.308 Winchester Small Rifle Primer Hangfires

[BudHyett]

The current shortage of large Rifle Primes has brought up a thought of using .308 Winchester brass with the Small Rifle Primer primer pocket.

Background: Many years ago I shot a Savage 110S with R-P Basic Brass in competition. This was an experiment with Small Rifle Primers for possible accuracy gains. I experienced hangfires, noticeable hangfires in time delay. This was with Reloder #7 powder, Winchester Small Rifle primers, and cooler weather.

This could be due to:

• Light primer strike
• Bad lot of primers
• This powder choice needing more ignition.

Has anyone experienced this?

Any expereince or thoughts will be appreciated.

 

[Michael]

I personally have not for the very reasons mentioned above. I did know a few high power rifle silhouette silhouette shooters who formed 7mm-08s from the basic case. They like the accuracy but, only used Rem 7-1/2s, anything else would hangfire. 7-1/2s are right behind LRPs in terms of availability these days.

SRs might do fine with cast using smaller charge weights of faster, easier to ignite powder options. Save the LRs for the big jobs. .

 

[BBerguson]

I have 100 Lapua 308 brass with small pockets. I settled on a good cast bullet load with 16gr of 4227 using pistol primers and dacron to hold the powder against the primer. Haven’t experimented with small rifle or srm primers but I’m going to so I can compare velocity, accuracy and SD.

With that said…. I just shot 3 rounds of 450 bushmaster with an SRM and a full case of Win 296 (40 some grains) and they all ignited fine. Group was total crap, but they fired fine. This case is pretty close in volume to the 308 fwiw.

 

[RBHarter]

I'd bet that most , especially where it's a common GI case , SRP brass works most reliably with a #41 or SRP mag .