Primer Weighing and Sorting?

CBA Member

pat i. posted this 27 October 2023

That's a question I never thought of asking. This could be interesting.

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John Carlson posted this 27 October 2023

Have heard of it in the JBR world, no idea how common or if anybody ever demonstrated an advantage.

John Carlson. CBA Director of Military Competition.

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CBA Regional Director

Tom Acheson posted this 27 October 2023

Might be one of those John Alexander idioms.....prove to me it has a benefit or a stop it with the fantasy stuff!

Tom

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linoww posted this 27 October 2023

I've even wondered about orientation of the anvil of the primer to an index mark?

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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Tom Acheson posted this 28 October 2023

Someone told me some guys are recycling primers....holy cow Batman, we're headed for the cliff!

Long live simplicity and....fun!

Tom

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CBA Member

Eutectic posted this 28 October 2023

Does the position of the B on CCI benchrest primers matter?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Bud Hyett posted this 28 October 2023

Great question. But i think the answer is not easily obtained.

With the manufacturing tolerances for the cup and anvil considered with the weight of the priming charge, how can a person define a testable scenario?

A person would need to assemble a primer with the same weight of cup, the same weight of anvil, the anvil set to the same depth and assure an uniform primer strike to have reliable data.

Farm boy from Illinois, living in the magical Pacific Northwest

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linoww posted this 28 October 2023

Does the position of the B on CCI benchrest primers matter?

Inquiring minds want to know.

nothing wrong with a B cup.

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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4and1 posted this 28 October 2023

1000 yard competitors do it during the winter for sake of something to do. All they can do is weigh them. But those guys are looking for the lowest shot to shot velocity difference. A little means a lot at 1K.

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Wm Cook posted this 28 October 2023

1000 yard competitors do it during the winter for sake of something to do.

I tend to agree with 4&1. Things like weighing brass, sorting bullets to the tenth of a grain and probably sorting primers might burn off nervous energy but they are pushed out of the top “five high priority needs” for accuracy by other things.

I’ve never heard of jacketed BR shooters do anything other than using out of the box Fed 205M. However I would temper that by saying that they would never ever mix different lots of primers. Good topic though. Bill

A “Measured Response” is as effective as tongue lashing a stuck door.

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linoww posted this 28 October 2023

maybe weighing gas checks is the anwser.....

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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Shuz posted this 28 October 2023

I think better results could be obtained by using a torque wrench on the nut behind the trigger!

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CBA President

John Alexander posted this 28 October 2023

What the shooting world needs is a $1,000 device in which you can spin primers, gas checks and plastic wads to see if they are dynamically balanced. It works for car wheels. Not sure if the little clip on weights to balance them could use lead these days?

If it leaked out that the winner of the Supershoot balanced his primers it would be a good time to buy stock in the company selling the machines. Everybody would have to have one,

Who knows, a whole industry might spring up to provide aftermarket accessories so you could customize your spinner to make it look more "tactical" and menacing. You could then claim you built it yourself. It worked for ARs and Ruger 10 22s. Maybe it could be improved by mounting it in an aluminum chassis instead of in the factory base to provide more stability. The possibilities are endless.

John

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CBA Member

Duane Mellenbruch posted this 28 October 2023

John, if it comes to that, perhaps when slugging a barrel, one should also measure the width of the lands and grooves to be sure they are all even. Any irregularity would surely upset the balance of the bullet and affect the flight. Maybe by as much as .00001" :-)

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John Carlson posted this 28 October 2023

Given current supplies, I think our efforts are better directed at making adapters to use small primers in large pockets.

John Carlson. CBA Director of Military Competition.

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Ken Campbell Iowa posted this 29 October 2023

lately i have been thinking maybe the trigger has a lot to do with un-accuracy ... mine certainly gives varied results ...

