Old Mother Hubbard - primers

[AZAK]

Went to the gun store today to pick up a few powders and primers, and saw a whole lot of empty. Managed to get about half of what was on my list, and no primers.

Luckily I am not out, just getting low on a few things. Still amazed that supplies are vanishing. Seems like just a few weeks ago, shelves were stocked high.

Being relatively new to loading, just how interchangeable are primers?

I have been following the manuals, to the letter, including primer brands.

So, just how interchangeable are they?

(I did do a search, and came up with differing results.)

Thanks!

[Sport45]

For less than max loads I interchange primers without hesitation. I do not however use regular primers where magnums are called for or visa-versa.

If you are at max powder levels I'd drop 3-5% and work back up.

For precision rifle shooting any component change is worth working back up to see if it makes desired accuracy.

[wncchester]

"...primers, and saw a whole lot of empty."

No reason for it, just a lot of scary type guys falling for "there's gonna be a shortage" so they create one. Wait a few weeks, they will be back on the shelves in normal abundance.

[SKULLANDCROSSBONES65]

G'day, I have read somewhere recently about the differences between different primer brands. They were rated on their hardness. All I am able to remember is that the Federal primers were the softest, thus requiring less firing pin spring pressure to set them off.

[Dezynco]

I substitute one brand for another all the time, just not in the same batch of loads. I have noticed that you can get some pretty noticable differences from one brand of primer to the other. I have personally shot 2 very nice 3-shot groups, nearly 12" from each other. The only difference was the primer. Nothing wrong with either brand of primer that I was using, just that the point of impact moved quite a bit. If my rifle is sighted in with CCI's as the primer, I wouldn't want to change to Federal's without checking to be sure that my rifle is on target.

I never use magnum primers when the load calls for standard, or vice versa. I have used large pistol primers in place of large rifle for some low velocity loads, etc. etc. No big difference other than pistol primers are a little easier to crack than rifle primers.

As a matter of fact, substituting a large pistol primer for a large rifle primer in Black Powder Cartridge shooting is a well known trick when you can't get the accuracy that you want from a particular cartridge like a 45-70, 38-55, etc. It seems that (sometimes) you can get better accuracy with large pistol primer. It's just something you have to try, and there's no real good explanation as to why this will work sometimes.