Demolition Ranch's take on it.



If you aren't watching his stuff, you should be. He's wicked smart and very funny. The intro to this one gives you a hint of both.


I find the title (Dropping Live Ammunition CAN Lead To Detonation) a bit annoying because they original way to test that primer sensitivity was in the right ballpark was to drop a steel ball on it. If it detonated when the ball was dropped too little distance, it failed for being over-sensitive. Dropped too far and it failed for being under-sensitive.

Dropping the round instead of the steel ball is exactly the same test in reverse. All it takes is long enough of a drop and (since primers are supposed to be seated recessed 0.003"-0.005") contact with an object capable of entering the recess and stoving in the primer cup and you've replicated the conditions that are supposed to make it go off.


The nimrod in the video happened to have replicated the test by butterfingering a box with a bunch of loose rounds in it, which gave him all the components required for the primer sensitivity test in one tidy package, and the law of averages caught up with him.