Why the distrust of lead free primers?

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Willie Lowman

New member
This is more about factory ammo but primers specifically so I put it here.


Years ago Winchester was selling "super unleaded" ammo. It boasted lead free primers and fully encapsulated bullets. Many people on forums claimed that the ammo would only have a 5 year shelf life because of the primers.

Recently I saw a similar post about Speer Lawman and Geco ammo. They use lead free primers and people were saying that the ammo would go bad in a few years.


Now I have 1000 rounds of the old Winchester super unleaded. I found it in the bottom corner of my ammo closet just the other day. This ammo I bought in 2006. I fired a box through my MP5 and every round fired just fine. So the claim to a 5 year shelf life seems to be false.

What gives, why are people poo-pooing lead free primers?
 
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reynolds357

New member
Willie Lowman said:
This is more about factory ammo but primers specifically so I put it here.


Years ago Winchester was selling "super unleaded" ammo. It boasted lead free primers and fully encapsulated bullets. Many people on forums claimed that the ammo would only have a 5 year shelf life because of the primers.

Recently I saw a similar post about Speer Lawman and Geco ammo. They use lead free primers and people were saying that the ammo would go bad in a few years.


Now I have 1000 rounds of the old Winchester super unleaded. I found it in the bottom corner of my ammo closet just the other day. This ammo I bought in 2006. I fired a box through my MP5 and every round fired just fine. So the claim to a 5 year shelf life seems to be false.

What gives, why are people poo-pooing lead free primers?
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Well....because someone said it and everyone else repeated it. If a lie gets repeated enough times, it becomes fact.(without getting political)
 
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44 AMP

Staff
Well....because someone said it and everyone else repeated it.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much it.

The real problem with this level of BS is the distrust and possible panic it can create among people who either failed, didn't take, or have forgotten what they should have learned in basic high school chemistry class.

I'm not a chemist. I can't figure out a formula to make a chemical do a certain thing. That's the research guys. What I was, was a Nuclear Chemical Operator for over 31 years, and I have extensive experience dealing with the use, storage and shelf life of a large number of chemicals and chemical products.

In simplest terms, the folks saying primers (or anything else) will become inert in X amount of time (5 years?) are either completely in the dark about the subject, or are deliberately lying.

There is simply no way to make a chemical compound that will reliably "go dead" on a given day. A chemical compound that generally becomes unusable for its intended purpose after a set amount of time, will ALSO have a percentage that lasts longer, AND a percentage that doesn't last the expected amount of time.

In other words, there's no way to make a primer that will become a dud in 5 years without ALSO making a primer that will last longer than 5 years and a primer that can turn into a dud in a handful of months.

If you look at any chemical product that has an expiration date, it is important to realize what few people know, and that is that the date the manufacturer puts on a product is not the date it becomes inert, it is the date where the maker stops standing behind the quality of the product.

This is a general CYA, not an evil plot to defraud consumers. The shelf life date is selected to be well before the average time properly stored material goes bad.

To illustrate, say I make "GOOP", and my chemists have tested and assure me that properly stored GOOP will last at least 10 years. SO, I put a 5 year shelf life on the can. If my GOOP goes bad before then, I'm responsible and will pay to replace the defective product. If it last longer than 5 years (which it always does) I am out nothing, and will sell more GOOP over time.

Some may bring up the argument about smokeless powder going bad over time, and while that does happen, eventually, its not a design "feature" its a result of the aging process of a chemical reaction that never entirely stops, just runs so slowly that the life cycle is measured in decades, if not longer.

People, including militaries, assign shelf lives to ammo, under the general framework of peace of mind in the knowledge that while the old stuff probably will still work, new stuff absolutely will, or the maker is responsible.
 
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RC20

New member
The issue is really that the all new and improved has often been anything but that and sometimes it takes years for the real story to reveal itself.

And until you have had those primers for 5/10/15/20/25 years, no one can say what they will do.

Now the right approach is, I am cautious about them but so far so good and tell what so far means.

Any idea you can age a primer artificially is nonsense. Yes you can test them in high temps (yes we heat them up and they are ok) but for how long?) , low temps (which should be no issue function wise though it could be an area they don't go bang in).

There are only 8,000 hours in a year and I would guess the best test is a higher temp test over time (and pick various levels to see if there is a cliff)
 
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