Quoted:
Quoted:
BTW PRIMERS ALONE can do damage to you fingers if you let one go off! I did an experiment once
(The Primers o' Truth, skip to 2:00) in which I slowly heated a cookie tray with a few primers on it, to find out how hot they could get before detonating. When they detonated, the primers dimpled the steel cookie sheet!
See also Cookoff Powder
Primers are indeed potent. Mercury fulminate, if I'm not mistaken? That's different that throwing some ammonium nitrate in the tip and expecting great results.
The short and skinny is that if there were an affective solution for stuffing explosive compounds in the tiny tip of a bullet, then the military would be using them.
Fulminate of mercury has not been used for a long time.
It ruins brass cases.
Lead styphnate is the primary in modern primers.
Unlike Chlorate primers (potassium chlorate and antimony sulfide) it dos not leave hygroscopic salts behind that then cause corrosion and rusting in barrels (and any steel they residue settle on).
Otter materials in primer compounds include tretracene, TNT, aluminum particles, and some other things that i do not remember of hand.
They are potent primary explosives.
In manufacture a slurry is made with water to make the priming compound safe to handle and put into the primer cups
Once it dries again it is ready to use, and very shock sensitive again
The anvil and any foil (and other things to protect the compound) are added before the material has dried.