Question about winchester small pistol primers

[Theycallmejohnnycash]

hey everyone, i was priming some .38 special and i noticed something strange, on my s&b brass, winchester primers were alot more difficult to get seated than my cci primers. has anyone had this happen ? the primers work fine, and the cases arent deformed or anything like that. primer pockets are perfectly clean. so i guess my question is, are winchester primers ever so slightly larger than cci ? i used my last 100 of the winchester otherwise id have used my calipers lol. i'm using an rcbs hand primer. no serious worry or anything. just a question of curiousity, i've been getting rid of all my winchester primers and been ordering nothing but cci, on a side note. where would the best place be to order cci primers from ? i was thinking of ordering 5,000 of both standard and magnum small pistol from budget shooter supply.

 

[thechineseguy]

i cant speak for the S&B .38 Special cases but i know i was having one hell of a time trying to prime their .44 Magnum brass. i got in touch with Black Sheep Brass and this is what they told me.

Good evening,

S&B brass tends to have two issues with the primer pockets. The issues are not a negative if you understand the purpose and how to properly deal with them.

Firstly S&B brass has primer pockets that are close to SAAMI minimum dimensions in relation to width. This ensures that the primer pocket has a strong gription (holding force) in relation to the primer pocket. This theoretically allows more reloadings before the primer pocket loosens.

The second issue with S&B brass that people would have the most issues is that the mouth of the primer pocket is not beveled to guide primers into the pocket while seating. You can rectify this by very mildly chamfering the mouth of the pocket with the proper tooling. From my understanding, the reasoning behind this is in support of the first point. With the larger the contact area the higher the holding force.

I hope I have been of assistance, as you can tell this was truly once fired brass; with a very minimal amount of preparation will provide you with brass that should last you for several loadings.

i ended up buying a Lyman primer pocket reaming tool and it solved my problem.

 

[RifleDude]

It's all about manufacturing tolerances. This was the perfect storm for primers to be at the high end of their tolerance and primer pockets to be at their lowest end of their tolerance. As thechineseguy said, get yourself a decent primer pocket tool to "normalize" your brass. You'll come across this problem more often in your reloading in the future.