Does anyone reload the small primer 45ACP brass? Any difference in loading and performance?

I have used it "just to see" and it works fine. It is mostly once fired "win-Clean" brass as I recall. I generally toss them now becasuse my case feeder can't recognize the difference and trying to cram a large pistol primer into a small cup really slows down the process

Yes. They load fine. But when you are loading them on a progressive press, it won't prime! If you have a lot of them, just load them up normal. If you have a few of them, along with the normal large primer, I'd toss or sell the small primer brass.

I sort them when I take them out of my tumbler and set them aside until I have enough to make since of changing the primer tube/etc. Then, I load them up and shoot them in matches when I cannot pick up brass, or just don't want to. Velocities are identical in my guns.

Google *DDNP = diazodinitrophenol

IIRC ,It is the industries attempt to make a "green" lead free primer and save some money by switching to small primers.

As with all changes there were some unintended consequences. The Lead Free or "green" primers are a bit hotter. This was causing the bullets to jump before the powder really took off so they had to reduce the amount of primer mix by going to a small primer, and enlarge the primer flash hole at the base of the case.

If you look at the flash hole of a .45 ACP with the small primer it will be enlarged over the .45 ACP that uses a large primer. You should be using the new primers in the small .45ACP primers pockets.

Remington stamps a small LF on the primer.

Federal stamps NT on the case.

Winchester - some Super Clean ammo uses a blue primer sealer instead of the typical red color.

CCI..not sure. I know they are using it in Blazer because I saw some .45 ACP at the range the other day with the small primer in it and I was like "WTF?"

That started some research on this and this is pretty much what I found out.

I'm suppose you can use standard pistol primers, but I'm not sure what effect the enlarged flash hole will have with them. You may want to try standard and magnum pistol primers and see how they shoot if you cannot get the new style primers.


If I still shot a .45 I'd load a bunch of them up in different ways and chrono them to see if there was any effect. I would bet there would be very little difference, if any at all, between all of them.

That's what my chrono said... no noticeable difference in (my) 5" barrel.

Outstanding, thanks for the confirmation.

Thanks for all the info and responses guys. I've got all my small primer 45s clean, primed and ready to load. I'm curious to get out to the range with these. I'm glad I kept these around, gives me a chance to try something new.

By the way, all of this brass is Blazer or Federal.

You won't have any problems with it.

I've had a few mixed in with my other 45 brass and just tossed them.

I'm saving mine until I have a few hundred so I don't know yet if I will reload them or sell them
it might be nice, though only having to keep small pistol primers around since that is the only round I load that takes the large