Large Primer Test

Ganderite

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I fired large primers in the dark and photographed the muzzle flash. Unfortunately my primer selection is missing samples the Federal and CCI Large Pistol.

I recently had some incidents involving mild loads of ball powder in 303 Brit that went Click-Bang. They were loaded with the Wolf primer. I can see now that these primers should not be used in hard to ignite situations.

largeprimers.jpg


The Wolf Pistol primer appears to be the mildest of the batch. Having seen this I will not use it to ignite a case full of slow powder in a 44 magnum.

wlp.jpg


The Wolf Rifle primer also looks milder than the other rifle primers. It looks like an excellent primer for extruded powders loaded to the case shoulder. I would not use it on ball powders or large cases of very slow powders.

wlr.jpg



The test of Winchester primers was fairly comprehensive. I have the Pistol, Rifle and Magnum Rifle on hand.

The Winchester Pistol primer was hot. These primers are designed to ignite the Winchester ball powders, so they will not be wimpy.

winlp.jpg


The Winchester Rifle primer was hotter than the pistol. No surprise there.

winlr.jpg


The Winchester Magnum Rifle made a flash almost a foot long. Looked real hot, too.

wlrm.jpg


I have always assumed the CCI standard primer is about the same as the Winchester standard. The pictures confirm this.

CCILR.jpg


I was surprised at the Federal large Rifle primer. I expected iot to be mild, but it looked just as nasty as the CCI.

flr.jpg
 
thanks for taking the time to do this, I understand why Match shooters love the wolf primers, the ignition is very smooth and uniform. Given all the particles flying off the other primers I cannot help but think that the priming mixture must be formulated different for the wolf primers
 
In Aug-Sept. of Handloader they took a .45 LC +P loading of 21 Gn of Enforcer and a 310gn bullet using the same cases in all loads and just changed the primers. They wanted to see the difference in velocity and pressure using the exact same everything except the primers.



CCI 350 1352fps 35,950 psi
Remington 2 1/2 1238fps 23,990psi
Winchester LP 1239fps 22,490psi
Federal 155 1278fps 27,870psi

I had no idea there was that much difference in pressures from just changing the primers. From Winchester to CCI there is about 13,500 psi difference of pressure, I would never have thought there was that much.

Your test confirms that not all primers are created equal.
 
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