Since we're all having fun with this primer thing and doing some speculating as to how they will go off and what kind of damage they will do, I'll add more of my first hand experience. I am still "wearing" a small rifle primer about 3" above my navel and too deep for the emergency room doctors to feel comfortable removing it. One Saturday afternoon I was in my basement preparing to anneal some 220 Beggs cases with a Giraud Annealer. If you aren't familiar with one, it uses a rack storage above a system that drops a single case onto a slide that rolls a case in front of a gas flame and drops it after a timer set number of seconds. I was adjusting the time and flame setting using some well worn cases that I believed to have all been fired and deprimed. I used one several times, checking with Tempilac for the right temperature. I decided that I had used one case enough and reached in the bag for a new one, placed it in the rack and allowed it to fall onto the moving slide. It completed the cycle in the flame and dropped into the cardboard box I was using to catch the annealed cases. In about 3 seconds there was a loud bang and I felt a blow to my stomach like someone had punched me. I had been sitting on a stool in front of the annealer and was about 12-15" away. I got up and walked over to turn on the light and when I walked back to the stool noticed red spots on the floor. Then I looked down at my denim shirt and saw the blood and the hole. The trip to the emergency room and a scan showed the primer in my stomach about 1/2" deep. I'm not exactly heavy, but like most guys over 70, I do have a layer of fat on my abdomen. The primer did not penetrate all the way, but was deep enough that the doctors thought it best to leave it. Of course, I'm much more careful now when using the annealer. I am proof that a primer set off with heat will penetrate flesh after passing through 1/4" of cardboard to a depth of 1/2" from a distance of 12-15". There was no powder in the case.
Rick
Rick
