Is There a Reason Primer Boxes Have Gotten so Big?

I hear ya, I've been seeing this trend for more than 30 yrs. and can't figure out the manufacture reasoning for the life of me?

GS

It's to provide more airspace between the individual primers. This is done to lessen the possibility of sympathetic explosion while in transport.

A couple of years ago I gave some old primers in the wooden trays to the reps from Federal at the SHOT Show. They were pretty spooked at handling them that way, so they've evidently had some type of problem in the past.

Hope this helps.

Fred

The federals are the worst! They take up twice the space as everything else!

ljnowell said:

The federals are the worst! They take up twice the space as everything else!

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The FEDERALS are also BY FAR the most sensitive to sympathtic detonation.

It's to provide more airspace between the individual primers. This is done to lessen the possibility of sympathetic explosion while in transport.

Click to expand...

I have been told this as well.

Why are Federal primers so easy to install ---I can almost push them in with my thumb.
They measure the same dia. as a CCI

HOWARD J Why are Federal primers so easy to install ---I can almost push them in with my thumb.
They measure the same dia. as a CCI

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Thinner/softer cup material.

I try to avoid Federal primers mainly because they take up so much damn space.

No one really knows. What is known is that Federal has been large for quite some time. Rumor has it that they heard that industry-wide packaging mandates were about to be implemented but they never were but had already switched over to satisfy those.. they never switched back because of already sunk costs.
I've not heard that their packaging is any safer than the much smaller CCI etc.

Thanks for the info--that's what one of my kids said.
I always use CCI---I don't like the feel you get on a Fed primer but beggers can't be choosers. That box takes up a lot of space I still have some of the old CCI boxes--- they are very small compared to Fed.

Federal is the only company to use "basic" primer compound. Look at it wrong (like the Happy Fun Ball) and they go off. Everybody else uses "normal" compound, that's why Lee says only Winchester and CCI if you're using a LM.

Besides the safety aspect of the increased space around the primers, the new, larger trays with individual primer pockets may be easier, faster, and cheaper to fill. Also, camera Q/C systems may be able to determine missing primers in the trays easier.

A theory based on my experience working with high speed consume goods packaging equipment.

I've been working through my stash of 70's era CCI primers and I love the little trays; they're easy to unload into my lee safety prime tray. The newer CCI trays are Juuuuuust small enough to fit, but I have to dump one row at a time and slide the tray along to keep it centered over the round lee safety prime.

The Fiocchi primer trays are still pretty compact.

But yeah, I avoid Federals just because they're such a pain to store.

Some years ago, Federal actually TESTED their primer packaging (rather than guessing, interpolating, navel-examining etc. etc.).

They placed a large quantity of their primers , in factory packaging, out in the open and set fire to the pile. The resulting explosion was sufficiently impressive that the packaging was immediately changed, and THAT is why Federal started the trend to larger (and less risky) packages.

Now, stop complaining and enjoy the increased safety of your primer packages! (Those bigger boxes also don't fit on older 'flipper' trays... I consider that a small price to pay, and bought one of the bigger Dillon trays).

So the larger boxes are composed of fireproof paper?

The Wolf/Tula primers are great. All the primers are flipped the same way. I flip a tray over, onto my big brass dillon primer tray, and push the plastic insert out of the cardboard. That leaves me with ten rows of ten primers lined up neatly to be picked up by the dillon tubes. I can load 100 primers in a tube in 1 minute 8 seconds.

I have some Federal Large Rifle Mag primers. 5 trays of those take up the same space as 10+ trays of the others. It works ok though. I don't use many of those. I do use akro bins to keep primers in. 8 of the dillon 550 bins will fit in a drawer of my loading bench. Each bin has a type of primer. I keep the cases of primers in a different location. I can't fit everything right at my bench.

I have some of those old Winchester Staynless (I think that is how it was spelled on the box) primers in the small wood packages. They are pretty cool. I haven't bothered to see if they actually still would ignite.

I Luke remington's packaging.

Sent from my CZ85 Combat

Federal did it for safety as said above...others do it because bigger box is more attractive to the buyer. Smaller boxes are seen as being less. Marketing.

My understanding is that standard testing protocol is a blasting cap is installed in the center of a cubic meter of primers in shipping packaging assembled at a test site. The blasting cap is fired from a safe distance and the outcome checked. There should be no significant evidence of sympathetic detonation of the packaged primers around the blasting cap.

This represents a worse-case transportation accident.

The report I read is that *earlier* generation Federal primer packaging failed this test miserably, and the whole assembly went high-order. Apparently the "boom" was heard many miles away.

Every time I throw away a primer tray, I can't help but think there must be a post use for these things.
But the only thing I can think of are really tiny ice cubes.

Some people use them to count out large sizes of waterfowl shot when loading high performance shotshells. Heavyshots expensive and good counts are good for performance.

New threshold for tedious - ouch! I thought I had OCD tendancies

How they used to look, with 50 BMG added for scale