Reloading Manual Data (Conflicts and Agreements)

[Winchester67]

Red Goat you are not wrong. I remember when our Ballistician came into my office and set some cases on my desk and asked me if I thought he could increase the load. Primers looked good...I said yes. He laughed and said they were proof load pressure but he got a batch of hard primers. (which I had never heard of, but he said they were just a manufacturing variance) I asked him how often that happened. He said way more often than you would think. Made a believer out of me!

 

[RedGoat]

Red Goat you are not wrong. I remember when our Ballistician came into my office and set some cases on my desk and asked me if I thought he could increase the load. Primers looked good...I said yes. He laughed and said they were proof load pressure but he got a batch of hard primers. (which I had never heard of, but he said they were just a manufacturing variance) I asked him how often that happened. He said way more often than you would think. Made a believer out of me!

I had my first lesson in hard primers vs "soft" primers very early courtesy of my S&W M66. When firing double action, my reloads using CCI primers would most often misfire, whereas those using Federal primers never missed a beat. However, the CCI primers worked fine if I fired single action. Evidently the mainspring on that revolver was a bit weak and lacked a little bit of OOMPH in double action mode. I never had any issues with any factory ammo. If I recall correctly, Federal wasn't directly engaged in complete ammo production back then, nor was CCI (except for 22 rimfire). I suspect, however, they were probably suppliers to entities that were in the factory ammo business. I guess I just lucked out and never picked up any factory ammo with CCI primers in it, assuming such existed back then. Most of what was available in my neck of the woods back then was either Winchester or Remington and I'm guessing that they used their own primers.