Make your own primers

[Seismic Sam]

Okay Oldman, how about this approach instead??

BigDog: Well, if another guy can do it, supposedly for 40 years, I don't see why you can't too. Go for it!! Obviously the rest of us have never looked into this, so what do we all know about making primers anyway?? I had no idea the ingredients were prepared in solution, and that this made them stable as long as they were liquid. That also takes care of the problem of mixing dry ingredients, which would be difficult to uniformly mix as well as dangerous. Have you looked into how the metal fatigues in the primer cup after each resizing?? If it has ANY relationship to primer ignition strength, and I suspect it might, then you have major problem. You are also going to have to accurately measure out equal portions of liquid, probably in the range of .1 mil to .01 mil. Does this compound contain lead styphnate?? That's what a lot of compounds have in them. And finally, are you seriously considering doing this in your own home?? And will this be in the same building as all of your powders and primers?? And have you considered in the current political environment, and how an explosion in your house will be viewed by the FBI, SS, ATF, and your local Fire and building inspectors?? And will you be having any grown children with their own kids, or pregnant women visiting/staying in your house?? And finally, how do you plan to be able to QUANTATIVELY measure the differences between Big Dog primers vs. Real Factory primers? Just pretend the wind, humidity and every other variable have magically become identical for 10 - 20 shots, and rate the primer's performance by group size?? Yeah, right!!

[OldmanFCSA]

Dangle a carrot from a stick, and ............................................................................. SSam will reply blasting a reloader.

[crbutler]

While I think Sam has a bit too hasty "you are gonna kill yourself" button in general...

My undergrad college background was biochem major/ chemistry minor, amongst other things, including medical lab technician. While what is being done is cookbook in a sense, thus not requiring advanced knowledge, you do have to make sure the compound is in the right range of concentration, etc. to get any consistency in product.

Suffice it to say I have quite a bit of tinkering with similar chemicals to priming compounds in a lab setting.

They are dangerous. No way around it. If the plants that make this stuff have occasional detonations, you can just imagine the issues with untrained home chemists. While I would be willing to tinker around with this in a true SHTF situation, to do so for other reasons strikes me as being rather callously in disregard for life and limb unless you have all the equipment to make sure you are safe (fume hood, analytic balances, titration equipment to verify concentration, etc.). You should also have some sort of explosive license I think if you don't want trouble with the friendly folks at ATF.

In my opinion the original match head idea is pretty safe to work with, it's also not real effective, and depending on your competence, your results may vary. Industrial level chemistry is capable of much finer work than anything you are going to cook up in a home lab. The balances we used in an ordinary hospital reference lab cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the other equipment is equally expensive compared to what you can buy in a reloading shop.

The simple answer for big dog is you don't even know enough to ask the right questions yet, if you think you could improve on commercially available priming compounds for consistency with 1000 yard match shooting, let alone actual primers. It would be similar to handing me a manual and telling me to perform the engine maintenance overhaul on a new Boeing Dreamliner. I doubt you would want to be the first guy to fly in that plane after that...

[usnret]

My big question is "Why"? If people could improve the accuracy by making their own primers, somebody would be already be doing it. If a person is doing it because they are afraid of running out due to a shortage, then buy, buy, buy now.
This is kind of like that guy that has a YouTube video showing you how to reload 22LR shells. Again I ask "Why"?

[MJY65]

If a person is doing it because they are afraid of running out due to a shortage, then buy, buy, buy now.

Exactly. For a few thousand dollars you could buy enough primers to last several lifetimes. Those would fit in a relatively small storage cabinet. Remember, in a true SHTF situation, you aren't going to be using 10k per year shooting IDPA. If you are in enough gunfights to use 100,000 primers, a bullet will find you and you won't need any more.

[BigDog58]

I guess I had a BAD idea! If I can find them, I'll have to try comparing CCI and RWS 50 BMG primers. In a Real SHTF situation, I'm taking all my stuff over to Oldman's place, since he lives in the "sticks" . In that situation, I believe with our combined stock and firepower we could ward off the Zombies for quite some time

[Erud]

I guess I had a BAD idea! If I can find them, I'll have to try comparing CCI and RWS 50 BMG primers. In a Real SHTF situation, I'm taking all my stuff over to Oldman's place, since he lives in the "sticks" . In that situation, I believe with our combined stock and firepower we could ward off the Zombies for quite some time

Do you guys shoot .50 BMG's?

[BigDog58]

I guess I had a BAD idea! If I can find them, I'll have to try comparing CCI and RWS 50 BMG primers. In a Real SHTF situation, I'm taking all my stuff over to Oldman's place, since he lives in the "sticks" . In that situation, I believe with our combined stock and firepower we could ward off the Zombies for quite some time

Do you guys shoot .50 BMG's?

Yes sir we do

[Ron Burgundy]

I guess I had a BAD idea! If I can find them, I'll have to try comparing CCI and RWS 50 BMG primers. In a Real SHTF situation, I'm taking all my stuff over to Oldman's place, since he lives in the "sticks" . In that situation, I believe with our combined stock and firepower we could ward off the Zombies for quite some time

Do you guys shoot .50 BMG's?

Lulz

[photogpat]

I'm going with BOOM for most amateur primer manufacturers.

[xd ED]

I'm going with BOOM for most amateur primer manufacturers.

^^^^
Yep; probably an 'all or nothing' result.

[Seismic Sam]

While I think Sam has a bit too hasty "you are gonna kill yourself" button in general...

