308 Alpha brass - small vs large primer

[excess]

I'm starting from scratch on some 308 loads and going to pick up a couple hundred pieces of Alpha brass. Should I get small or large primer brass? I'll be buying primers so what i have on hand is not a factor. Also, the rifle has a small firing pin already.

As far as use I'll be using this for 600 yards F-TR club matches.

 

[spife7980]

If youre going F-TR I would go small primer as that will allow you more meat in the case head which should be capable of more pressure. Since you are limited in how much performance you can milk out of it by the rules of F-TR the additional case head meat will hopefully allow you to reach the next node up before pressure issues manifest themselves giving you a leg up on where you would be at with a lower node.

Thats not to say that you are guaranteed to find the upper node as accurate as a lower node, but if accuracy is the same the additional velocity might give you a leg up on the competition. Or at least on the same leg as the competition because most are going to be trying to do the same thing to gain any advantage possible.

 

[Clark]

.. small primer as that will allow you more meat in the case head which should be capable of more pressure. ..

I did that with Lapua Palma brass necked down to 260 and turned the necks. While breaking in the barrel with CFE223, I found a CCI450 magnum small rifle primer could not set off more than 40 gr of the coated ball powder.

 

[5RWill]

Been wondering this myself. My brother is building a 308 and while we have lots of 308 brass both lapua and nosler with large rifle primer i can't help but think that small rifle would be more beneficial, especially after shooting the 6.5x47 for a while now and seeing the induction of the 6.5CM with small rifle primer brass. Been thinking of tell him to go small rifle.

 

[TAMU20]

What is the advantage to using a small rifle primer?

 

[mpk1996]

based on the testing, one wont be more or less accurate or give better SD/ES than the other. the only advantage will be a little additional case life. since you have a small firing pin and need to buy primers, I would prob go with the SRP brass

 

[Clark]

The small primer pockets in 6mmBR allow me to use very high pressure.
My guess is from Quickload and work ups, and things going wrong:
308 case head with large primer, threshold of short brass life 70 kpsi
223 case head with small primer pocket, threshold of short brass life 80 kpsi
6mmBR case head with small rifle primer, threshold of primer pierce 85 kpsi

 

[GhengisAhn175]

Just scored first in my class this past weekend shooting 600 FT-R

Used alpha SRP. Had a hot load.. but my alpha brass shot very very well.

I just neck turned to skim .001/.0015 off the necks and backed my charge down a hair