Okay, I gotta ask

[Calif Hunter]

I have the collet bullet puller and collets for most of the rifle calibers I load. I use the inertia puller when it is just a round or two that I need to work on. The collet bullet puller would be difficult to use on many handgun rounds that do not have much of a full diameter section of the bullet exposed. If the full diameter of the bullet is right at or just inside the case mouth, there is not much for the collet to grab onto with the tapered exposed portion of the bullet I use the inertia puller for most handgun rounds. I use a lot of cast lead bullets and I think they could be easily marred by a collet puller.

[FLIGHT762]

There has bee a couple documented cases of the inertia pullers setting off a primer when the regular collet was substituted for a regular shell holder. Apparently, the shell holder allows the case to move around allowing the edge of the shell holder to set off a high primer.

[Fizz]

Primers are ignited with heat, not impact.

The velocity of the primer cup being crushed by the firing pin and sandwiching primer material between it and the anvil causes the magic.

Technically you're putting more heat into the cartridge than a firing pin, but it's distributed vs pinpoint.

This is also why you can crush a primer in a vise (slowly) and nothing happens.

[ar15barrels]

Primers are ignited with heat, not impact.

Would you like to rephrase that?

[xfer42]

Ive used a kinetic puller on duds without issue. These were .44mag with significant strikes, but didnt go off. I think the pockets were a little deeper on these cases. Just keep the primer pointed away from you. That will shoot off like a pellet gun.

[Fizz]

Would you like to rephrase that?

I said what I meant, and explained why. So no.

[bigbossman]

Primers are ignited with heat, not impact.

Umm...... no. Impact is the mechanism that ignites a primer.

https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2020/3/5/ammunition-science-all-about-primers/

The purpose of a primer is to ignite the propellant powder in a given cartridge. To do this, the primer contains a very small amount of explosive held inside a metal primer cap. In technical terms, when the gun's firing pin strikes the primer cap, the priming mixture is crushed between the cap and the anvil. This causes the priming mixture to explode, sending a stream of hot gases through the flash hole and into the cartridge case. The stream of hot gas rapidly increases the temperature and pressure inside the cartridge case, igniting the propellant powder.

[JackEllis]

I said what I meant, and explained why. So no.

I agree, and I'll use the cautions about shooting high velocity rounds at hardened steel plates to explain why.

When a bullet strikes a steel plate, most of its energy is converted from kinetic energy (motion) to thermal energy (heat). At high enough velocities, the heat that's generated during deceleration on impact is high enough to melt a bit of the hardened steel at the point of impact and form the crater. If impact velocity is too low, there's not enough kinetic energy available to melt the hardened steel. The underlying scientific principle is conservation of energy.

The steel plate example transfers directly to primers. And certain binary explosives.

Now nuclear weapons are a different story altogether...

[orangeusa]

There has bee a couple documented cases of the inertia pullers setting off a primer when the regular collet was substituted for a regular shell holder. Apparently, the shell holder allows the case to move around allowing the edge of the shell holder to set off a high primer.

This makes complete sense. I shall avoid that.

[hermosabeach]

never heard of it....

Hear a lot about bent handles....

[FLIGHT762]

Here's a link to a documented case. Click on the "Expand" bar on the attached quote in the first post on the page. The member of the forum is "MtJerry" that it happened to.

https://www.shootersforum.com/threads/inertial-bullet-puller-warning.50347/

There are photos attached to show what happened.

I've also heard of other but I'm not going to waste time scanning the net. I use the supplied collet, not a shell holder that some recommend.

[newbie1234]

Once I had to used the Hornady Cam Lock Puller (https://www.brownells.com/reloading/...18-113840.aspx)
to pull bullet out of around 350-400 round of 38SPL. It was a breeze, everything was an OK.
I do not know about the Inertial Kinetic Hammer to remove the bullet. The Cam Lock Puller is only $20 more than the Kinetic Hammer, to save you from injure for 20 bucks it is a very good deal. Remember, now a day, 20 buck is just a 40 round of 9 mils.

[stilly]

YES it did happen and it was so simple that nobody even saw it coming. Literally, nobody saw it coming... The year was 2028 and Adam C. Pershing (yes, in AZ) had retreated to the crawlspace of his house where he had created between the void of the ground and his sub floor, a small sealed off section where he kept his ammunition and reloading components hidden from the world. He spent most of his days breaking into homes and stealing ammo and he had hit the jackpot in one home and scored over 5k rounds of .22, Jap 7mm and 40 cal. Well, when he got into his crawlspace to start taking apart the ammo he had an inertia puller and did not see that there was a nail sticking down from the floor and he accidentally raised the puller up with one of the .40 cals inside it and he ended up tapping the nail point that was sticking out, which set off the primer and it blew up and shattered the puller. But the funny part was that he came out of the crawl space with a blackened face and licking his lips cause he lost feeling on the right side and his hair was a little hmmm, melted? in a small spot or two, well, just the ends were curled up and smelled nasty right above his right ear... We had a good laugh at that one, and there was a trickle of blood from his right temple area, but nothing serious, just a few pieces of plastic shrapnel hit him, the rest of the puller and cartridge were still in the crawlspace. Good thing for him he was already blind in his right eye and he could not hear very well either. The ringing subsided about an hour later and that was when I made a note to myself to not pull bullets in crawlspaces... I just figured at that time, I would stick to gathering ammo that was already made for my guns, not harvesting the powder and primers from off calibers that nobody used anymore and trying to make them work...

There ya go Ham...

[Ronanld]

You need to push the top of the primer into the built in anvil, and hard and fast. The anvil is protected inside of the brass, so it's pretty accident proof in an inertia puller. There's just no way to put force between the untouched outside of the primer and the anvil.

I recently got a progressive, and now me and the inertia puller are certainly more aquatinted.

That answers the question. But is always on my mind when doing it. And like you, I find the progressive press amplifies any problem. I had a very frisky 10 mm reload that I refuse to shoot in my G29 and there they sit. I consider them encumbered back up components.

[TomReloaded]

Here's a link to a documented case. Click on the "Expand" bar on the attached quote in the first post on the page. The member of the forum is "MtJerry" that it happened to.

https://www.shootersforum.com/threads/inertial-bullet-puller-warning.50347/

There are photos attached to show what happened.

I've also heard of other but I'm not going to waste time scanning the net. I use the supplied collet, not a shell holder that some recommend.

Right off the bat, says guy used a shell holder.

Definitely don't modify your puller. It's built that way on purpose!