Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Is it impossible to get some CCI 250 primers?

Thank you for the kind offer....so I assume shipping isn't an option? No plans to travel to West Virginia anytime soon unfortunately...I hear it is beautiful there.

Well, I have ice cream and you cant have any....

No kidding, right...you wrote an excellent reply to him.

I don't think the magnum means that much, rather the volume of powder. More powder more spark needed. As in hotter.

OP,
I can spare 100 or so if you live close enough to drive over and pick them up. I live between Nashville and Knoxville. No charge.

Well I'd get back there and grab some if they have any left, and you want something to shoot.

From local Benchrest guys, most of the ones locally shoot LR primers in 300 Win Mags, 300 Weatherbys, 338 Win Mags.
I've done the same thing, and they work just fine.. so much I don't even notice the difference.

My heavy duty load in my 300 Win Mag, is 83 grains of H 1000 with a 220 grain RN or Nosler Partition SMP. Shot thru both a Browning A Bolt and Model 70 Winchester, with zero issues ever... No pieced primers, no real change in MV as compared to using a Magnum Rifle Primer... with either CCI 250s or Federal 215s. AND H 1000 is just one real accurate powder.

This is experience of several thousand rounds loaded as such.... If someone else has experienced different results, I sure haven't seen it in my 300 Mags or my 338 Win Mag. YMMV, from mine, but they have worked just fine and did the job at hand. Local friend does the same thing in his 338 Lapua.... with 300 grain Lapua bullets, and a charge around 100 grains of powder.

Good luck on your quest...

Generally, most of us use magnum primers in cartridges like 300 win mag, 338 win mag, 375 H&H, or any other cartridge that exceeds about 70 grains of powder. I've always just used them to prevent any issues. I have a recent example I can share with you. I was at the range the other day and a young guy showed up with a Nosler 28. He brought some ammo he had loaded. We got to talking about loads and he filled me in one what he was using. Nearly 90 grains of powder, and he was complaining about hang fires. I asked if he was using magnum primers and he said, "no, CCI200's". I told him that he may have better luck with CCI 250's or WLRMP's. Or any magnum primer he can get his hands on. He said that's not the issue, his dad and grandpa have been handloading with CCI200's for years. If he would not have taken the "I know more than you do" approach, I would have offered up a couple hundred for him to try. I suspect he was having a detonation issue that maybe a magnum primer would have resolved. I may be wrong, but that was my suspicion.

Just read seafires post. Hell, maybe that was John's grandson? Ha ha..

seafire doesn't have any grandchildren....but he also doesn't appear to have hangfires when he uses his 300 Win Mag or 338 Mag...Primers I use are CCI 200, Federal Large Rifle and Winchester Large Rifle...

Never tried it with the S & B Large rifle primers...and I don't use any other brand of primers on a regular basis...
I also don't shoot my magnums on a regular basis anymore.. only when I get the urge to let them out of the gunsafe
occasionally.

But my disclaimer: YMMV, is certainly a possibility...so wear eye protection...and keep your muzzle pointed down range..
ya know... common sense stuff, that doesn't seem "so common" anymore these days...

Come on gramps..

I gave up the search and finally switched to the CCI 34 primer which uses the same primer compound.

Having them by July- or even anytime in 2023- is welcome news.

chris

You think Seafire is old? Try this...almost 60 yrs ago my first magnum...a .300 H&H on a P 14 Enfield got best results with a standard primer and 3 grs of Bullseye over a stuffed case of surplus 4831. I had heard of chronographs...but nobody west of the Mississippi had one...but, I was shooting a magnum!!!, only kid in my high school to have a magnum, and 120 pound forked horns would faint at the sight of that long brass case.

Our esteemed gun magazine authors have written several times of comparative "Hotness" of rifle primers. The truth is: Some brands of standard rifle primers are hotter than some other brands magnum primers.

Almost fifty years ago, I decided to use CCI 200 primers in anything less than 60 gr of powder slower than H4350.

270 with 61 gr H4831= CCI 250. 30-06 with 60 gr H4831= CCI 250, 7 RM, or 7 STW with H1000, Ramshot magnum, Magpro, RL 25, RL 33 all get CCI 250 primers.

7-08, 243, 6mm, 22-250, 260 all with lighter doses of faster powders get CCI 200 primers. I have been able to load MOA loads with almost any rifle I have tried with this policy. A ruger MK II in 260 was an exception, until PacNor put a new barrel on.

I sincerely hope CCI can get primers back on our shelves before I run out. I now have less than 2K of each. Bought when they were $25 to $30 per 1000.

Natchez and PV have had 200s a couple times this year, but they sell out quick. Not at 25-30 bucks, though. Just looked back at my order histories. $100.99 per 1000 from Natchez in January, and $95 even from PV in Feb.

As I understand it there are several facets to the "hotness" of primers.

The amount of combustion products produced by the priming charge is one. When I first started handloading, and for a number of years after that, the CCI large rifle magnum primer contained the same priming compound as their standard large rifle primer, just more of it. In those days the Federal 215 was the hottest magnum, and the Winchester WLR was the hottest standard. I don't know if the WLRM took the hottest magnum spot when it appeared.

The flame temperature of the burning priming compound is another factor. There is also what I'll call the sharpness of the primer explosion, for lack of a better description. At some point in time CCI revised their magnum large rifle primer and markedly increased one or both of these factors. Now it's a hot one indeed.

In one of holy grail quests ,I found primer lot #s do affect loads. And also some lot#s are more consistent. This matters for a target shooter, though there is little they can do about it. The best they can do is minimize the effect of the primer on the load.

I have seen the 34's show up often lately. Are you changing your loads at all or do they perform the same?

chris

UPDATE: Looked through my contact list and reached out to a friend of my cousin...he apparently has a stockpile of components...Success!

Hopefully going to this trouble provides good results over factory rounds! I have plenty of those but I'm hoping to tighten up accuracy a bit.

Very good. Glad to hear you found some. Good luck with your venture. Over time, you will develop skills to make your handloaded ammo much better than any factory ammo you can buy. That does not happen over night though. It comes with experience. Focus more on the safety aspect of it, and don't cut too many corners.

Will do, thanks