Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Primers for ball powders

I have been digging through the campfire archives for threads on the necessity for hot primers being used in ball powders. Without any kind of consensus.
Speer reloading manuals over the years have always recommended mag primers or at least Winchester primers for ball propellants. I have an old Winchester pamphlet, pre Hodgdon, that suggests the use of an old primer no longer produced, WLR (for standard or magnum loads)
So what say ye, consumers of older surplus ball powders like H414, H380, BLC-2 etc. ????

Never have used magnum primers with those powders. Fed Match, CCI standards etc.

I use magnum primers because JB said so. Never had a problem.

I guess I should add that I don't shoot in extremes of temperature...40 deg F to 85 deg...poking holes in paper or dinging steel...but I have pounds of H414 and H380 to use up...it's getting old and so am I. But as someone once said...only accurate rifles (loads in my case) are interesting.

I don't think that you really "need" magnum primers with loads below 55-60 grains of powder or unless you are in very cold temps.

Whether they benefit your loads with less is up to your gun & the load data consistency.

If your accuracy, SD/ES, & velocity are better then act accordingly.

Also depends on the burn rate of the particular powder, as the very slowest ones may benefit at lower charges than faster ones will.

YMMV

MM

42 grains H380, CCI 200, 52 SMK, Norma brass 61*, 5 shots

Speer #9 was the manual when I was learning the ropes, and in there I read their recommendation for magnum primers with most ball powders. In those days Winchester's primer was known as the 8 1/2-120 (WLR these days) and was clearly suitable for ball powders. As a result, it became my custom to use a WLR or CCI 250 primer with ball powders and the results were very good.

I'm certainly not saying other primers don't/won't work great.

I have used both standard and magnum primers with these powders ( CCI 200 vs CCI 250) and both worked fine but about the lowest temp i tested them was no colder than the mid 20's....Good luck ..Hb

flinlocke ol buddy. I'm sure you realize the WLR primers are hotter than most standard primers, like the CCI200's for example. With that being said, I generally don't use magnum primers just because I'm using ball powders. I do use magnum primers when the amount of powder is larger than about 60 grains. This means any cartridge case bigger than the good ol 30-06 (300wm, 338wm, 7mm rem mag, 375H&H, just to name a few), gets a magnum primer.

I know some guys push using a magnum primer for some applications like the 7mm-08 running big game powder. I will admit, the performance difference was marginally better when switching from CCI200 to CCI250's. Not really enough difference to write home about though, if you really want to know the truth..

With this being said, if I were forced to use a small rifle primer in a larger case, like what was the fad with the 6.5 creedmoor, I'd run a magnum small rifle primer, for better/more consistent ignition.

Also, if you ever notice an anomaly like detonation (hangfires), when running ball powders, you could try switching to a magnum primer and see if that fixes the issue. Otherwise, I'm just running a standard primer. Especially in small cases like 22-250, 243, 6.5 creedmoor, 308 etc..

I have loaded a good many loads with ball powder over the years, and have have never used a magnum primer, except for some 270 WSM loads in which I used W760.


I'll edit this to say this.....given a choice, I prefer to use ball powders because of the way they meter. I am on my last 8 pound jug of surplus WC846, started out with three. I have also used a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of W748, WC844, BLC-2, W760, the no longer made W785, H322, H335, TAC, several pounds of Big Game and Hunter, along with several other.

I generally use Magnum primers in every load. if it doesn't shoot very well I will change out primers to a standard load and see what happens.
but I've honestly seen very few cases that it made much difference..
I like using the magnums for better ignition with ball powders whether it makes that much difference or not is debatable. and I also like them in cold weather. as well as having a thicker cup for pressure reasons , floating firing pin reasons and such.

Big loads of powder as has been mentioned more than 60 gr's (not sure that's scientific but probably a good baseline) or if hunting in frigid temperatures. On the latter, it's probably not a bad idea even with stick powders, but ball powders and frigid temps I'd feel better with magnum primers regardless of powder charge.

