17 Hornet Factory ammo, Pierced primers.

[ramos]

Douglas,
Hope they get everything sorted out for you and, quickly. From my armchair, the ammo certainly sounds suspect. Please share their findings with us if they share them with you. Although I am a big fan of the V-Max bullet for rodents, Hornaday centerfire brass and ammo has always been a disappointment to me. That may be blasphemy but it is based on my personal, if limited, experience.
Jon

[Bayou City Boy]

I hope Hornady can sort it out for you.

When the initial problems showed up, I had some questions so I called Hornady and talked with a CS rep. He told me that the problem was definitely with the ammo and that they were working on it.

I had a couple of additional questions come to mind later on concerning the ammunition, so I called back the next day. That CS rep told me it was the rifles people were using that was causing the problem and it had nothing to do with the ammunition.

Maybe since they have replaced ammo for some people that they are accepting possible blame for the problem. At the time, I found it to be incredible that I could get two totally different answers like I got from their CS folks when an obvious and well documented problem existed.

-BCB

[Alan in GA]

Seems like I wasn't alone.

[Bluesman]

Originally Posted by Double D

I am going to send them the two boxes of unfired and one box of fired cases.

Did that one box fire-cut your bolt face when it pierced all those primers?

JB in NC

[Double D]

No, not all pierced, some just flowed. No flame cutting.

[Alan in GA]

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Did that one box fire-cut your bolt face when it pierced all those primers?

JB in NC

Friend's brand new CZ 17HH has bolt face cutting. Had about 18 pierced primers with about 3 'blown' primers out of a batch of 850 factory ammo purchased for a Montana gopher shooting trip. This was an early batch of Hornady factory ammo purchased with intent to reload many times. No handloads had ever been fired in the rifle as this batch of 850 factory ammo was the first and only ammo he had.

[Double D]

Email notice from Hornady replacement ammo shipped and should arrive Friday.

No further information. Email reply sent, asking for details.

[Double D]

Talked to the ballistician Nick this morning. He test fired the returned ammo in a Ruger and a Savage, with not problems.

He agreed that there appeared to be no head space issues with the fired brass.

When we discussed the gun he was curious about how I manged to get such big gun to work with such a small cartridge...uh oh. He had no clue what a BSA Martini was.

The Martini has a long history of issue with primer flow back from soft primers. But the previous 500 rounds of factory ammo, the 400 rounds of reloads and the 400 rounds of a different lot of factory fired after this lot did not fail. This lot of ammo is the only factory 17 Hornet ammo with silver primers that I saw-there was 400 rounds of that and only 48 were fired.

They sent me some new ammo. Should be here Monday.

[Kevin Gullette]

What is the firing pin boltface hole diameter?

Could you post a close-up picture of the case end, showing a "flowed" primer?

Kevin

[rick w.]

I suspect that just because the breechblock was bushed, one cannot really assume that the fit of the pin to the bushing, and said protrusion is right for high intensity cartridges. Some martinis that I have seen have generous protrusion of the firing pin; nothing like a stuck martini.