Small rifle primers in 9mm

Curmudgeon

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Did an oopsie and loaded 50 rounds of 115gr 9mm using Winchester small rifle primers instead of pistol primers. What''s the collective consensus - safe to use or scrap them? I can use a Beretta 92 to shoot them if strength of firearms makes a difference.
 
I rarely load to max, so a little hotter primer probably would not do much harm with my loads. The problem may be getting them to fire. I accidently loaded a bunch of 9mm with CCI small rifle primers a while back and did not discover my mistake until a bunch of them would not fire in several different striker-fired pistols. Your pistol is hammer fired, so it might not be a problem. I did not notice any problems with those that did actually fire. I pulled and repacked the ones left from the range session. I had switched to a different batch of loads after I discovered what the problem was and had no more issues with any of the pistols.

If you load right up to the max, the prudent thing to do would be to pull and repack the rounds with the wrong primers.

I bet there will be several people who write that they always use small rifle primers in their 9mm loads. That seems to be fine as long as the rounds will fire in their pistols and as long as they have worked up the load with the small rifle primers.
 
If they were mine I'd probly shoot em. But I'd never recommend that for someone else.
 
FWIW, I use sometimes use small rifle primers in my small primer 45acp. I always work up my loads using large primers, and in all the testing I've done, the small rifle primers (and small pistol magnum primers) always give slightly less velocity, but more velocity than regular small primers. If you are not loaded near max charges, I would think you would be safe to try them.
 
Most great inventions started with....

"hmmm...wonder what happens if......"

Then again, so do most accidents. :cool:

Choot em (with a full safety squint)
 
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Back in the days of primer shortages, I used Winchester small rifle primers, for all my small primer needs. I still used Win small rifle primers in my 9mm loads, makes inventory a bit easier for me.
 
I use small rifle primers for my 38 Super Comp loads. Different animal but I’m with everyone else, shoot ‘em.


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Some people run SRP exclusively for competition rounds. I had a thread about trying it a while back but never did. There are a lot of experiences documented on other forums if you google a little.
 
What's the absolute worst that could happen? :rolleyes:

They could fail to fire in your firearm as they did in several of mine.

I assume that you work up and test each new combination of components, so overpressure should not be an issue any more than it would be anytime you introduced a new component. If you load to max and just substitute a different primer, you might get overpressure issues.
 
They could fail to fire in your firearm as they did in several of mine.

I assume that you work up and test each new combination of components, so overpressure should not be an issue any more than it would be anytime you introduced a new component. If you load to max and just substitute a different primer, you might get overpressure issues.
That question was rhetorical
 
Pull those bullets...







By shooting them.
Done it before, you're good to go.
 
iu
 
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