why small primers?

[kenworth1114]

been years since I had a .45,recently picked up a beater p90,still waiting on my 10 day,slid by walmart and got a couple boxes of winchester white box, open the ammo when I got home and noticed it had small primers??, when and why did this change? , its gonna be a pain to sort brass.

[Dark Mod]

Lol yeah, its pretty much part of everyday life now. I find that far fewer manufacturers use small primers so if your scrounging brass you will have plenty of usable cases. I just scrap em, not worth the chance of one of them finding its way into my progressive

[bohoki]

their new lead free primer compound ...oh who knows

[Bill Steele]

My guess to "why SPP" is the manufacturer that is producing lead free "green" primers only produces them in SPP size, or perhaps the small produces less other really bad stuff, of which there is plenty even in a "green" primer.

I was loading some .45ACP this afternoon and found some PMC small primer brass, first of that brand of me. I save them and load them up when I have a full batch. I usually load them when first changing over from 9mm so I don't need to change the primer setup on my 550B.

I use the exact same load data for SPP .45ACP as LPP. The difference in velocity is almost within the SD, at least for my lighter lead loads.

[ns3v3n]

I crush every single spp 45 acp brass that I find, I know some people use them, but they create such a headache if one falls into my pile when I load on my press. Hate them with a passion.

[Fishslayer]

My guess to "why SPP" is the manufacturer that is producing lead free "green" primers only produces them in SPP size, or perhaps the small produces less other really bad stuff, of which there is plenty even in a "green" primer.

More of a "non-toxic" thing than green thing. Less lead floating around indoor ranges. The bullets will be plated or "TC" "total clad" or whatever. Just means no exposed lead.

I was loading some .45ACP this afternoon and found some PMC small primer brass, first of that brand of me.

Oh... just great!

Now I have ANOTHER headstamp to look for, and PMC is one of my favorites for .45ACP.

I sort by headstamp so it's not a HUGE deal. I save the SPP brass in case we have another Great Primer Drought. I can run SRP if I have to.

[Cowboy T]

Yep, it's the lead-free primers. There was a great explanation as to why there aren't lead-free LPP's. Apparently the brisance (detonative, explosive effect) of the lead-free compound is such that it'd be too much for most cartridges. The pressure spike was enormous during their intial trials. Therefore, they stayed with SPP's.

There's a guy I know that uses the .45 ACP SPP cases to neck down to 40-cal for use in some Major Power Factor Super-Load that he uses in his IPSC competitions. Kinda like an up-scaled version of .357 SIG. I save those cases for him, and I'm told that they reload just fine. I don't bother sorting by headstamp, just primer size, and after a while, you get pretty quick with it.