S&B primers

Just bought a 1000 bc of the price...small pistol I'm gonna test some soon in both 9mm and 40 will try and post results
 
Didn't want to do it but a few months back I had no choice but to get the S&B small pistol primers. I figured they would be inconsistent at best and unreliable at worst. Wrong on both counts. They work great and make the "name brand" primers look overpriced. Got some friends together and made a bulk buy from a LGS. Got 5000 from that order then a week later they were on sale mail order at a really good price so in came another 6000. These primers work as well as any others in the loads I use. (40 s&w)
 
Short of cup failures, pistols are usually fine with loads adjusted to match about any primer that reliably goes off when hit. Rifle shooting, especially at longer ranges, is another matter, and the gun may then tell you it prefers one primer over the other.
 
Slim,
Great words to hear.

Uncle,
There were references a while back that wolf primers were marginally over/undersized. Trying to avoid that at all costs.
 
I have gone through several thousand of them. The work as well as any of the others. I use the SR for pistol, and rifle. I also use the LP primers for several loads, and have not had a prblem.
 
grumpa,

Last year, I posted a thread asking for experience with S&B primers. One member responded with something like, I've used thousands of them and all have gone bang.
 
I have used S&B this whole year for indoor pistol shooting, 7 to 20 yards. Preformed a test with a name brand primer. At that distances there was no change that i could see at all. I also shoot BR rifle. I'm sure i would see a difference there. Might try it next spring for kicks.
Tony
 
Thanks to all. I bought 6000 in the usual flavors. Saved a ton of money too.

No fancy shooting, no BR, just me my pistols at 10 yards and my milsurp rifles at 100 yards.
 
They work fine.

Right now, I have more Fiocchi, S&B, and MagTech small pistol and small rifle primers, than domestic brands.

I got a bunch cheap, and they've treated me just fine.
 
ka9fax,

You may wind up pleasantly surprised by the S&B's. I know I've found that to be the case with the inexpensive Russian KVB primers sold by Tulammo and Wolff. They are harder to seat, having burrs on the edges of their crudely trimmed cups, and a couple of lots have exhibited issues with reliable ignition or having the anvils fall out in the box (one lot of Wolff), but as far as ignition goes, they produce sub-10 fps SD's all the time for me, even in .30-06 loads that don't fill the case perfectly.

Board member Slamfire has put up some data from the Garand, showing KVB primers producing lower velocity spread than even Federal Match primers do. The Russians have a long running love affair with target shooting competition (even their big high schools have shooting ranges with full-time coaches and armorers). Say whatever you want about Russian politics, they do know how to make a consistent primer.

What I am hoping, not having run tests myself yet, is that, as residents of a former Soviet Block country, S&B's primer makers may have some of that same target precision tradition in their bones. So let us know how it goes when you run them through a BR rig. I'd like to learn if they can keep up with the Russians.
 
Just for the sake of conversation... since you already bought them...

I found that they require more force to properly seat than do CCI, Winchester or Federal. Even with that, I went ahead and loaded two thousand and from that load, I've sent more than 1,000 down range (small and large pistol, in 9mm and .45) and I have had zero problems.

I am not so sure we will see a steady supply of these primers however, as S&B had a horrendous explosion at their plant, I think three people were lost in the blast.
 
Sorry to hear about the explosion. I have communicated by email with them in the past about some surplus with their two small circles on the headstamp, and hope the fellow I was communicating with was not hurt.

The hard seating effort sounds exactly like the KVB primers. If you look under a magnifier you can see the marks from a grinder that trimmed the cups to length and can see a little of the brass often smeared off one end. That's what you are fighting in seating.

CCI used to have the same problem, being harder to seat than other brands. They revamped their process and cleaned that up around 1990. I still have a few of the old ones left over from the 80's. Can't run them in a Dillon without getting high primers. Have to be seated by hand like the KVB's.


P.S. For those interested, here's the story. 3 dead and others injured. Lead Styphnate explosion. Making primers can be dangerous.0
 
Thanks for the reply Unclenick. I keep a lot of data so when I try them with my rifle loads I'll let you guys know how it went.
Tony
 
I think they are a little harder than others. My gp100 with a 10 pound hammer spring had an occasional hard time igniting them over other primers. Not a big deal as long as you are shooting guns with a factory spec hammer strike.
 
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