Bought some once-fired brass

[dabluesguy]

Found a website for once-fired brass and placed an order, mostly to save some money. Order came and everything looked good for the three pistol calibers I ordered. When I re-cleaned and de-primed my 45 acp brass I found out that of the 285 I bought, 182 of them were small pistol primer size. I only use the large pistol variety. I am just curious if this makes any ballistic difference or not. I have decided I'm not going to use them for a few reasons (some of them anal probably). If anyone of you uses these for reloading and can use them, send me a PM and we'll work something out. Otherwise they'll probably get tossed.

 

[Gerry]

Small primer .45 ACP are really popular here among reloaders in Canada, and they cost a lot more due to them still being more rare and having to be sorted out. No significant ballistic difference from those who use them that I know of. But reloaders who also load other calibers that take small primer such as 9mm love them because you don't have to switch over the priming system of your press when changing calibers. Believe me, this is a huge thing among us Dillon XL 650 users. The only Dillion 650 owners that I personally know of that load 9mm and conventional large primer .45 ACP have two presses!

I use my Lee Classic Turret press to load .45 ACP with large primers, and my Dillion XL 650 is dedicated to 9mm. This makes life much easier

 

[William T. Watts]

Frankly I'm not willing to switch to small primer 45 Acp cases, with that said I'll try to purchase what I need while large primer cases are still available. My .02 William

 

[m&p45acp10+1]

I have laoded a few hundred of them. and they worked just fine with my cast bullet loads. I save then up till I have a coffee can full of them. I also load for 9mm so I keep a supply of small pistol primers on hand. I load them with the same charge of Bull's Eye that I use for large pistol primers. I have not noticed a differance.

 

[orionengnr]

I would be pretty annoyed by that--basically, 60% of what you bought is unusable. Hope you can trade it 1-for-1 for some LPP brass.

I pick up range brass and lately have started to notice some of the SPP brass showing up.

I find it annoying that I generally don't notice them until after de-priming and attempting to prime the new case.

I have been culling them out and tossing them in a zip-lock bag while loading. I have maybe 100 so far. When I get a bag full I will see if I can give them away.

Edited to add--thank you for bringing this up. I just went and sorted through three ~200 round bins of cleaned brass, and removed a bunch more of the SPP brass. My next loading session will be far more enjoyable without the distractions and interruptions.

 

[raceroch]

I will buy spp 45acp any day at a discount... in RI if you have a large enough amount let me know.

 

[azphx55]

Every online source of once-fired brass that I've checked has been warning that they're not going to sort out the small primers.

Once I had collected about 20 from the range, I went ahead and bought enough once-fired to bring my total of small primer up to something worth loading.

After cleaning I run a colored marker across the heads to help keep them separate. I figure it also makes it more likely that anybody picking up my strays at the range will at least look at the head before throwing it into a progressive press.

One of my pistols has a fairly light trigger spring and I find that Federal small primers are the only thing that are 100% reliable

 

[Miata Mike]

Exactly why I hand prime my .45acp. Nothing worse than chugging along on my Lee Pro 1000 press and find a small pistol primer case. I also have a few hundred set aside for the day I have to do an indoor range that will not let me collect my own brass.

 

[FrankenMauser]

Just keep them separate, and load as usual.

Many of the ATK brands (CCI, Blazer, Speer, FC, American Eagle, etc) are going to the small primer pocket as the standard; with only a few loads still using the large primer. You'll be running into more, and more of the small primer pockets in the future. You might as well adapt now.

 

[capreppy]

I keep them separated and when I have enough to do a batch load (500 at a minimum), then I'll start reloading them. I have about the same amount of SPP & LPP (8k each), but the SPP is for my 9mm Luger. Given the recent rise in cost of primers, I'd rather not deplete my SPP until such a time that the primers go back down to pre-May prices. I've got enough of each to last me a little while and don't want to run out of SPP cause I used some of them on 45 ACP ammo.

 

[Xfire68]

Having sold a allot of once fired range brass I can say first hand how much of a pain in the A$$ the SPP 45's are to sort. I really wish the ammo companies would have stuck to the same old same old. Yes I did it anyway but it was time consuming! I also had to research into the ballistics and "if" they where ok to reload. All info I found on them indicated they loaded the same as LPP 45's aside from the obvious smaller primer.

I did have trouble selling them as many people could not get over the change and would wait till I had LPP 45's in stock over buying SPP cases.

I am pretty sure I still have a few hundred of them somewhere?

 

[gwalchmai]

I inspect and sort my brass by headstamp so it's no trouble at all to sort out the SPPs. I have a few hundred so far and if I ever run short of LPP brass I'll load up the SPPs. One thing I see is that a lot of the SPPs are NT brass and are very clean and shiny inside. All in all this is no big deal.

 

[Xfire68]

gwalchmai, try doing 20k of them and you will see what I am talking about.

 

[gwalchmai]

It doesn't have to be done all at once. I have two 5 gallon buckets of .45 ACP that I use in my reloading rotation. Every month or so I clean and sort a tumbler full.