Been a shortage of "regular" small pistol primers and faster pistol powders in my area. Our Gander Mtn has some Federal Small Pistol Magnum (No 200). Thought I would try a box for light 38Spl ... using 148gr WC or 158gr Bayou SWC with lightest recommended charge of Unique or HS6. Would this be a problem using a good M19? Thanks.

Magnum primers will work. You can also use Small Rifle primers.

They will be fine, Always start at the low powder charge and work up. I doubt you will notice any difference.

Actually some manuals call for mag primers with HS6 (not really needed though unless full load Magnums)

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Still Running Against the Wind

Because the burn is stronger your accuracy may be affected if you are shooting some with magnum primers and have some left with standard. I would make sure that they are well labelled.

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Front sight and squeeze

If you have a chronograph you would probably find that consistancy
was improved. As far as problems, you're shooting light 38 spl loads
in a 357 magnum. It would take a lot more than a simple change of
primers to cause problems.

I have found that small pistol magnum primers produced slightly lower velocities than standard primers with otherwise identical loads. I never had any problems when I needed to substitute them for the standard ones.

Interesting fact: Winchester large pistol primers are marked on the box as being for standard or magnum loads.

cjw3;
+1...............

I have noticed that some of my loads when using a "Mag" primer has had lower fps than a standard primer.
I have also gotten higher fps in some loads.

Not that big of a deal.............. but the groups on paper were
generally at a different impact area.

I was saving some Federal Gold Medal primers, which I thought would be super in my 9mm................
NOT !!

You never know what will turn up.
I have yet to use rifle in pistol or revolver loads, though.

Small rifle mag primers are harder than small pistol mag. I burned a few holes working up a load in a .357 mag rifle using 2400 and the .357 mag rifle primers were the answer.

All this means is they have acceptable results in both applications, and as a result they only manufacture one type primer! Would you expect them to say their primer is only good for magnum loads (or standard) and that you should use a different brand for other applications??????????? Get serious.

Rule3, HS-6 definitely needs a S.P. Magnum or Small Rifle primer in any application. I thought the way you do until trying to develop a +P .38 Spl. load with HS-6. I could not get anywhere near the expected velocity with standard SP primers, but switching to SPM as recommended by many on this forum(!) velocity improved to the vicinity where it was expected to be per Hodgdon data. It was ca, 150 FPS faster with no other change than the primer!

Gee you sound like Archangle who has not posted for a while.He was the HS6 Guru!

For 38 special Hodgdon does not call for a mag primer

Hornady and Speer do not call for one either. Yes, they do for the 357 and HS 6.

I have read that the powder does do better with a Mag primer. It's one of the in between powders that can be hard to ignite. Using a Mag certainly will not hurt.

For 357 Mag Hodgdon calls for a Mag primer with EVERY powder, even HP38

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Still Running Against the Wind

I agree with the above post on hs-6. I have seen the hs-6 not go off & the powder was still in the case with the bullet in the barrel- in the past year- more than once.--------Let me clear this up--The hs-6 loads that did not work were all standard primers. I just looked in an old Lyman book & all the loads for 357 were hs-7 with mag primers. hs-6 is not listed.

Some powders don't like magnum primers, but many people have taken to just using the magnum primers exclusively. Drop back a few tenths on the load and check it out. Won't cost anything but a box of magnum primers.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I tried small rifle primers a while back and found I had trouble setting them off in some of my S&W revolvers. Small rifle primers have to withstand much higher pressure than pistol primers so don't be surprised if your pistol/revolver doesn't strike hard enough to set them off.

SP vs SPM, I pretty much always try both. I've given up trying to guess which will work best, you just never know. I'm sure if I had 3 or 4 different SP primers to try I'd find the same thing. And, yes for me, my SPM primer almost always works better with HS-6.