Questions about primer sorting

[USMCDOC]

"Let's just say you are CLOSE to an MOA at 600/1000 yds.
Would spending a little time trimming 1/4 MOA off your groups caused by the few outlier primers be worth it? Do you travel to a match or a hunt?"

Wow, 1/4 MOA group reduction from just over 1 MOA just by sorting primers? That is like a 25% reduction! Why aren't more shooters doing it?

Most shooters are lazy..

 

[Rocketvapor]

LAZY? I doubt it.
Here's why more don't sort primers:
Some don't reload,
Brass Prep is more important,
Already getting Cleans with a high X count,
Load with a Beam Scale,
The vertical outliers they run across are caused by something else,
Primers outliers might account for 10 out of 1000 shots,
Some have been loading for 50 years and resist change,
Some just won't admit they sort primers.

Primer sorting comes up from time to time and always draws Naysayers.
In fact, we have two threads going right now.

CCI Primer weights.

Hi Guys I thought I would weigh some primers to see what the spread would be. I weighed them on a A&D FX 120i in grams. I don't know how much the difference there would be between the cups and anvils. In other posts I have read they are pretty consistent with their weights. If (Big IF) we just...

forum.accurateshooter.com

I SEE Primer Weight on MY Targets.
Maybe just merge these two threads.

 

[Rick300]

I use a large size 1 week pill box and sort in grams. That gives me 7 "bins" to put the primers in. Once you find the middle weight it's very easy to to just drop the primer into the appropriate weight bin. In the case of BR4's, mine goes 237,238,239,240,241,242,243. No matter the lot it seems that the 240 & 241 bins fill up the fastest. A pill box will hold +/- 1000 primers.

 

[quest450]

The Indian and the arrow must be capable of shooting the difference otherwise it's an unnecessary waste of time
I sort my primers to 0.001 gram because it makes my match ammo more consistent and uniform and reduces fliers, it is a simple task but time consuming.

 

[Rocketvapor]

The Indian and the arrow must be capable of shooting the difference otherwise it's an unnecessary waste of time
I sort my primers to 0.001 gram because it makes my match ammo more consistent and uniform and reduces fliers, it is a simple task but time consuming.

View attachment 1579798

@quest450
I see you have a few @ .245 and a few @ .235.
About a 4% range. I also return them to the 100 primer sleeves instead of pill bottles
Have you shot those to see the different in velocity and waterline on target?


@Rick300
"The Indian and the arrow must be capable of shooting the difference otherwise it's an unnecessary waste of time"
Who wouldn't like 1/4 to 1/2 MOA taken off their groups?

 

[quest450]

I have not, I use those for foulers and a full 100ea sleeve for match rounds I do test a lot of things but that seems like a waste of barrel life to me and maybe I just do not want to find out the results because it could change my reloading process and if it ain't broke I'm not gonna try to fix it

 

[Rocketvapor]

You could just watch where your heavy/light foulers hit



Just a Joke

 

[quest450]

Lol, that's eggzackly how I feel sometimes

 

[Rick300]

@Rick300
"The Indian and the arrow must be capable of shooting the difference otherwise it's an unnecessary waste of time"
Who wouldn't like 1/4 to 1/2 MOA taken off their groups?

I think you were thinking of @quest450 for that quote. I use pill containers, not bottles. either way works just fine.

 

[Rocketvapor]

Looks organized and compact.
What do you get for the extreme weights?

 

[Rick300]

Usually 236 to 244. I combine those with the 2 outer bins as those are used as foulers

 

[Rocketvapor]

I meant velocity and waterline for the outliers.

The wife and I shoot F-Open (600yds for now) with 22 Nosler and I do most of the reloading (she does some of the operations). We started with AR's and she got to shooting better than me. So, I kitchen assembled a Savage bolt gun (again in 22N) for her as a Christmas present. Needless to say, she still USUALLY still out shoots me.
Now 22N isn't any where the right F-Open round but score is score and we both are getting better. She is still throwing a 9, or two, or three, but it ain't gonna be because of a primer flyer.
(that would just be mean)

I need to load up ammo for a match next Saturday. I have the time to sort another brick.
Or, just hang on the internet

 

[varget204]

The trick is developing a technique that is fast.

I need someone to show me How to weigh sort 15,000 primers

 

[Rocketvapor]

I think there is a special attachment for the FX-120i that trickles out primers.

 

[varget204]

This is how I sort primers with a Gempro 250 scale:

I tested my Gempro 250 against 2 FX 120I's it was Spot on,just as accurate

 

[varget204]

I think there is a special attachment for the FX-120i that trickles out primers.

It won't take so long I have 2 FX-120i's

 

[Rocketvapor]

Any half way decent milligram scale should be adequate.

 

[Dave M.]

I see that many are showing notable results from primer sorting. I've been skeptical of it myself, but I think I may give it ago to see if I can make any notable improvement on my next barrel.

When you sort, are you mixing lot numbers and maintaining a specific target weight for a batch of ammo? Or do you sort by lot and weight?

I ask because the primers I use have not only been expensive, they have been hard to find.

I sort only for important 1000 yard competitions, and I sort by lot. I don’t mix lots of primers in rounds meant for a single competition. If I have extras left over, I put them in a ziplock bag and use them for 600 yard competitions where I haven’t seen any benefit from sorting primers by weight (I shoot F class, and I absolutely think sorting primers by weight could have a significant benefit at 600 yards in Benchrest).
Dave

 

[Straightshooter1]

I sorted a brick of CCI-400's and loaded up my best .308 charges (41.1 gr AR-Comp behind 169SMK's in Lapua Palma brass). Weights ranged from 3.36 grs to 3.50 grs. There was enough of the 3.36's to load 20 and only 10 for the 3.50's, so I loaded up 10 3.48's so that I could compare to the 20 3.36's. An extra 6 cartridges were loaded for firing to initial warming of the barrel. Then looked for a day when the morning temperatures were low enough and wouldn't heat up so fast as it's been doing a lot this year.

Well, I just couldn't wait any longer and chose yesterday with the temperature being, hmmm???. . .not too bad for here at 90°F. These were fired round robin throughout the morning with a somewhat slow rate of fire ( ~90 seconds between shots) and long pauses for barrel cool down when barrel heat got to 122°F. Barrel is a Krieger 26" heavy.

What is interesting to me is in the first series of 10 for the 3.36's, there was two velocities over 2700 fps. I'm not sure what to make of that. In any case, here's the numbers:

 

[JFrank]

I agree with @quest450 No need to test extremes against each other just use them for foulers or prairie dogs.
If sorting primers helps find one more X or tightens the group just a tiny bit it’s worth the effort.