.45 ACP small primer?

Special place in hell for whoever invented the SPP .45 case.
Mine go in the brass can, for deposit in the brass barrel at the Club.
I can tell when I hit one in the press; the primer feels wrong, and I stop immediately. Can't afford to screw up a $0.10 primer!
Moon

I save them, just because........ The only ones I have reloaded were a few for testing, just to compare to large primers. They can be a pain unless you load like I do, deprime, tumble and prime with a hand primer.

halfmoonclip said:

Special place in hell for whoever invented the SPP .45 case.
Mine go in the brass can, for deposit in the brass barrel at the Club.
I can tell when I hit one in the press; the primer feels wrong, and I stop immediately. Can't afford to screw up a $0.10 primer!
Moon

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I was not able to get the picture off the individual who said he received via email, but a bud claimed to have seen a Dillion progressive heavily damaged when the press attempted to seat a large pistol primer in a 45 ACP small pistol primer case. Bud said he could not believe the damage he saw. Wish I had the picture.

These are pictures when primers went off in other presses






Anyway, I have had small primer cases in my hand sorted 45 ACP brass appear above the primer arm. I thought I had carefully collected and inspected all the brass I picked up, turns out there was a small pistol primer case, not my own, that was in the corner. Could have been a big badda boom.

I can’t help but be grateful to the family members and friends who drilled it into me from a young age not to hurry, not to rush, get to know all of my components on a first name basis, and handle each piece of brass I load, old and new, at least three times before priming. I don’t even want to guess how many calamity that’s saved me from.

Slamfire said:

I was not able to get the picture off the individual who said he received via email, but a bud claimed to have seen a Dillion progressive heavily damaged when the press attempted to seat a large pistol primer in a 45 ACP small pistol primer case. Bud said he could not believe the damage he saw. Wish I had the picture.

These are pictures when primers went off in other presses

View attachment 1093790


View attachment 1093791

Anyway, I have had small primer cases in my hand sorted 45 ACP brass appear above the primer arm. I thought I had carefully collected and inspected all the brass I picked up, turns out there was a small pistol primer case, not my own, that was in the corner. Could have been a big badda boom.

Click to expand...

The Dillon 650 has detonated primers since it's on start. When I started loading I looked at the 650. The GS I went too had one on display where the primers detonated. The cause forcing things when you shouldn't. I looked at them again 20 yrs ago and the problem had not been corrected, so I went with the LNL-AP.

Bottom line. ONLY the Operator can stop things like this if he know his equipment. We all know it's never good to force thing. If it does not feel right, STOP and investigate.

Blue68f100 said:

The cause forcing things when you shouldn't.

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This is worth repeating.

I save all my small primer 45acp. Throw it into a container until I have a bunch of them to reload. I use a Dillon 550 and am in the habit of looking at the primer hole regardless, of caliber, to make sure it is clear. If not, what it should be, it does not get reloaded. Not that hard to do. Best wishes!

I set it aside until I have enough to load.
In my testing with a 230 and 5gr of HP38 LPs were maybe 10-15 fps faster.
But having said that in 9mm I have seen 10-15fps difference in various flavors of SPs.
Right now I am saving the SPs for 9mm but It is nice to have the SP45s around in case I am low on LPs.
I find they are easier to sort (for me at least) if I deprime them all first.

Small primer 45acp are for times like these when you run out of lpp. Can be a blessing

Catpop said:

Small primer 45acp are for times like these when you run out of lpp. Can be a blessing

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not so much i ran out of large primers for 45acp, more that shells looked so beat up i felt i needed to use the go/no primer gauge each time i used them.
I had socked away the small primer 45acp all these years and they looked practically brand new. I prime by hand and have been able to feel when sloppy , or piece of walnut shell stuck in hole but I'm losing some sensitive feeling (thinking may be age or diabetes(neurapathy). A blessing like you said, .45 colt will use the last of the large pistol primers

jmorris said:

I started seeing SPP 45 ACP around 2003-2004.

I built this device for my 45 ACP 1050, once I got tired of sorting them by hand.



And sometime later built this decap/sort machine.



They load and shoot the same, IIRC they had a little lower ES/SD than LPP with the load I tested them with.

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That's great stuff right there.

Blazer and Federal are the usual two that have switched to SPP for years now. It's a pain to sort SPP and LPP and I hate it, but if you have enough brass in both, it could actually be a benefit at the moment with the primer shortage, as in use what you've got.