Republic Ammunition -- Servicios y Avent sp Primers

[earlmck]

A few weeks ago somebody here pointed us toward Republic Ammunition's deals in Argentinian-made primers. I ordered up a batch, plus they had "deals" in once-fired brass of both 40 S&W and 45 ACP with the small primer pockets which I also got batches of.

A virus producing the world's nastiest cough has laid me low for several weeks now so just yesterday I finally got out to shoot some of that ammo to compare primer performance. I had a few winchester small pistol primers left, so loaded some of those with my regular W244 loads in both 44 S&W and 45 ACP. And then the same with the Servicios y Aventuras Small Pistol Primers. Mixed headstamp stuff so not gonna' give great consistencies but I can report there was no detectable difference in velocity or consistency between the WSP and the S&A primers (little Garmin radar-chronograph sure is nifty!). I was using Lee's 175 grain Tumble Lube 40 cal bullet and Lee's 230 grain RN 45 bullet. The Glock 40 didn't like the Lee bullet at all -- more of a "pattern" than a "group" but the S&W 40 (an apparently shameless copy of the Glock) shot it fine. The 45 Glock shot the 230 Lee just fine with both primers. The Charles Daly 45 shot both quite fine.

If you need some small pistol primers I'd say you won't go wrong with those Servicios y Aventuras Small Pistol Primers.

And thanks for the "heads up" on that Republic Ammunition outfit, whoever did it. (Sorry for forgetting who gets the credit). I am tickled to finally get that danged 45ACP away from my dwindling stash of large pistol primers which the low-volume case certainly does not need.

[Scott Tschirhart]

I’ve gone through more than a thousand of those primers now and I haven’t seen any reason to criticize them. Good to go.

[JimT]

I’ve gone through more than a thousand of those primers now and I haven’t seen any reason to criticize them. Good to go.

Me too.

[earlmck]

I consider it disrespectful that I made the claim that "I saw no particular difference" in the primers when I should have given you the data to draw your own conclusions. All I can say is that I was (still am) suffering from the effects of a nasty virus and feel lower than snake poo.

Here's the comparison data:

S&W 40 cal, 5.1 gr. W244, 175 Lee WSP primer -- 12 shots, Ave vel = 1023, ES 62, SD 17
S&A primer -- 12 shots Ave vel = 1026, ES 31, SD 11

Glock 40 cal, 5.1 gr. W244, 175 Lee WSP primer -- 12 shots Ave vel = 1021, ES 27, SD 8
S&A primer -- 12 shots Ave vel = 1029, ES 41, SD 13

I should have sorted out a batch of same headstamp cases to do the tests but I didn't. So this is all "mixed headstamp" data so kinda' large SD's to be expected.

I did a fair bunch of shooting with a couple 45 ACP's with ammo loaded into small-primer pocket cases using the S&A primers and all seemed quite fine but I didn't have direct comparison loads made, so no data to report other than "shot fine" for the 45 auto.