Primers

[Ray1946]

Does anybody have a favorite primer for cast bullet shooting with the old military rifles? Years ago I used to experiment with many different primers and finally settled on one.............................

[Dschuttig]

Right now I'm loving the availabilty of berdan primers. Some of that surplus brass is top shelf. (7.5 swiss, 6.5 swedish made by norma...)

[madsenshooter]

I like the Japanese made Herters brand. I'm about out of them though, don't know what will replace them, think I'll try the Tula unleaded, the price is right at Grafs. I've used Remington magnums, supposedly the mildest of magnum primers, to good effect too.

[Mark Daiute]

My favorites are whatever I can afford and whatever are available

[frnkeore]

For low pressure loads (<30,000) I like 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 Rem, F100/F150 and Wolf Pistol. For over that, My favorite is F210. I have Wolf rifle primers but, haven't tried them yet. Anyone used them?

Frank

[emptyhead]

I have tried the wolf large pistol and they work great in the 45 acp but I had hang fires in 44 mag with them. Never had this problem with winchester primers.

[WRideout]

Right now I'm loving the availabilty of berdan primers. Some of that surplus brass is top shelf. (7.5 swiss, 6.5 swedish made by norma...)

Where are you finding the Berdan primers? I have a ton of surplus brass I would love to reload.

Wayne

[chuebner]

I've been using Wolf LR in 7.5 Swiss, 30-06 and 45-70 for the past 1 1/2 yrs. and just finished my first case of 5000 with not one FTF. They work.

charlie

[RayinNH]

WRideout, here is one source. I've never dealt with these folks, just seen them mentioned here and bookmarked the site...Ray

http://www.dagammo.com/shop/

[WineMan]

Powder Valley has Berdans in 1,000 lot quantities. Good price too.

Wineman

[WRideout]

Thanks, Ray and Wineman. If I don't have to convert cases to Boxer, it would be great!

Wayne

[shooterg]

Graf's has Berdan's . 2 sizes at least.

[rhbrink]

Federal #210 after that whatever is available i would like to try some Wolf or Tula.

[ilcop22]

Most my reloading is done using Wolf primers. They're hard primers with positive ignition. They passed the Garand slam fire test; that and the lower price prompted me to bulk order a couple years back.

[WineMan]

They are in two flavors: 7.62x39 and 7.62 NATO. The former are lower power and do fine with the faster powders under cast loads (16 gr AL 2400 goes bang every time for me) and the NATO are fine for full charge loads. I have some NATO but have not used them yet. When seating be careful not to overseat and crush the priming pellet on the anvil. Check out http://theswissriflesdotcommessageboard.yuku.com/topic/4839/berdan-primer-question#.TzSCZIGwUYo. I use a shim of thin wood under the handle with my Lee hand unit that keeps me from going to far. The newer Lee units may not have a big enough cup to handle the 217 size. Mine is a few years old and works fine.

Wineman

[Twmaster]

I'm no longer using Wolf primers on my pistols. I had failures to fire on half of the Wolf primers in my H&K USP. They were just too hard.

They've been fine in my milsurp rifles.

[Char-Gar]

Remington 9.5

[res45]

Back when I started reloading some 30+ years ago CCI and Win. were the two most common brand names around my area. Remington was hit and miss and Federals were non-existent so most of my J bullet hunting and long range loads are worked up with the CCI and Win. primers and I pretty much stick with those.

For general purpose plinking and shooting with cast bullet loads in both handgun and rifles at the ranges I shoot at primer brand doesn't seem to make much difference that I can tell. I've used them all in various sizes with the exception of Remington which is still hit and miss in this area. The only exception is that I still use mil-spec primer like CCI #34 or Wolf/Tula LR primers in my semi autos with free floating firing pins due to primer dimpling.