boxer primed?

[harrierdjh]

After reloading so much ammo. I will look at military ammo and it says boxer primed. What does that mean? I figured out what crimped primer is but is there a way to do that?

[Mike Irwin]

A boxer primer has a single flash hole located in the center of the primer pocket.

Berdan primed has multiple flash holes that aren't located centrally. This makes the a lot harder to reload than Boxer primed cases.

[dahermit]

harrierdjh,
Boxer primed is the default standard for all reloading in the U.S. It has nothing to do with crimped-in primers. If a person wishes to hand load Berdan (the default European standard), one must obtain the proper tools, the proper Berdan primers, which is likely to be a problem (I have never seen Berdan primers for sale). In all, hand loading with the Boxer system is less problematic than using the Berdan system. Therefore, that is the likely reason Americans have adopted to the Boxer system.

[harrierdjh]

ok thanks for the information. Is there a way to crimp a primer? or is that only in factories?

[medalguy]

Normally primers are crimped in military ammo only because it may undergo extremely harsh handling, and they don't want a loose blown primer floating around inside a machine gun in the middle of a firefight. There's absolutely no reason for you to want a crimped primer. They don't do anything for the average shooter, and they are difficult to reload unless you remove the crimp. And then you couldn't recrimp the primer again anyway. Hope this information helps you.

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Funny as it may seem, word has it that the "boxer" primer/case was European to start with, while the Berdan primer/case started out in the US.

The Speer Blazer w/aluminum case is a Berdan primed case as it is not made to be reloaded.

As per the crimped primers, take the advice and don't worry about it or go there.

Crimped primer cases can be reloaded, but the crimp must be removed before repriming.

Keep em Coming!

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[Mike Irwin]

"Funny as it may seem, word has it that the "boxer" primer/case was European to start with, while the Berdan primer/case started out in the US."

That's exactly how it happened.

Col. Hiram Berdan, leader of the famous sharpshooters of Civil War fame and a prolific firearms inventor, came up with the priming system that bears his name.

Col. Edward Boxer of the British Army developed the priming system that bears his name.

Interestingly enough, both developed their priming systems in the last half of the 1860s.

[johnw63]

Tstory behind the primers is pretty cool. The Brit designed system ends up taking off in the US and the US designed system takes off in europe!

Also, just think about it -- our system for priming has been around for 150 years! While its certainly true that the quality of the materials has certainly vastly improved, the system is still the same.

[Mike Irwin]

The Berdan system did see extensive use in the United States for commercial ammunition for many years. It seems to have finally died out before World War I, though.

I think there are two big reasons why the Boxer system caught on in the United States.

US users have always been more inclined to reload their shells. For buffalo hunters in the west reloading was virtually mandatory.

The second, and possibly biggest reason, is that the US military, for many years, collected shells expended during training and send them back to Frankford Arsenal for reloading, to be used in more training. It was apparently a way of making parsimonious defense funding go a little bit farther.

This continued until the US entry into World War I and possibly into the 1920s. Reloaded cases were often marked with knurling around the mid body, indicating that they were to be used for training and weren't suitable for ready reserve ammo.

Because the military reloaded its ammo, it was pretty much mandatory that the military would adopt the Boxer primer system even though primer manufacture was a bit more complex.