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I'm new to the Winchester 94 but when I found this well used gun for a decent price I bought it. I've put about 4-6 boxes through it and noticed yesterday after shooting some Federal factory 170gr ammo and examining the brass that all of the fired cases have the primer backed out about .008" or so. The Remington factory 150gr show a few with primer standing slightly proud. Before I order a No-Go field gauge I thought I would ask a Newbie question here ... is this normal for this rifle and if not what do I need, get anew locking bolt?

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Have you checked your firing pin? Is it sharper than your average pin to where it's almost puncturing your primers rather than just denting them? Also, if I had to take a logical guess here, if it's not the aforementioned problem, possibly your headspacing is off ever so slightly that your bullet doesn't seat fully into the chamber, and causes excess force on the primer when your firing pin strikes? Again, these are just guesses... I couldn't say for certain, but it's better than no answer I figure. Good luck!

I have an older .32 win spl. (early 1900's) that does the same thing. I attributed the primer being pushed back to the head spacing being out of spec. It was doing ok with lighter loads, but I still won't use it again until I can check into it further. I haven't tried to correct the problem yet, but its worth checking out before something happens whenever you see signs of excess pressure.