like this having your flame concentrated in a smaller spot I can't help but think that would be more effective at lighting off the powder because that's all you're trying to do right you're just getting it started you're just getting it lit and then it goes on its own so I'll probably get a hold of some little pull of brass before too long we're already up our next firing on this brass is gonna be v firing so it's not gonna last forever so maybe I can take what I learned from this video in the next video and whenever I get a hold of similar pure brass may be rerun some tests with the best with the best and worst primers we identify here in these videos and see if the results are the same with the Lapua this is interesting stuff to me man this is what it's all about there's so much going on there's so much I don't understand there's so much I don't know and trying to navigate through all this stuff and make sense of it is what makes this a lot of fun it can be frustrating but it's fun so I've run out of match burners so for the next video I'm not sure what I'm gonna do I was thinking about buying more of these but I was also thinking about getting some of the horn ADIZ there's 140 grain Hornady match bullet that I was looking over at Widener's you can get a 500 pack of them for a hundred and eighteen dollars so that's 24 cents apiece I'm thinking that might be the best plinking option for 6.5 Creedmoor so it might be it might be interesting to you know get a nice big box of them and try and work up some good cheap plinking loads I mean if you can call 24 cents a piece cheap not exactly cheap but about as cheap as I can come up with four for the 6.5 Creedmoor I'm not sure what I'll do there all right I'm rambling wow I'm really rambling I think that's where we'll leave this one so this is normally the spot where I beg for money but I don't want to do that today instead I'll just say thank you to all the supporters at patreon all the people who have sent in donations via PayPal or give him super chats during my livestream you guys are awesome and I really appreciate it so I will see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 25,873

Rating: 4.949367 out of 5

Keywords: guns, shooting, reloading, 6.5 Creedmoor

Id: ywZX1hpJZZU

Length: 34min 22sec (2062 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018