[toolman]

After firing thousands of rounds of Wolf ammo, I had my first FTF in my M-44 tonight and it cost me a nice hog. I jumped three hogs near a trap and in the confusion, one ran into the trap and the other two headed for the fence. I lined up on him broadside at about 30 feet, squeezed the trigger and got the dreaded "click of doom". Upon inspection, the primer has a tiny indentation maybe .001-.002 deep but the primer is a full
.015 below the base. Firing pin protrusion measures .065, so the only thing I can figure is that the case is slightly undersized and the primer is too deep not allowing the firing pin to make contact. I tried a couple of Barnaul rounds and a couple of my handloads with no problems. I'm NOT happy! BTW, this is the steel-cased ammo, not the Gold Line.

[samuel]

Sad to hear about your bad luck.All I can say in cases like that is !@#$)(&*%$@#&*()#@%^!!!! sam.

[Big Dog]

Turn your firing pin a half turn - it'll account for deep primers.
I once bought a 1000-round case of Bulgarian surplus - half of it had deep primers! East European QC leaves something to be desired.

[killer]

Seems like all my 7.62x54R has a deeper primer. Wonder what the advantage is/was in that feature? Is it strictly a battle field design?

[toolman]

It's partially my fault, I had 10 rds of my latest handload left but I was saving them for accuracy testing, I should've had one of those chambered instead. These are near-max loads that consist of a Hornady 150 gr. S.P. over 44.8 gr. of AA 2520 in Graf's cases. I don't have a chronograph yet, but these should be stepping out at around 2800 fps. Should be fine for a 250 lb. porker.

[Beer Forever]

Wolf is fine for plinking, but for hunting I would use Winchester without a doubt.

[44spl]

Thank god for winchester in 7.62x54r

[toolman]

FWIW, I normally use my handloads, but had left that ammo box at home during the confusion of trying to get my wife and two grandkids out of the door. When I got to the farm, the only '54R ammo I could find in my car was a partial box of the old Wolf 200 gr. S.P. so it was what i used. I still don't know what happened, but this same round fired just fine a couple of days later in the same gun.