Primed brass......

Bailey Boat

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When you buy pre-primed brass how do you go about determining your load since you don't know what primer its loaded with???? Seems like a real iffy situation to me unless someone knows something I don't??????
 
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When you buy pre-primed brass how do you go about determining your load since you don't know what primer its loaded with???? Seems like a real iffy situation to me unless someone knows something I don't??????
 
Unless you are loading to the maximum recommended by load books I would not worry about the primer differences. Even mag vs standard pistol primers you are only looking at 50 to 100 fps velocity difference. Who's primed brass are you using? If they make primers it is probably theirs.
 
a call or email to the manufacturer with the lot # should give you the answer. when in doubt, reduce the powder charge 1 to 1.5grs from max load.
 
For a while, like late 80's thru the 90's used to
see lots of new pre-primed brass, usually popular
handgun calibers, Remington or Winchester make, and maybe some Federal. Midway used to carry it...and just possibly they carried cleaned,resized and reprimed range brass in 9mm...not 100%, but seem to remember something like that...I used to pick up that stuff by the 5gal buckload then, and a couple of those is damn near a lifetime supply...curious who's selling...Jack
 
Originally posted by Bailey Boat:
When you buy pre-primed brass how do you go about determining your load since you don't know what primer its loaded with???? Seems like a real iffy situation to me unless someone knows something I don't??????

Factory primed brass was always primed with the same manufacturers primers, whatever was standard for the caliber. Winchester .38 Spl/Win Small Pistol primer. Rem .44 Magnum/Rem LP Magnum equivalent, Rem .30-06/Rem 9 1/2, etc. Simple, ain't it? Unless you are loading to absolute maximum loads it just isn't an issue anyway.

As a matter of fact, if you had a Stoeger "Shooter's Bible" the listings for brass would tell you what they were primed with. And, FWIW, I don't really recall factory primed brass except Winchester, Remington, and, possibly, Federal, so the factory primer options were quite limited.
 
I'm not certain of the manufacturer of the primed brass. A friend wants me to help him get started in reloading and without any discussion he jumped the gun and ordered a bunch of "stuff" and the primed brass was among that order. He is already off to a bad start and I'm not sure about helping him any longer given that he's making decisions without any regard for safety. Another example was in buying primers, I told him to get CCI since that's what I'm most familiar with and since "they" were out of CCI he bought 1000 of Federal and 1000 of Winchester.

Maybe I'm a little anal about things but unless I can find a published load with the caliber in question and the components available I don't proceed. I have grown quite fond of my 8 fingers AND both thumbs..........
 
I ordered primers yesterday and couldn't get the CCI550's I usually use so I orderd the Federal equivalent instead. Unless you're using the Lee priming set up or maximum loads, I doubt it makes that much difference.

With supplies being so spotty, we may all have to make some adjustments.
 
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