plastic flow of primer material

orkan said:
Dudes need to stop buying 1lb containers of powder. lol

Even with something as tiny as a 6BRA... you can only get a couple hundred rounds out of a pound of powder.

Even with a .243win barrel eater... you'd need at least 1000rnds (800 at minimum) to take the barrel out... which would take about 6lbs of powder.

Why not just buy 8lbs of any powder you're interested in?

The fact that 1lb containers even exist, other than testing, is an ever-present reminder of just how few rounds people fire in a typical year. ;)

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Or perhaps it's all they can afford at the time. There's quite a difference in price. And you can buy more than 1, 1lb container from the same lot. Just saying.
Mark37082 said:
Greg - Your article was a great read. Very well written and illustrated. Too many people like to push the limits of a cartridge design to achieve some bragging rights on velocity IMO. It takes a skilled eye and feel to determine when you may be reaching the danger zone on some rifles. Pressure spikes can sometimes be encountered in very small increases in powder charges.

Thanks for sharing.
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orkan said:
That's because someone did; Barnes. lol 🤣

The brass decides what pressure you can run. Nothing else. Certainly not the marketing department.


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orkan said:
That's because someone did; Barnes. lol 🤣

The brass decides what pressure you can run. Nothing else. Certainly not the marketing department.


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The brass brand certainly seems to be the deciding factor. In over 50 years of loading I have experienced most of the problems shown in this thread at one time or another especially near maximum loads. Recently I decided to bring my 300 Wby built in 1992 out of retirement for an upcoming moose hunt. I picked up some new Peterson Brass to load since I didn't have enough old Weatherby brass to prepare for the trip. I had used Peterson Brass in the past and have nothing but praise for this brass. No matter how hard I pushed my loads (6.5-300 Wby) primer pockets remained extremely tight and never loosened one bit after multiple loadings. My old 300 Wby load was 86.5 grains of 7828 with a 180 grain bullet (3160 FPS) but wanted to check cases for H20 capacity before I started just changing out brass. Amazingly the Peterson .300 cases weighed 25 grains heavier than the Wby and the H20 Capacity was 6 grains less with Peterson. I started with 2 shots of each load shot over my Oehler beginning with 83 grains which yielded 3050 FPS to try to duplicate the velocity of my old hunting load. At 85 grains in Peterson brass I was duplicating the old 86.5 grain velocity while using Weatherby brass. I continued up by 0.5 grains until I hit the old load of 86.5 of 7828 which yielded 3225 FPS. This was just a test as the primers were showing definite signs of pressure and were completely flat and I settled on 85.5 as my final load giving 3185 FPS. After resizing and repriming this brass, primer pockets were just as tight as the initial loading. In fact I find Peterson brass to have very tight primer pockets which require significant effort to seat a new primer. I have been slowly switching all my brass over to Peterson for this reason as many types of brass, especially nosler, are trash due to loose primer pockets after 2 or 3 firings. I'm making an assumption but I feel the extra 25 grains of brass in those 300 Wby Peterson cases is in the head area making them extremely pressure tolerant
 
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I have been reading this post with interest. I bought a CA 7MM PRC this spring. When breaking in the barrel with factry Hornady 175 gr. edl-x and 180 gr. edl-m, almost all my brass showed signs of pressure. Brass had flatten primers and ejector marks, some worse than others. I just recieved new Peterson match brass to start load testing, not wanting to try reloading cheap soft Hornady brass from factry loads.
 
The loose primer pocket ammo was loaded with165 grain Barnes TTX. It kicked me so bad I refused to shoot it during load work up. He had a gunsmith thread and put a break on it from Australia of all places, it turned into a ***** cat after that. Was fun to shoot.
 
M1A1ABRAMS said:
Or perhaps it's all they can afford at the time. There's quite a difference in price. And you can buy more than 1, 1lb container from the same lot. Just saying.

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Randy Selby gets a lot a flack since he started his YouTube channel but before all that he built me a .300 H&H and gave me that exact same advice/lecture in the same amount of time as in that video. Two years later I talk with him again because the Remington extractor broke. He keeps notes on his builds, and I got that same lecture again in the same amount of time. Now, if you ever loaded the .300 H&H and have become good at it you have graduated from becoming "a reloader to a hand loader.". :)
 
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Culpeper said:
Randy Selby gets a lot a flack since he started his YouTube channel but before all that he built me a .300 H&H and gave me that exact same advice/lecture in the same amount of time as in that video. Two years later I talk with him again because the Remington extractor broke. He keeps notes on his builds, and I got that same lecture again in the same amount of time. Now, if you ever loaded the .300 H&H and have become good at it you have graduated from becoming "a reloader to a hand loader.". :)
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I did speed up his video quite considerably. Still enjoyed the content as a being New to reloading. Greg Orkan has stated the same thing about miking the case for expansion on hot loads.
 
I've tried measuring brass near the case head. I also measure the chamber. New brass vs. once fired/neck sized will be different, after that it didn't change much. Various brands of brass will make a huge difference in 'pressure signs', and no doubt some become dangerous to load with much lower charges. Primers, type and brand, definitely will make a big difference in pressure signs with all other variables kept constant. Manufacturers test loads in special pressure barrels which have different chamber dimensions than most hunting barrels. They also use two different means to measure pressure, one being a copper crush - and these give very different results.
The bottom line is that there really is no way to tell what the pressure of a handload is in a rifle without some kind of instrumentation on it, and a load not exhibiting 'signs of pressure' may or may not be safe, and may be safe in some modern firearms but not others. Thus there really is no way for the handloader to determine if a load is 'safe'. Be conservative, or if you really need the extra few fps, buy a bigger rifle...
Finally there is the issue of 'the most accurate powder tested' posted in some data, and the 'ladder test' many handloaders use. Browning patented the BOSS system which actually tunes the vibration of the barrel to a given load, such that it is at full swing (like on a swingset) and thus doesn't change position (aim point) much with slight changes in velocity. I'm guessing the ladder and or the powder combo for 'most accurate' are two ways to achieve the same 'full swing' point in a given rifle.
These are just my opinions/experiences, not to be relied upon for your own safety.
 

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