Unique powder primers
- Thread starter montana09
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LeverGunFan
New member
FYI - Prior to writing a column for Shooting Times, Allan Jones worked for Speer and worked on several editions of the Speer reloading manual. Much of his writing is based on results of lab testing at Speer.
Over the years I have loaded many pounds of Unique and have never used anything but standard SP and LP primers no matter what handgun caliber. Probably 99% of the primers I used were CCI but I would do the same with any other brand. Oh, and I have never had a problem of any kind with any of these loads.
USSR,
It depends on your definition of "hard". Do you mean mechanical hardness or requiring more energy to ignite? A lot of shooters mean the latter, but Jones was talking about the former. If you don't believe it, try scoring cups from different brands with a file. Also, try measuring the cup thickness. Winchester has made some extra thin cups and caused some issues with some lots. But if you are saying the guy that designed the primers doesn't know what he specified, you ought to rethink what it is you are actually seeing and recognize that it can have different explanations.
The bottom line is that magnum primer design only became about the powder in 1989, when CCI was first (AFAIK) to increase temperature and raise gas volume even further because of the high deterent coatings on spherical propellants. Before then, it was just about pressure for case volume and for lower temperatures, just as Jones said. I'm sorry the Rifleman's Journal isn't still available to all, as Salazar had a lot of primer flash photos to compare. This page has some of them. Note the comment about the 80's vintage Federal 205. Federal clearly took the same steps at some point to handle hard to ignite powders, but again, that came later. The original magnum primers were an adaptation for larger magnum cases.
It depends on your definition of "hard". Do you mean mechanical hardness or requiring more energy to ignite? A lot of shooters mean the latter, but Jones was talking about the former. If you don't believe it, try scoring cups from different brands with a file. Also, try measuring the cup thickness. Winchester has made some extra thin cups and caused some issues with some lots. But if you are saying the guy that designed the primers doesn't know what he specified, you ought to rethink what it is you are actually seeing and recognize that it can have different explanations.
The bottom line is that magnum primer design only became about the powder in 1989, when CCI was first (AFAIK) to increase temperature and raise gas volume even further because of the high deterent coatings on spherical propellants. Before then, it was just about pressure for case volume and for lower temperatures, just as Jones said. I'm sorry the Rifleman's Journal isn't still available to all, as Salazar had a lot of primer flash photos to compare. This page has some of them. Note the comment about the 80's vintage Federal 205. Federal clearly took the same steps at some point to handle hard to ignite powders, but again, that came later. The original magnum primers were an adaptation for larger magnum cases.
Nick,
When talking about the hardness of primers, it is commonly assumed to be the hardness to ignite, and that is what I was referring to. How hard they are metallurgically is of no consequence to a guy on the line. They either go bang or they don't. So, arguing that your primers aren't "hard" in that sense is somewhat disingenuous.
Don
Commonly? Maybe for you. For me it has always been the opposite. As in hard cups to prevent slamfires in military rifles with floating firing pins.
For that CCI's had the reputation of having harder cups to resist going bang on recoil in such a rifle with a floating firing pin. Federals, while fine, ok, better for competitors "on the line" shooting one at a time, are not so great for the rest of us, trying to shoot with a full magazine and not have slamfires. (Yes, I know the worst culprit is high primers...sensitive primers are next)
So now after reading the article in question, I find the physical hardness was a myth? Maybe so....but they still don't tend to slamfire as easily as federals, or blow up in priming tubes as often.
BTW, maybe I'm wrong, but I think you guys "on the line" are not nearly as "common" as guys like me who don't (shouldn't?) compete. That said, I wish I was as good a shot as most of you guys who shoot "on the line". I wouldn't mind being in that "minority".
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In both the .357 and .44 magnum I use Unique for medium loads. Out of curiosity I tried both the sp and spm, both CCI, to see if there was any difference in accuracy. The standard primers consistently gave better accuracy in both calibers. The difference at 25 yards was nearly an inch with both guns. This may or may not be the case for you but that is the only reason I can think of for using a magnum primer with Unique. I have never loaded either cartridge again with magnum primers except when using 296/110. I accidentally loaded up some 9mm over Unique using SR primers and they worked fine.