Thread: Hang fires

Originally Posted by Jaco Goosen

Ah, thanks John. Hang fires can result from wrong propellant/primer combination. Propellant or primer got wet. Ball powder has a tendancy to clump up and would sometimes be difficult to ignite, I dont belief you used ball powder though.

Headspace can also cause hang fires but to a lesser extend.

Sorry for misreading, your origenal post.

I have had both with one lot of murom primers in a 6.5x55 when I started reloading. I had loaded 20 rounds in sets of 4 with slightly different charges. Found the one that worked best and then went and made 100 handloads of the same. Of that 100 I had about 13 misfires and another 4 with a hangfire and stopped using the loads until I figured out why. rechecked powder charges...(One misfire had no powder but I think I know what I did there....the others showed good primer strike, and one of the misfires showed the projectile almost out of the case. After working through it, It looked like I had either mishandled the primers or stored them incorrectly. I had purchased 200 and used 120 so had 80 to play with. Of those 80 quite a few failed too...The place i got them kindly let me have another half packet from the same carton and we tested those primers and they all worked 100% so were able to eliminate the cause from being the batch of primers....Most likely I had something on my hands (oil or perhaps case lube) or I had done something in the storage that allowed them to fail. It took me a long while to start reloading again (confidence knocked) but I now reload a few for the 303 I use so starting to relearn again....