45acp

[Danth]

Just wondering when and why some 45acp manufacturers started using small pistol primers. Is one better than the other in any way? Thanks, Dan

[jebsca]

Think I read something about non-toxic ammo being eazyer to make with small primers. Have also started seeing some ammo with nt in the head stamp, and I think that is for non-toxic. I could be way off on both.

[DukeInFlorida]

Some of the states, and the federal government DEMANDED that lead was removed from ammo. Well, they quickly found out that they can't force the public to switch to non-lead. But, they were able to get law enforcement to make the switch.

There are two sources of lead in "normal" ammo:
1) Lead in the bullets
2) Lead in the chemicals for the primers

They decided to eliminate BOTH sources of lead, hence the push for "non-toxic"....

They went with compressed copper powder for making the bullets = frangible. When they hit a solid object, the smash into powder.

The non lead chemical for the primer turned out to be so aggressive that they first tried reducing the amount of the new chemical in the large primers. What they saw was un-reliable ignition issues. So, they switched to small primers with a normal small primer amount of the new primer chemicals. Problems solved.

Not all of the small primer 45 ACPs have the NT (non-toxic) head stamp.

The small primered ones are reloadable. However, many of them have primers which are crimped into place (especially the military ammo), and those crimps have to be removed before installing a new, normal primer. Use the same load data as for a large primer load.

You'll have to sort head stamps/primer size from now on!

I use the small primer brass (as jackets) for making my 500 S&W Mag jacketed bullets, using BT Sniper's tool set for swaging bullets. See the Castboolits Swaging area for details.

[gandog56]

Interesting about the fact that small primered .45's may be crimped. Is this just military cases? Because I haven't seen that in any Winchester NT's.