Add Speer to the Small Primer 45ACP List

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weblance

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I bought some Speer Lawman 45 ACP Ammo 230gr TMJ Clean-Fire (53885) today and was shocked to see it is manufactured with small primers. I have been breaking in my newest Kahr, a CW45, and have been collecting 45 brass for future reloading. I bought 4 boxes of 45 ACP Ammo 200gr TMJ Speer Lawman (53655) last week, and it is larger primer. I have shied way from Blazer Brass because of the small primer brass, trying to stay with one primer size. I have all my brass separated, and kept the Blazer brass just "in case". Now I have more of what I didn't want, small primer 45 brass.

Is Speer small primer 45ACP old news, or is this the first of their switch to SP?
 
Yes, on the whole, this stinks. We can all probably agree.

As time marches foward-- it will (fundamentally) still stink royally however, tangibly, it will stink less so.

You may as well keep a stash and watch it grow. If you get enough of them, it won't be such a big deal to load & use them.

We can continue to be completely annoyed with it, but we can never unring a bell. These things are not ever going away.
 
Actually, there are large lead-free primers, but the DDNT sensitizer has such high brissance that you have to drill out the flash holes to 1/8" to use them without blowing out the primer cups. That's how the first NT 45 Auto cases were done. By going to a small primer, the flash hole needs no adjustment and you can choose which kind of primer to use interchangeably in the same brass. That's why these small primer 45 Auto cases are becoming common. They're convenient for the manufacturer.
 
That is the science behind it, but making it easier for the manufacturer doesn't even need to go nearly that far. All we have to do is take all the most popular handgun rounds and look and see which use a large pistol primer and which use a small.

.45 is the only high volume, highly popular and ultra-high production and sales handgun ammo that uses the large primer. 10mm, .41 and .44 Magnum, .45 Colt? In factory ammo, you could add those four up and triple it and it wouldn't even approach 9mm. To say nothing about .380, .38 Special, .357 Mag, .40 S&W, etc etc.

Even if the non-toxic primers had never come to be whatsoever, it is an extremely good deal for the manufacturers to move from a large pistol primer in .45 to a small pistol primer.

What truly stinks for the end handloader is the *gulp* CENTURY of stockpiled, used, wonderful, and perfectly functional .45 brass we've always had.

Believe me when I say that if you *HATE* small primer .45 Auto brass... brother, I hear you and I understand, absolutely. :o But I will also say this, and with no apologies: it's a little bit of vindication for those of us who have always taken the time and care to inspect and separate our brass. This problem with primer sizes in .45 doesn't slow me down even a half a blip.

Sorting and inspecting brass is a little boring and monotonous at times, but for me, it has always been a very necessary part of the process and it hasn't changed my world in the slightest, save for the extra couple of containers I now use to store a different headstamp of .45 brass.
 
Speer and Blazer, along with a swarm of other large brand names, are owned by the same holding company.
Blazer uses Speer bullets and CCI primers. Primer size really makes no difference unless you mix 'em.
 
Where in the flying 'ell have you guys been ? SPP have been used in 45ACP cases now for over twenty[20!!!] years and SPEER was one of the first.
IN MANY ways they are preferable to LPP in the dinky 45ACP case.
And so it goes...
 
Some of the ATK umbrella ammo/brass products come from two completely different facilities on completely different equipment and are not even made with the same manufacturing process and to consider them any more similar than ANYTHING else is ludicrous because they are simply nothing alike whatsoever.

The new-age Federal stamped small primer extruded brass is nothing at all like the traditional Federal LPP .45 brass. This is easily seen with the naked eye and it's silly to consider it "same" simply because some corporate conglomerate happens to own it.

The list of things that Alliant Techsystems owns seems nearly endless.
 
Well, it was, but they spun that off, and now its under Vista Outdoors. From the Wikipedia article on ATK:

On April 29, 2014, ATK announced that it would spin off its Sporting Group and merge its Aerospace and Defense Groups with Orbital Sciences Corporation.
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ATK decided missiles and aerospace were their real core area of expertise and created Orbital ATK. They still run Lake City, though.


Will,

I expect you could find some lots even older than that if you look through foreign production. They just didn't seem to become common range pickups here until lead-free priming picked up momentum. Even that's getting close to the 20 year mark now, but I don't recall the switch from large primer NT to small primer NT until after 2000.

Maybe you or someone else can correct me on that. I don't have any clear history of it. In Charles Petty's article (Lead-free Ammo: when solutions beget problems, Guns Magaine, May 2005) he mentions calling Federal and them saying they had switched to the small primers for their BallistiClean line a few years before then. So, maybe 15 years ago or so. It was limited to their lead-free ammo then. It seems more like the last five years or so that the standard ammo with SP pockets has become common, but time seems to pass faster these days, so I don't date certain for that.

I would expect the fact military 45 Auto still uses an LP primer influences the industry some.
 
Sevens: Sorting and inspecting brass is a little boring and monotonous at times, but for me, it has always been a very necessary part of the process and it hasn't changed my world in the slightest, save for the extra couple of containers I now use to store a different headstamp of .45 brass.
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not the end of the world, but for me certainly a little inconvenience. Not because of sorting, inspection, or storage, but the sometimes tedious setup of older progressive presses. I have two RL450s. One set up for large primer and the other for small primer. I guess if I updated my frames to 550s with tool heads, it wouldn't be hardly any inconvenience at all. I could just move the tool head between presses. that is assuming no die readjustment will be required between presses.
 
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As I also use a progressive to prep all my brass, I have a changeover also, although admittedly not nearly the hassle it sounds like you must endure with your equipment.

I totally agree, this situation is -FAR- from ideal, it truly is. But most handloaders could solve their complete angst by simply not bending over and picking up that brass that some previous shooter left behind for you to get, for free.

It's not like Fiocchi, Federal and Winchester produced a bunch of small primer .45 brass and also snuck in you reloading room and stole all of your valuable LP .45 brass! :D;)
 
When you start reloading the equipment/tools you buy for priming will have cups for both small and large pistol primers. Since all brass is inspected (you will inspect your brass, won't you?) all that's necessary is sorting and buying 2 sizes of primers (and there's a very good chance you'll be reloading a cartridge in the future with small primers too)...:rolleyes:
 
I love SPP 45 brass! So convenient to have both although I have so many primers now it doesn't really matter...

Actually, there are large lead-free primers,
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Someone else is making them too, I have a box at home... the manufacturer is escaping me right now but it isn't Tula. Will try to remember to check.
 
Yeah, I use nothing but SP Blazer Brass these days. Somebody at my home range buys a lot of Blazer and graciously leaves the empties behind. I've seen no change in my light wadcutter load with 4.2 Bullseye since switching to SP brass, and my 45 can now share primers with my 357.
 
Yeah...if it weren't for the fact that I also load 10mm, .41 Mag and .45 LC...that whole SP .45acp thing would work out fine for me. :rolleyes:

It's okay...I probably have 10k of LP .45acp brass. I just have to suppress the ingrained urge to pick up any .45acp brass laying around...
 
I would hold onto the SP brass personally, even if you chose not to load it. Having the ability to be versatile is beneficial with this hobby. Primers can be found easily today. Next year this time? Maybe not. It may be all you can find are small primers during the next run on components. LPPs are kind of hard to find locally where I'm at now. YMMV, but I would sort it, keep it all, and look for the mixed blessing in the situation.
 
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