Small Pistol vs. Small Pistol Magnum vs. Small Rifle primers

[billdeserthills]

Someone needs to do their fact checking.
The have ammo for sale, if it's in stock.

It's true, looks like they have 9mm & .223 in stock

 

[Eludnu]

We've had this discussion a few times with new reloaded. I've been loading for a little over 20yrs a couple of the others have been loading and gunsmithing for 50+ yrs. Great guys to learn from. Using small rifle or small pistol magnums in pistol loads is fine if your not using a striker fire. Some sticker fire will ignite the heavier cups. The 5 M&P's that I have will all ignite them. A hammer gun will ignite them with no problem. Now this is where things change you shouldn't use small pistol and for the most part small pistol magnums in a rifle. The cup on these are to thin and the fire pin can puncture the primer cup. If you have a light spring on your rifle firing pin then it's a trial and error. A punctured primer cup isn't going to blow you up but it's not the best thing for you firing pin and the carbon blow back in to the firing pin and spring area. So the trial if your rifle shoots small mag pistol try the small pistol if it punctures then stick with the mags. Kind of like the trial and area with a pistol load 10-20 rounds of small rifle if you pistol ignites them you have options if not you stuck trying to find small pistol and good luck with that one.
Now all that said I do keep separate ammo storage for anything I load with rifle primers. That way when I get a different gun in if it won't ignite the rifle I don't have a mix that ends up getting wasted.
So for the long write but this is something I have been doing for the last 15+yrs and learned from some that are highly knowledgeable and almost as long as I've walked this planet.

This is why I love this forum. Been using small and or large rifle/pistol primers in the same loads with no issues. As long as they torch off, I consider them good. You bring up good points.

 

[arakboss]

This outfit did a comparison with a 223 load and a variety of small rifle primers. Summary they all worked fine in floating fire pin gun.

 

[Papercidal]

I decided to do a little experimenting just for fun with a hot .38/44 load in 357magnum cases so as to have a bit of room for error. This was 2400 which has always been said to not need magnum primers. I shot around 20 rounds of each load through 2 different S&W M19s 1 2.5" and the other 6" (I was also curious as to how much difference 3.5" of barrel made) the load was the same 11.8gr 2400 in Winchester.357mag cases the primers where cci 500 standard small pistol primers and federal small pistol magnum primers
.

I was interested to see that on average the magnum primers produced about 50fps more but also that the extreme spread was far lower with the magnum primers.

I used this cartridge as a test bed for this experiment because this load is well below max and had plenty of room for error, should I have to use magnum primers in something like 9mm I think I would back down quite a bit and work my way up to my goal velocity chronographing frequently.

 

[jjfitch]

I did a similar test 5 years ago in 9mm with 125 grain plated rnfp bullets. A popular option in shooting games. I used a medium burn rate powder at 1000 fps. I found the average showed a 25 fpd increase without signs of over pressure. Accuracy didn't change!
Smiles

 

[man7sell]

Now that was interesting and informative. Now where to buy a primer in 2022???

 

[billdeserthills]

Now that was interesting and informative. Now where to buy a primer in 2022???

A friend had some at his last little gun show--they were $10 a pack tho & they were NOS

 

[bionic knees]

I am getting ready to load some .32 H&R mag to +p, maybe even +p+ specs, to be fired in a gp100 .327 federal mag revolver. all I have is small pistol magnum primers. I have been a little concerned about using the magnum primers but no more. now to locate some powder.

 

[76Aaron]

Good to know. Thank you.

 

[ma96782]

Aloha, Mark

PS........and as for returning to that question about switching, Large Rifle and Pistol Primers.....

 

[ma96782]

Brownell's advises.....

Use the "proper primers" for the application.

Yup....when primers get cheaper (and more available).....it's on my list of things to buy.

Aloha, Mark

PS...."they're highly engineered'".

 

[wired]

Only issue I have ever had swapping primers, and yeah I do it willy nilly, is that some brands of small rifle primers wont work in 9mm in the P320. Work great in everything else but the striker in the 320 just wont quite hit S&B primers hard enough.