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mashburn posted this 29 October 2023

Hello John,

You certainly hit a sore spot of mine. Your statement of, making it look more tactical, would sell a lot of the machines. I am so sick of hearing people using the term tactical! I don't know why the term tactical excites so many people, not only in firearms, but tooth- brushes, razors and what not. Maybe these people spent too much of their lives playing shoot the bad guys in video- games. In all of the years I spent working for Uncle Sam, I got all I wanted of wagging, so called, tactical arms around every-day, never mind the every-day cleaning that took place also. Another thing they may need to know is, that when you carry that stuff around for real, there are some countries who wanted to shoot you. That's not near as much fun as shooting exploding targets or man sized silhouettes

John, I tend to think that you feel the same way as I, about tactical crap.Put the draft back in and soon, I don't think you would see near as many people hooked on tactical weapons.

Sorry, I just had, to vent. For me, make it Walnut and Steel.

Mashburn

David a. Cogburn

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OU812 posted this 29 October 2023

Talking about spinning and balancing primers. I have seen slow motion videos of air rifle pellets spinning in flight. The brand of pellet that wobbled less or zero wobble (fell asleep) always grouped better.

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linoww posted this 29 October 2023

lately i have been thinking maybe the trigger has a lot to do with un-accuracy ... mine certainly gives varied results ...

If my rifle could talk, it would complain that it has a really poor driver sometimes.

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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4and1 posted this 29 October 2023

Last I looked, my primers stayed somewhat still while the bullet went spinning it's way to the target. Weighing them is just verifying the priming mixture is as close to the same amount as possible, causing the same burn as possible.

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linoww posted this 29 October 2023

Last I looked, my primers stayed somewhat still while the bullet went spinning it's way to the target. Weighing them is just verifying the priming mixture is as close to the same amount as possible, causing the same burn as possible.

or is it the cup material weight variation?

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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CBA President

John Alexander posted this 29 October 2023

Of course the primers don't move, but maybe balancing them should be " just good practice" like cleaning inside necks, weigh sorting bullets and cases, precisely weighing powder charges, worrying about shot to shot variation in neck tension, indexing prepped cases and even primers, etc.

If we don't let common sense, the laws of diminishing returns, the way small errors affect the final product, or the laws of physics enter in to our thinking who's to say that balancing primers might not help a bit and build confidence in the shooter.

"or is it the cup material weight variation?

Excellent point. And the variation in brass weight could be determined, to separate it out of the calculation, if we were serious about this. Why hasn't this been done?

Do we even know that normal variations in primer blast affects accuracy, or even velocity? I don't think we do. Shouldn't we try to find that out first? Does anybody have a reference of a test?

John

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Ken Campbell Iowa posted this 29 October 2023

if you must chase weighing primers ...

you need to weigh the fired primers also .. to determine if the variation is the metal or the primer compound ...

there probably would be a smidgeon of effect of variable amounts of priming compound ... because i believe the priming variation is important in match 22LR cartridges ... but there the primer is a big part of the overall energy .

but i am still working on the mystery of that dang far wide outliar ... a foot from his kin, ... perfectly round hole and no obvious excuse offered ... but still there it is ... doubt it was a fat primer ... or three extra kernals of smokeless ...

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mashburn posted this 29 October 2023

Ken, I agree with you on the rimfire primers idea. The only thing that I see in center-fire primers is, maybe the anvil could not have been seated improperly causing poor ignition, but of course weighing wouldn't show this. Oh yea, like John said you would have to spin them to check for that. One thing for sure, that won't happen, there won't be anyone trying to run flash tests on primers or some other weird activity, they have gotten too expensive. Those kind of activities is why I removed myself from riimfire bench.

My biggest concern with primers is the availability and their cost.Years ago when I was loading and dropped a primer on the floor, unless it was visible, I wouldn't even look for it. Now I will crawl around until I find it. The problem is for the last several months, I can't squat down let alone try to crawl, I bet there is a lot of young loaders who don't know that you could buy primers for less than one cent each in the good ole days.

Mashburn

David a. Cogburn

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pat i. posted this 29 October 2023

The only way to meaningfully weigh primers for consistancy would be to weigh the anvil, priming compound, and cup separately. Of course you wont have any primers to shoot after that but maybe thats not important in the quest for knowledge. I think a much better, and non destructive, question is what color priming compound sealer is best for getting good groups......green or red.

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pat i. posted this 29 October 2023

324 views and 25 posts about weighing primers and it ain't even winter yet. Oy Vay!!

