which large pistol primer is the softest

[lal357]

having a few soft primer strikes (3 out of 150)on one of my pistols and i'm thinking about swapping primers .right now i'm using Winchester large pistol

 

[Lapua40X]

Back in my pistol packin' days I relied on CCI primers. Never found any reason to change.

 

[lazer-i]

Federal #150, large pistol primers are the softest. For an example, when S&W does an action job on a revolver to lighten the double action trigger pull, they note Federal ammo and primers only, to avoid light strikes and misfires.

 

[Travelor]

Clark Custom Guns also recommends Federal Large Pistol Primers only after their target action jobs on revolvers. I shot IDPA for years with their action jobs and Federal primers were the ONLY primer that was reliable after the work to lighten the trigger pull which resulted in lighter primer strikes.

 

[NickB1075]

Another vote for Federal. That is all I can use for reliable ignition in my PPC revolvers.

Nick

 

[lal357]

I'll have to try them so I can swap my 3 1/2# spring back in my colt fires them all block is being picky

 

[BlackDog22]

It is interesting that there is no data available that I can find that tests the hardness of primers based on Brand - Usage - Wall thickness - Hardness (indent distance to standard dimension firing pin.)

I bought a Tanfoglio 9mm a while back that I bought near new. The guy obviously sold it because it was misfiring every 8th round. (And just forgot to mention that to me when he sold it )

I took it to the importer and he gave me a few "guaranteed" fixes that didn't do a thing to stop the issue. One acquaintance told me to try different types of ammo until you get one that works. Well he was right, but what he probably didn't know and neither did I at the time, was that primers come in different harnesses.

Although the wall thickness of the primer may be the same, the hardness of the primer can be quite different. I learned through expensive experience that CCI primers are hard and Federal Match Primers and nice and soft.

My "Cow" of a 9mm Now works 99.99999% of the time running on Federal Primers.

I think the importer is still telling people to swap firing pins, and shaving off firing pin blocks and sand papering this and that. What a laugh.

Well I was delighted with the fix. I don't understand why there is no "hardness" grading for each make and model/brand of primer on the market. It would certainly have made my finding a fix easier.

Reading the opinions hear about which primer is soft or hard is a prime reason why someone should do the testing. Because some of the comments are just plain wrong!!

So the Rule is "LIGHT PRIMER STRIKES - TRY A DIFFERENT BRAND OF PRIMER" They aren't all the same!!!

 

[snert]

You don't mention what round you are shooting. Maybe a bit too much crimp and it is causing a headspace issue? If it is a rimless cartridge and the taper is too deep it may make the cartridge too "short" causing the perfectly fine hit of the pin to be light because it is too "short". Just a thought

 

[Zero333]

Federal

 

[watercam]

I use Starline .45 acp brass for Bullseye and Winchester LP primers for the extra spark. I had to uniform the primer pockets in the brass to eliminate periodic soft strikes because I was getting high primers and those were the rounds that would misfire. Does not make sense to me but the fix was getting the primers seated below the case base.
May try Federal primers next, CCI definitely needs more powder at target velocity speeds.

 

[Webster]

having a few soft primer strikes (3 out of 150)on one of my pistols and i'm thinking about swapping primers .right now i'm using Winchester large pistol

It's time someone did micro hardness on primer cups. We need real data numbers. It's very easy to do in a metallurgy lab. Maybe the AMPS induction annealing people could do it. if I was not retired I would do it for free. About 3 hours work to do 10-15 fired primer cups.

 

[Steve Ladino]

I use Starline .45 acp brass for Bullseye and Winchester LP primers for the extra spark. I had to uniform the primer pockets in the brass to eliminate periodic soft strikes because I was getting high primers and those were the rounds that would misfire. Does not make sense to me but the fix was getting the primers seated below the case base.
May try Federal primers next, CCI definitely needs more powder at target velocity speeds.

After spending many years reloading 45's and 38's on my C-H progressive press it wasn't until I started shooting rifle that I decided to uniform primer pockets in the 45 acp brass. Other than this with WW primers I never had misfires with any primers except shooting PPC with my 586 , which liked Federal for sure fire as did everyone else back then.

 

[cem]

I use Starline .45 acp brass for Bullseye and Winchester LP primers for the extra spark. I had to uniform the primer pockets in the brass to eliminate periodic soft strikes because I was getting high primers and those were the rounds that would misfire. Does not make sense to me but the fix was getting the primers seated below the case base.
May try Federal primers next, CCI definitely needs more powder at target velocity speeds.

It's a known issue. The firing pin seats the high primer, that is the primer is moved rather than fired.

Testing the primers is more or less a waste of time over time with no promise of consistency. One of the major companies put a table of primers by size and foil cup color in a manual. Time proved the colors were not consistent and customers were consistently annoyed.