Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Primers How "Hot are they?"

I believe I read an article years ago where a writer (NRA) rated primers to their 'heat' or perhaps their total energy. They did it by measuring how much a wooden dowel moved in a barrel. Which made me wonder if they were actually measuring energy or amount of gas released. I'm thinking they didn't measure the temperature of the ignition.
I believe that Weatherby calls out Federal 215 primers, but if I recall correctly, the test showed another primer having as much energy or perhaps amount of gas released by the primer.

Powder burn rate charts are plentiful and are often updated it seems.

My memory may be (often is) flawed. Is there a chart that shows the Heat or the energy of a primer? If so please point me in the right direction.

I have Remington, Winchester, Wolf, and CCI primers on hand. Some of the Remington and Winchester primers are older. (Less than $10 retail per box of 1,000. I think some have been discontinued too.

Last questions: Is it the heat or the total energy that is important. Or are they close enough that the heat and the energy correspond directly?

Thanks.

Yes, the amount of heat produced by a primer is most important factor in "hotness"--which is why many of so-called tests of primers are nearly useless. Another mostly useless test, which has apparently been in vogue since photography was invented, is making images of the flame produced, on the assumption that more flame means a hotter primer. It may or may not.

Probably the most reliable test is velocity and pressure of fired rounds, especially in "magnum" cartridges. The A-Square manual, published in 1996, had a test of several large rifle primers in the 7mm Remington Magnum, with 160-grain Sierras and H4831. The Winchester LR and Magnum LR primers produced more velocity and pressure than any other primers, with the CCI 250 in third place, slightly ahead of the Federal 215.

But primer companies sometimes change the formula, often without informing customers. CCI changed the formula for 250's in the early 1990's, claiming that it was now the hottest magnum primer, not the F215. That claim was based on actual flame-temperature tests, or at least that's what I was told by a guy involved in CCI's technical testing. The CCI 250's in the A-Square tests could easily have been the older model. The manual was published in 1996, but pressure-testing for a loading manual takes quite a while, and back then it normally took a year to publish a book even after it was completed.

Then there are the differences that can occur in various cartridges, with various powders. Not all powders react the same way to primers, and results can also differ with cartridge/bullet combinations, the reason burn-rate charts are only an approximation. Powders can and do change burn-rates in different rounds.

Probably the answer is, as always, "it depends."

John, how would you personally list the primers in order of ignition power from your experience?

Assume all new manufacture & H 1000 as the test powder in a 300 Weatherby case

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Haven't used Winchester LR magnums enough to have a firm idea, but in general would list them from hottest down like this:

CCI 250
Fed. 215
Rem. 9-1/2M
Win. Large Rifle

And then would clump a bunch of "standard" LR primers pretty much the same, including CC1 200's, Federal 210's and Rem. 9-1/2's. My more limited experience with foreign-made primers indicates the Sellier & Bellot standard LR primer is in the same group.

One item I forgot to mention in the previous post is primers can also vary from lot to lot. There are some interesting results about that in the A-Square manual as well--which is another reason there really can't be any hard-and-fast rule about which primers are hottest, especially for a specific application.

I always tested lots of primers in 223 years ago and when a case of 5000 showed great at 600 yards, that case got totally reserved for 223 only and only 600 yards to 1000 yard loads.

223 years - a long time ago.