I've always thought factory loads used Large rifle primers unless they were a Magnum of some sort... 30/06 vs 300 Win Mag.

I've hunted in Minnesota ( using mainly Federal ammo, since it was made locally and also cheap because of that ). I've zeroed rifles when the weather was warmer in the 50s and 60s in September, yet have hunted in 20 and 30 below up on the Canadian border come November. I never really noticed any real handicap. The rounds were still more than minute of deer at Forest Distances.

So I've never got all that concerned one way or the other...for deer.

Here in Oregon, I volume shoot varmints from in the low to mid 30s to 90 & 100 degrees. Depending on the powder being used ( shotgun& pistol powders, in the 223 ) or small rifle when using rifle powders.. Seems most of the time they were still minute of sage rat out to 200 plus yds.

I've never sweated it, because I just haven't seen problems in the field.

Now the problem is where to get magnum large rifle primers? A few weeks ago for a very short time I did see a few Remington large rifle magnum primers on the internet order market, but I would not order any. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but from what I can gather it seems that Federal, CCI, and Winchester seem to be the hottest magnum large rifle primers with Remington coming in last. I really don't know if they are really "hot" enough or just marginal, so I did not take a chance on them. I really wish there was a SAAMI standard for the various designations of primers. I would like to buy a couple of bricks of large rifle magnum primers to have on hand.

IME ball powders group better with magnum primers.

Not rifle, but I found CCI Magnum small pistol primers give me better accuracy with Universal than std primers, but W231 likes the standard small pistol primers. This was with the same load 4.6 gr and a 158 gr cast lead in a .357 case

Just thought I'd share today's shooting tests with anybody who might be interested...in a relatively small case like my 7.65 Mauser, a rifle of known accuracy, Norma cases with 57 gr water capacity (only a grain or two greater than the .308 Lapua case)...testing WLR's, CCI 250's, Fed 210 match primers with 50 gr of H380. 150 gr at 2,820. Assuming that anything under 1% extreme spread, velocity average for 5 rounds is statistically invalid...there is no difference at 45 deg F.
Even more curious, I returned to a known accuracy load in this rifle, 45.5 gr of H4895 @ 2,800 and tested WLR's and CCI 250's (Fed 210 Match is the original load primer)...and that is where the hotter primers showed velocity increases. Surprisingly, both ran from lo 2,835 to 2,867 hi, neck and neck.
I realize none of this is scientific testing, but I am going to proceed on the assumption, in small cases and powder toward the slow end, primers don't mean much.

The reason I've suggested that is that spherical powders ("Ball" powder is a Winchester copyrighted term) can produce better groups is that spherical powders feature a burn-retardant coating, embedded in the surface of the granules, which is how their burn rate is controlled. These coatings tend to be, almost by definition, harder to ignite--especially in slower-burning powders.

Over the years have found that hotter primers (whether the Winchester LR or "magnum" of various brands, including Winchester) can indeed result in less variation in velocity and hence smaller groups in many spherical-powder loads, in cartridges from the .22 Hornet on up. But that doesn't mean they ALWAYS do--because as usual there are many other factors involved.

It also depends on what sort of grouping you're looking for. For average-range "deer loads" is doesn't make any difference. For varmints at several hundred yards it definitely can.

And of course these days many handloaders are using whatever primer they can find....

Not likely cross relevant in any way but something I found interesting.

When using a severely reduced plinking/small game load with very fast powders in a 35 whelen and using lead cast round balls, I got great accuracy with both primers, but better accuracy with magnum primers. 1 hole groups with the magnum at 25 yds. Load was 4.7 gr's of Unique, and 5.3 gr's of CFE pistol.

Also interesting was that the magnum primers produced slower velocities. Both Federal 215 and CCI 250's were slower velocity than standard primers. I checked back and forth numerous times with both.

Sometimes you just can't predict how things will line up until you try it.

Waay back when the .308 was considered a benchrest cartridge the boys burned truckloads of BLC-2 and H380...wish I'da paid more attention to the details.