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Mike H posted this 30 October 2023

I don’t weigh primer’s,however a friend of mine does,he is a F Open shooter.He says that the primer cup and anvil are very uniform in weight and any difference in weight is with the priming compound.There is no end to what shooters will try,but wrong wind calls and less than perfect shot release cause more damage than a small/possible velocity variation.

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RicinYakima posted this 30 October 2023

I shot benchrest for 25+ years. The biggest variable was always me.

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RicinYakima posted this 12 November 2023

Reading the latest "The Reloading Tool Journal" this afternoon, Ken Neeld published an article on the Webster powder balances and scales. An early 1950's flyer noted that their Webster RWC weighs down to 1/20 grain and is very useful for "sorting primers". So someone was doing it in those days. FWIW

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lotech posted this 12 November 2023

Hard core busy work.

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porthos posted this 13 November 2023

life is too short to even think about this!!!

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alphabrass posted this 13 November 2023

I think Harvey Donaldson mentioned weighing primers in "Yours Truly" as well as orienting the anvils the same way.

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John Alexander posted this 14 November 2023

It is kinda sad that we are arguing about whether there is any advantage. Instead of finding, or producing test results that answer the question.

I know that there are shooters that sort primers as well as orienting the anvils the same way, but they don't know anymore about whether it tightens groups than us skeptics, because they don't test to find out any more than the usual CBA shooters tests to see if cleaning primer pockets or inside case necks is the least bit useful.

Maybe we shouldn't be too scornful of these guys' hairbrained ideas since we don't test to find out if some of our own anal retentive driven procedures are worth doing.

Oh well.

John

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Millelacs posted this 03 December 2023

John Alexander posted this 14 Nov 2023
It is kinda sad that we are arguing about whether there is any advantage. Instead of finding, or producing test results that answer the question.

Something that I noticed is that no has actually weighed their primers.

So I decided to do so. I used two scales:
1 - RCBS 505 Balance Beam Scale
2 - Lyman 1000XP Compact Electronic Reloading Scale

I weighed ten New / Unfired Federal No. 210 Large Rifle Primers individually and then ten together.

Results are as follows:

The Lyman Electronic Scale consistently measured lower weights than the RCBS 505 scale.

The RCBS scale weighed a range from 5.5 grains to 5.7 grains, with a span of 0.2 grains.

The Lyman Electronic Scale weighed a range from 5.2 grains to 5.45 grains, with a span of 0.25 grains.

Would the 1/4 grain weight difference be obscured by performance differences from bullet, case and powder variations?

The next step would be to sort the primers by weight for loading and do some range testing.

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cfp4570 posted this 03 December 2023

I just finished reading "The Story of Pope's Barrels" (every gun crank should read this!), and the author asked Pope about the weighing of primers and his response was an explosive "A lot of G.D. foolishness!" Evidently old Harry didn't buy it. LOL

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John Alexander posted this 03 December 2023

Good work millelacs. I look forward to your shooting tests.

The latest issue of the Single Shot Journal had a reprinted article By H. A. Donaldson (I think that is the Harvey that alphabrass mentioned.

In the article he is giving advice to other shooters and claims weigh sorting and aligning the primers is necessary. But he gives no hint that he has tested the procedure to SEE if it improves precision -- just like the shooters still practicing it now.

Some things never change.

John

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Lee Wiggins posted this 03 December 2023

If you are going to do this , add a step please. Shoot the sorted , by primer weight, rounds and keep the fired cases in order.

Then weigh the fired primers to see if weight variation was cup & anvil or primer compound.

I'll keep an open mind , Lee

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John Alexander posted this 04 December 2023

Please also shoot enough sorted vs. unsorted to get a repeatable answer. Otherwise the result will just make the folks that scorn statistics think they know something they don't. Thanks.

John

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Millelacs posted this 07 December 2023

. John Alexander posted this 3 days ago .

          Please also shoot enough sorted vs. unsorted to get a repeatable answer.
          Otherwise the result will just make the folks that scorn statistics
          think they know something they don't.

.         Thanks.

         John

With our primer shortage, I don't have enough large rifle primers to do testing.
I'll have to develop a load for a 223. Then I can do some primer testing,
but it'll have to wait until next year.