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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Spent Primers (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 4/4/2017 11:27:10 AM EDT
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What are you guys doing with your spent primers?
I've got a Dukes of Hazzard trash can from the 80's that's overflowing with spent primers. I've contacted a metal salvage place, but they weren't interested. Any NC guys had luck finding a place for them? |
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I sell mine with my scrap brass. I hope you find a recycler who will take them. That's a lot of prime metal to be just putting it in a land fill. Motor I don't get much for the brass and end up paying them $40+ for the lead. |
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I generally save them in glass jars until I have a load of other items that go to the recycler. In my area they just add to weight as the yard guys leave this stuff sitting in the weather for months.
Most of the time I don't declare what is in the non ferrous pile. Every time I do they just shrug and point to the pile they want it in. I normally end up trading for wheel weights or other lead they have on hand. |
| Around here a bunch of us get together and stick some primers in the surface of 2" Styrofoam wall insulation and see which one of us can shoot them out from the bench at 25 yards. But most of the time, I just throw them in a coffee can and take them to the dump when I go. |
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I collect them for recycling. It may take a while, but they add up over time.
US primers are brass; cups are brass, anvils are brass. Nickel plated primers typically have un-plated anvils. I have found some Russian Boxer primers with steel anvils, but they fall out of the cup when deprimed, so they're easy to separate. Because of the particular process I go through for depriming, I even separate plated primers from un-plated primers. |
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I'm going to melt mine down after running through a sorting process that removes the anvils.
Nickel cups get melted with Nickel cases. Anvils get melted with Berdan and other damaged cartridge casings. I may research stripping the Nickel, and reclaiming it as a separate process. - It all comes down to cost and effort. It has to be worth the work. |
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I have one can with spent primers, and one of rejected brass. When the brass is full I take them both to the recycling center. I don't get much, but you know how us reloaders are.  |
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Attached File Scrap them in the past,, this time I have a heavy steel recovery tank bottom, may try and melt into brass blob and hope for more cash.. or pour into ingots (have material to make ingot molds),, but dont have heat source yet |
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I'm going to melt mine down after running through a sorting process that removes the anvils. Nickel cups get melted with Nickel cases. Anvils get melted with Berdan and other damaged cartridge casings. I may research stripping the Nickel, and reclaiming it as a separate process. - It all comes down to cost and effort. It has to be worth the work. 
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https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/997/primers-183123.JPG Scrap them in the past,, this time I have a heavy steel recovery tank bottom, may try and melt into brass blob and hope for more cash.. or pour into ingots (have material to make ingot molds),, but dont have heat source yet  Make A Trash Can Metal Foundry | How To Make A Metal Foundry For Melting Brass And Other Metals I am currently saving my primers, last time they went in the brass bucket when I went to the recycler. |
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Anyone using as tumble media in wet tumbling like SS pins? |
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Takes me the same amount of effort to place them in a recycle can as to throw away. Quoted:
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Why do anything with them? The value is so little...is it really worth your time? Trash it and move on. Nearest scrap yard is too far and I reload too many calibers/don't have enough space to pick up every piece of brass to have a sizable enough stash to offset the cost of gas and time to take Brass and spent primers to the yard, but no reason to put them in a landfill if the local recycling plant will (possibly) recover them. Might get a batch of primers back as a button or something else someday 
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| I have a little over four 5 gallon buckets of mixed primers/brass trimmings for cutting Blackout/junk brass sitting in the shed waiting for the price of brass to either go up a little bit more or I get enough to make a trip down to the scrap yard.. Right now I probably have 100-150lbs of brass. If you have the space to store them it is definitely worth saving them.. |
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I use them for background pictures on my iPhone then throw them away.
Attached File |
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I use them for background pictures on my iPhone then throw them away. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/188107/image-189168.JPG |
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I saw a post in a Facebook reloading group about why spent primers aren't a good tumbling medium. The guy had tumbled a bunch of small primer brass with spent primers, and had many/most of the cases wind up with primers jammed into the primer pockets. To me that was a "lesson learned," because I'd have never even considered that might happen.
I like the idea of using them as shooting rest filler. If I didn't collect mine for recycling, that sounds like a practical use for 'em. |
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Why do anything with them? The value is so little...is it really worth your time? Trash it and move on. They go into a little container And I doubt anyone here is making a special trip to the scrap yard just for primers. When I have enough I'll just take them in with other stuff. |
[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Spent Primers (Page 1 of 2)
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