Here is a new one on me; probably never happen again. This fellow bought a carton of 1,000 primers and it turns out they were intentionally produced to be inert. Speer used them for reloading clinics.

Click here to read it in his own words. http://www.castbulletassoc.org/forum/view_topic.php?id=2432&forum_id=37

I wouldn't mind getting a tray or two of those. I want to experiment to see if excessive anealing is the cause of some of my .250 Savage cases formed from Remington URBR cases are giving me some slight hangfires. He could send them to me at:

Dennis L. Mickey
125 Orphanage Road
Littlestown, PA 17340

Thanks in advance.

That sounds like a GC goof up on Speer's part.

Those should never have hit the store shelves anywhere.

I wouldn't mind getting a tray or two of those. I want to experiment to see if excessive anealing is the cause of some of my .250 Savage cases formed from Remington URBR cases are giving me some slight hangfires. He could send them to me at:

Thanks in advance.

I'm wondering how inert (these won't fire) primers will help determine if you have hangfires?

I think the idea is that if the brass is so soft that the shoulder gives during firing, he would chamber and snap and use a headspace gauge to see if firing shortened the case. I don't think it would. Chambering it fast can take a little off the headspace, though (see Hatcher's Notebook). More likely it is excessive headspace, a firing pin protrusion that is under spec, or a misshaped firing pin tip.

i think that federal put about a dozen of them in the last 1K that i bought. actually i think that they left the priming compound out because the duds show a noticably deeper impact than the ones that worked. i think that in almost 20 yrs of reloading i've had one, maybe two duds.... this makes me glad that i'm most of the way thru that box. hopefully that was just an isolated incident, kinda rattles my confidence in them at this point tho.