Primers...Which Are The Most Accurate?

c-fbmi

c-fbmi

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Gentlmen of vast experience, I ask your guidance on this matter at hand. I wish to garner the last Nth degree of accuracy from my 22-284, however I personally have never done a specific "best primer" test. So I thought I might ask if anyone here has?
I'll give you the parameters............

22-284 made from W-W 284 cases with necks turned and weighed cases within a 1.0 grain differential.
Powders under consideration are slow... RL25, RL33, Retumbo and the like..........
Weight of powders to be tested will be between 55 and possibly 65 grains.
Bullets to be initially tested will be 80 grainers, of which I have several makes
The primers suitable that I have on hand are as follows;
Fed 215
CCI 250
Win LRP
Win LRPM
CCI 200
CCI BR2

Now of these primers can anyone say with reasonable certainty that one will give better accuracy than the rest. I have normally used magnum primers for loads using 60 grains or more, or all ball powder loads or when using powders in this burn range. This load is right on the cusp of magnum/standard primer load weights. Testing so far has been using CCI 250s and accuracy was pretty good but nothing definitive was established, then I changed barrels and twists and have yet to fire a load in the new barrel. However if I'm going to work up loads and given the relatively short lifespan I can expect from the throat of this rifle, I would really like to know if anyone has any empirical data that shows any one primer to be superior accuracy wise than the rest. I am not interested in theories, as I have lots of my own, I'm interested in advice from anyone who has done any extensive testing and come away with a significant conclusion.
 
Thank you Scott, I read the attachment and really appreciate the response. I'm wondering if powder quantity and expansion ratio would change this result? Possibly a hotter primer is more appropriate given the aforementioned factors as I doubt any of the match shooters are using a cartridge with an expansion ratio any where near this cartridge. It's more on par with the 6.5-300 Wby or 7mm RUM or 30-378 Wby, although it does not use anywhere near the amount of powder these cartridges do, it's expansion ratio is in this ballpark.
 
Last edited:
kawicrash said:
Always had good results with Federal.
Never had one fail to go bang in about 28 years of reloading.
Click to expand...

Sir;

The point is not whether it goes bang or not as all my loads for 45 years have gone bang..............the point is I want these loads to go bang and keep 5 shots in 3/8" every time when it goes bang...............
 
Good topic. I haven't had good luck with win primers. But I have noticed ok or promising groups shrink to one hole by switching primers. I can't really help you directly. But for example, my 6.5x47 with varget powder likes 205 primers but with 4350, br4's worked better. In my 6.5-284, 210's shoot h4350 really well, cci200's worked just as good though. When I was using h1000 in the 6.5-284 the 215's were the most consistent for ES, but the 210 shot tighter groups. I imagine the 215's would have out shined the 210's at distance. Sorry, just read that you aren't interested in theories. Disregard.
 
http://www.larrywillis.com/primers.html


Larry has a pretty good explanation , 80% of what he's talking about OP you already know - but the last paragraph is accurate in that ; no company to his knowledge has documented a test between primers and accuracy....


That being said , I would be interested in getting the top 3 brands of commonly used primers and using them in a set of loads that were running all identical brass , powder charges and projectiles and see if there was any noticeable pattern difference....

Speaking from recent trial and error , federal champion were very dirty and did not burn IMR 3031 or Varget or 4320 very well leaving heavy black residue that took many extra cycles on the ultra sonic cleaner and some hand cleaning to remove.... Vs
Recently switching to Cci-br2 and looking at the solution in the sonic cleaner after 20 minutes .... Inspecting rounds and wondering how the cartridges were clean and the solution also still clean.... Only thing that changed was the primer - anecdotal at best

Good luck on your search / trials
 
I used to buy brass pre-primed with Fed 210Ms for making match ammo. At one time we could not find 40,000 Fed primers for that purchase, so substituted Winchester standards, based on my experience with Winchester.

With a given load the velocity was a bit higher with Winchester (40 fps) but the ES and SD was similar (single digits).

This was 15 years ago. No idea what primer quality is today.
 
c-fbmi, I can't say that i've done any specific testing of primer accuracy, but in my 35+ years of loading for my varmint barreled rifles I noticed the the Rem 9 1/2 M was the primer I most often got the best accuracy with. Of the primers you listed the cci 250 also pops up often in my loads. Over all I would say that I consider a primer just another component in a load . Works good in one load in one rifle and not so good in another. If you have never tried the Rem 9 1/2M and are still looking for that certain primer I would give these a try.
 
In larger cases, Doug, I have almost always had the best accuracy success using WLRM primers. Second choice is the Fed 215M.
For standard capacity cases [read 7x57, 308 family] the Fed 210M has been the winner by a small margin. CCI BR2 are very close
and I have found it can be a crap shoot which will work best. Only by trying out the exact same load with both and shooting
a number of groups can it be seen. Dave.
 
I was getting the odd hang fire with the wlrm primers with h1000 in cold weather with a 300 wm. I didn't have any issues personally with piercing personally, but I have heard they were pretty soft.
 
When I was playing with boomers, my choice was Fed 215M

Today, I would also add CCI 250 to the list.

Test each to see which groups the flatest and the lowest velocity variations. And don't be shy to test different lots if at first you don't get happy happy.

Jerry
 
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