Federal Primers...Priming Mixture Color

A friend worked at Federal a few years ago and the color you see is a thin film pressed over the priming mixture to keep the mixes together. The women made the match primers.
 
Bjs6

The groups were all nearly identical...I was fighting a right to left 8-10 mph wind with gusts up to 15 mph...the nice part was I found my seating depth and all groups were flat with about 1-2 bullet horizontal. I don't think the velocity difference (18-20 fps) when I got over 3400 fps affected accuracy at all..:)
I wanted to go higher (fps), but decided to wait until a calmer day..
 
Thanks for the info.

205M's are near impossible to get down here at the moment but 205's are available, at least on and off. Nice to know I should be OK to swap primers if things get deperate !! I better get out and test the 205's myself and stock up.

Bryce
 
Bjs6

I found 3,000 of the Federal 205s at a local sporting goods store that were all of the same mfg lot..:eek:
I have found them to be excellent and equal to the 205M, just a tad slower..
 
Bryce, the CCI BR4 produced more velocity and pressure than the 205M in my testing, but not much. SD of both was also close; the flash was also very close to the 205M. Primers vary from lot to lot, so there's no big surprise in finding results opposite of mine, it just highlights the need to test the primers as much as any other component.

I wrote a nice article on all this which should be in the June Precision Shooting and am now working on a follow up article with large primers (some dating back to the 1940's!). In fact, I need to go load ammo for tomorrow's test session - it's getting late!

German Salazar
 
Wolf Primers

German,

I recall that you and at least one of the Phoenix area benchrest shooters were testing the Wolf Small Rifle Magnum Primers recently. I am very interested in your results. Would you mind giving us a preview?

Thanks. Ryan
 
Ryan, both the large and small Russian primers, under any of their various importer labels consistently give the lowest SD of velocity and pressure of any primer, day in, day out. I just finished a session with the 30-06 and guess what - same result, Russians on top.

The Wolf labeled SRM has some coloring on the anvil that makes it look different from the previous imports but it appears to be cosmetic only as it tests exactly the same.

German Salazar
 
Thanks German.

I applaud your primer testing and consider you to be an authority in this area.

Can you comment on your observations - or reports from others testing Wolf primers - regarding their use in the 6ppc? And, specifically, their accuracy/precision for use in 100/200 yard short range Benchrest?

Thanks Again.
Ryan
 
Ryan, my testing of small rifle primers has been almost all in the 6BR with 105 grain bullets with loads geared to 300 to 600 yard shooting. I'm not a Benchrest shooter, although a few more years of laying on my belly in the dirt might change that (37 years of fighting ants, spiders and scorpions for range space can be tiring).

I have a .22 PPC (also a prone rifle, shoots 80 Berger VLD's) and in that rifle, results were consistent with the 6BR, the primers with the lowet visual flash (Russian and 205M) gave the best numbers and the best accuracy. However, the 205M primers blanked in my .22 PPC whereas the Russian SRM held together without any problem.

Thanks for the kind words on my testing, I've had the good fortune to team up with Bob Jensen for all my primer work, he's a real pioneer in the field and we have a lot of fun testing and analyzing all of this stuff.

German Salazar
 
Thanks Again. I look forward to reading your Precision Shooting article.

Ryan
 
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