Shot my new 686 SSR yesterday. Shot 85 rounds of a mixed bag of a few Rem UMC .38's, Winchester .357 145 gr Silvertips and Remington .357 Golden Sabres - the latter is a load I like. One of the Rem Golden Sabres had a pierced primer. All the other primer hits looked good since I save all my brass on a test run for examination. No cratering or partial cracks.

Any thoughts? Are Rem primers prone to this, does this happen once in a while or could it be the gun? Firing pin protrusion is about 35 thous. Pierced primers could burn up the firing pin real quickly and I'd like to avoid that.

Shot my new 686 SSR yesterday. Shot 85 rounds of a mixed bag of a few Rem UMC .38's, Winchester .357 145 gr Silvertips and Remington .357 Golden Sabres - the latter is a load I like. One of the Rem Golden Sabres had a pierced primer. All the other primer hits looked good since I save all my brass on a test run for examination. No cratering or partial cracks.

Any thoughts? Are Rem primers prone to this, does this happen once in a while or could it be the gun? Firing pin protrusion is about 35 thous. Pierced primers could burn up the firing pin real quickly and I'd like to avoid that.

Have you modified the 686 in any way? S&W revolvers tend to be heavily oversprung but they should never pierce primers.

Come to think of it, in the last few months I have seen two Remington cartridges where the primers actually cracked and collapsed inward when struck by the firing pin. One was a 12 gauge shotshell and the other a .30-06. This is odd because I had never seen it happen before with ANY primers, and I have just seen it twice. Both cartridges were Remington. I have never been a fan of Remington ammo (though they do make some good brass) and my solution to your problem would be to avoid their ammo. Pierced primers will quickly erode the firing pin and any steel around it.

Dave Sinko

FWIW, I learned a long time ago (the hard way) not to use Remington primers in my high end 454 loads. I switched to CCI and haven't had a problem since.