Need help with an oops!

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Prof Young

New member
Loaders:

So I'm loading 45 ACP with a 200 grain flat nosed plated bullet on top of 4.7 grains of titegroup with half a crimp. According to all three of my load data sources this is a minimal load. So, part way through the process I realize I'm using large RIFLE primers instead of pistol. (CRAP!) I've got more than a few.

Are these safe to shoot or do I have to pull em all and start over?

If I have to pull them all, that means depriming live primers. Any safety tips here and will the primers be useable after going through the deprime?

Are we having fun yet?

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Rifle primers are a little harder, so some of those rounds may need a second strike. Or not.

As far as de-priming a live round, look through the archives here. There was a thread on just this topic not too long ago. I've done it. Scared me at 1st, but take your time and de-prime it slowly and you may even still be able to still use the pushed out primer.
 
I've de-primed live rounds. You shouldn't have any problems, but I would wear safety glasses. I would de-prime all of them; I wouldn't recommend using rifle primers on pistol ammo.
 
Large Rifle primers are about .008" taller than Large Pistol.
If they are seating flush you will probably be fine with a 1911
with a factory mainspring. Striker fired gun or a 1911 with a
lighter mainspring might have problems.
 
Flush means . . .

When you all say "flush" do you mean seated to the bottom of the hole or the primer face is level with the head?

I think they are both, but will take another look.

What happens if they are not flush?

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Pull the bullet, save the powder since you know what it is, deprime by running through the resizing die & catch the primer it can be used again. Be safe don't take chances. Start from scratch again.
 
Rifle primers can/will seat “proud” in pistol cases. This potentially can lead to them being set off by the slide closing as it pushes the bullet into the chamber. If that should happen your gun can go on full auto. Depends on your gun. If it were me, I’d take them apart and not use them.
 
Prof, as stated above, you can safely deprime them. To play it safe, I "wrap" the press lightly with an old bath hand-towel by draping it over the top, keeping the handle free. Then gently lower the handle and slowly "feel" the primer pop out.
 
I have not (Yet, maybe.) popped a primer while gently decapping it.
I have not (Yet, maybe.) had a recovered primer fail to fire when seated in a fresh round.
 
In the case of CCI primers, there was past word from the horse's mouth. Before they got agglomerated with Vista Outdoors, I had a conversation with the nice lady who answered their phones back then. She looked up the drawings of the small pistol magnum primers (350) and their small rifle standard primers (400) while I was on the phone with her and she said they showed the same cups, anvils and quantity of the same priming mix, and went on to say a lot of the employees just bought the less expensively priced 400s for use for both purposes. Today if you call and ask them they say never to mix the two up, even though that YouTube test seems to indicate you can. That said, I got that information somewhere around 2007 or so and priming mixes can change and employees can get instructed not to say certain things, especially if lawyers are involved. Anyway, I wanted to run my own test last year, weighing them on my analytical balance before and after shooting wax bullets over a chronograph with them to measure their power. But I want to do it with current production and not the decades-old ones I have on hand and of course, the shortage has made that impossible to do at a reasonable price. I've got the analytical balance and the 38 cal wax bullets on hand and a couple of 38 Special revolvers and a few new cases drilled out for wax bullet shooting. I just need the primers and when I get them, I'll let people know the result.
 
I generally believe in scientific testing, but in this hobby old wives tales and back of the gunshop wisdom seems to be the rule
 
Unclenick with the current price of everything going nuts, it would be IMMENSELY valuable for you to dispense with whatever else you have to do and proceed with your described experiment!!!
 
I would if I could find current production 550s and 400s. Allan Jones, who used to work at CCI, including being involved in primer development, says primer formulations and methods change over time, so I don't want to test any of my old stock. I already know from that conversation long ago what the result will be. Meanwhile, for CCI, specifically, I think the video Hounddawg linked to in the other thread is pretty strong evidence that, despite what the lawyers have CCI techs say on the phone today (mixing them is "playing with dynamite"), what the nice lady on the phone told me long ago still holds for CCI.
 
So, part way through the process I realize I'm using large RIFLE primers instead of pistol. (CRAP!) I've got more than a few.
Click to expand...

Starting with primer dimensions and SAAMI specifications:
Large Pistol have a diameter of 0.2105" to 0.2130" and a height of 0.115" to 0.125"
Large Rifle have a diameter of 0.2105" to 0.2130" and a height of 0.123" to 0.133"

You can see the problem with height as the low end tolerance for rifle is right at the high end of pistol. When seating primers we normally seat till the primer bottoms out in the case primer pocket. We also want our primers to be just below flush with the case head.

In your case if you choose to deprime just pull the bullets, save the powder and deprime just being careful wearing eye protection, slow and easy. Will large rifle work in .45 ACP made for large pistol? Yes but not always depending on gun and exact primer dimensions. I would not take anything less than flush with the case heads.

Ron
 
And so . . .

Loaders:

First, thanks for all the advice and help.

So after re-reading everything above I inspected each of the 90 pistol rounds that had the rifle primer.

They were all flush.

Took them to the range, put on my gloves and best protective glasses and loaded one round into the mag. Racked it, shot, and hit the red. Put in two rounds to see if there was potential for a nasty full auto effect. Two more shots, no problems, making a three inch group (by the way this was at seven yards). Loaded in four etc. All in all I shot off 20 of them with no problem. Whole group was my usual sloppy 5-6 inches.

Am sure I won't make that mistake again.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
I'm late to the party; but was going to suggest trying them. I've loaded 4.7gn of TiteGroup under a 200gn plated FP bullet - it's not a strong load. So I wasn't worried about pressure. My only concern was the primer cup being too hard to go bang - as others mentioned.

Since there seems to be no problems at the range, I would even consider just loading the already primed cases that you didn't finish loading. (At least, I inferred you had still-primed cases).
 
Thanks Nick

Thanks Nick. No unloaded but primed cases. And I still have a couple hundred large pistol primers so life is good in that regard. What I need is more 45 acp brass, but I know where to find it if I really wanna load more.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
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