Oh boy, well Cabelas stuck me with a brick of Large Pistol Magnum primers. Am I SOL, or can I still use these for loading plinking loads of 45acp? I have some Berry's plated 230gr RN, but am planning on picking up 1,000 lead 200gr SWC, and have been using Unique and Winchester 231 powder. Just wondering if I would be better off selling or trading locally.

Needless to say Cabelas is on my "s" list at the moment, at least the CCI Small Pistol primers they set aside for me were correct and only $24.99. Still kicking myself for not checking both boxes before checkout.

You can use them. But I'd back the load down .5 to .3 grns and work up from there.

Guess it would have helped if I had mentioned the loads I am using. For the Berry's 230gr Plated RN, I had been using 6.0 gr. of Unique, and for the Winchester 231, I just ran a starter load of 8 rounds with 5.2gr. I don't mind loading at the bottom of the chart, as I just do plinking. When I pick up the 200gr Lead SWC, I'd have to verify in my manual the starting load for the powder.

My wife has already said "NO" to me buying a S&W 629 to resolve the issue.

Since your loads are well below max. just load and use them as though
they were std. primers and don't worry. You will never notice any
difference. Velocity will probably increase by 10 fps or less with your
loads.

Not to worry especially with your W231 load. Here is something to set your mind at ease. Winchester no longer produces standard and magnum LPP. Their LPP primers are rated for both standard and magnum loads so if that's safe so is using a CCI LPM primer in the .45 Auto.

Magnum primers burn slightly hotter and slightly longer than standard primers. Your charge of 5.2gr W231 is not at the top of the pressure range so you will not have any pressure problems. I have been using those Winchester LPP for several years now and see no difference from when I was using a CCI standard LPP.

You might see the velocity spread increase slightly but I doubt accuracy will suffer, at least with W231. I'm not sure about unique because it's been reported Unique does not like a magnum primer when it comes to ES numbers. (but still no danger)

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

No problem at all with your loads and the mag primers. I've been using CCI and Winchester, Mag. LPP's with a 200gr. LSW over 5.2gr. Unique for months in my Commander with absolutely no problem and accurate to boot.

You can find great information about this at http://www.loaddata.com

We had too much time on our hands, so we pulled out the chronograph to see how much our major and minor comp loads would speed up using magnum primers instead of regular.
Answer: statistically insignificant.
Note: we were using medium loads of medium powders (HP38, titegroup, WSF, universal) and NO hot loads. Go figure....

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Science plus Art

If your loads are well below max, substituting a mag primer hurts nothing. Now get to max loads, everything matters.
FWIW, I once tried rifle primers in my 45acp major loads. There was a marked increase in vel, so I assume pressures as well, but the load was still not book max.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

But what exactly did you order?? Regular or Magnums?

Widener's sent me a case of the wrong primers once. Their reply. "Just keep them, as it is to hard to send them back and we will send you the correct ones!!" Can't beat that!! Needless to say I have and continue to buy from them when I can.

Some day I will tell you a story about LL Bean sending me a really, really big item that had a slight scratch and how they sent me another one even though I said not to, Some companies really go the extra mile.

So if they messed up you may want to see what they will do about it.

As stated though, I doubt you will know the difference.

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Still Running Against the Wind

So were you using Large rifle primers or Small rifle primers??

I had an email exchange with Federal concerning a similar question. Their magnum primers are beefed up to contain what is expected to be a more powerful load. This results in a primer that is somewhat harder to ignite. Said only a problem in highly tuned guns, but something you might want to check before loading a whole bunch of rounds.

That's a actually a very good solution. Have you worked the safety angle yet?