My undergrad college background was biochem major/ chemistry minor, amongst other things, including medical lab technician. While what is being done is cookbook in a sense, thus not requiring advanced knowledge, you do have to make sure the compound is in the right range of concentration, etc. to get any consistency in product.

Suffice it to say I have quite a bit of tinkering with similar chemicals to priming compounds in a lab setting.

They are dangerous. No way around it. If the plants that make this stuff have occasional detonations, you can just imagine the issues with untrained home chemists. While I would be willing to tinker around with this in a true SHTF situation, to do so for other reasons strikes me as being rather callously in disregard for life and limb unless you have all the equipment to make sure you are safe (fume hood, analytic balances, titration equipment to verify concentration, etc.). You should also have some sort of explosive license I think if you don't want trouble with the friendly folks at ATF.

In my opinion the original match head idea is pretty safe to work with, it's also not real effective, and depending on your competence, your results may vary. Industrial level chemistry is capable of much finer work than anything you are going to cook up in a home lab. The balances we used in an ordinary hospital reference lab cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the other equipment is equally expensive compared to what you can buy in a reloading shop.

The simple answer for big dog is you don't even know enough to ask the right questions yet, if you think you could improve on commercially available priming compounds for consistency with 1000 yard match shooting, let alone actual primers. It would be similar to handing me a manual and telling me to perform the engine maintenance overhaul on a new Boeing Dreamliner. I doubt you would want to be the first guy to fly in that plane after that...

I had a Major in Organic Chemistry, never got a Ph.D, and did some pretty hairy synthesis work inside a full-on blast room. The walls were foot thick concrete with rebars on 1 cm centers , the windows were mounted on big spring clips, so the explosion will blow them and not the rest of the building. The door is 1" thick solid steel, it only opens inward, and last but not least there is a big 10' x 25' potholder woven out of 3/4" steel cable over the window. Its purpose it to stay there when the windows blow out, and keep what's left of you and your experiment inside. What ISN'T there is a phone, FIRE!! alarm, or any other form of calling for help. If you can't walk out under your own power, then they wait for the coroners with the big rubber dish scrapers. I could do what I did then if you paid me enough, but I wouldn't try to make primers from scratch for ANY amount of money. And BTW BigDog, doesn't bad luck follow you around like ugly on a cheap suit that's worn by Tootsie???

[Erud]

Plus, you survived that epic snowblowing catastrophe! If anyone is qualified to speak on the dangers of reloading, it is you, sir.

[BigDog58]

My open thoughts of possibly creating a primer compound would have included the participation of my oldest son, should I attempt that task. He has a Masters Degree in Computational Chemistry and possibly the help of the youngest son, that has a Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering. As many know my main lifetime experience is in repairing aircraft and turbine engines. I would never attempt it halfheartedly, nor by simply reading books nor online tutorials. I too worked in an explosion prepared facility, in my early days of being an aircraft engine tech. I designed and fabricated testing apparatus for jet engine fuel controls, fuel manifolds and fuel nozzles. The fixture for testing the manifolds and nozzles required atomizing Jet A fuel and or Aliphatic Naphtha in a controlled environment. Thankfully, we never had any fires nor explosions.

I would also not begin with a primer as large as a 50 BMG. My posting, was just thinking out loud . After witnessing Oldman's experience with detonating 50 BMG primers, I am well aware of their destructive abilities. Through my own experience (a few months ago) I'm acutely aware of the toxicity of the chemicals, especially when detonated, and being highly exposed to them. I spent more than a month using a bronchial inhaler and very strong prescription cough medicines after detonating 150 TZZ-90 Primed 50 BMG cases, one at a time, inside Oldman's closed shop (new cases from 1990 that I had no idea as to how they had been stored for the last 26 years). That is one mistake I will never make again especially after the ass chewing I got from my doctor after he read the MSDS I provided. And, Oldman's kidding me of my stoopidity

I do think knowing how to make them, and whether an individual would be capable of making them, in a supposed SHTF situation, might be a worthwhile endeavor. Hopefully, none of us will ever have to find out.

Spelling hopefully corrected

[Seismic Sam]

Plus, you survived that epic snowblowing catastrophe! If anyone is qualified to speak on the dangers of reloading, it is you, sir.

Good memory!! And yes, a snowblowing accident can teach you better than I ever could about safety in general. It was supposedly "safer" because it had a clutch so you could stop the blades without turning off the engine. However, after 3 hours of trying to get a car freed up and darkness fast approaching, exhaustion, frustration, and fatigue set in and I wound up clutching it maybe 30 times and I cleaned it out one more than that. The real kicker was that we lived at the end of a 1 mile long farm road, and it was impassable at the time, although the county plow was supposed to show up later. As such, I got to sit in a chair and watch the marrow ooze out of the bones sticking out of the bloody stumps for over 3 hours with no medical attention, painkillers, or anything else.

And geez, BigDog, detonating 100-some big noisy, and toxic 50 BMG primers INSIDE Oldman's shop?? Than means EVERYTHING in there got a toxic coating on it.... Even if it had been 20 below, you should have taken that chore outside, if for no other reason than to cut down the noise level. WTF were you thinking??? And YOU, the PROFESSIONAL walking disaster zone, want to make your own primers??? Do yourself a favor, and Google "Joe Btfsplk". YOU are the real life version of that cartoon character!! The sooner you accept this concept, the better off ALL of us will be.

Oh, and one other thing: Did you come up with this burning desire to make primers in your OWN house BEFORE or AFTER Oldman chewed you out for contaminating part of his living space??