Remington 308 BR brass/small primer

[gene so]

Hello,

Some Remington BR 308 brass NIB is coming my way by a generous friend. I am told it was produced with a small primer pocket. I appreciate this because I shall be forming it into a slightly smaller wildcat case and the small primer should be a plus. I was told it was made in the '90's.

Has anybody used this brass and compared it to the newer manufactured brass as to uniformity? I've heard of this brass but never seen it.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Gene So

 

[steveno]

the BR brass came with the small primer because it was intended to used to form cases for the 7 MM BR. with a case that small a large primer wasn't needed. there was some thinking that the small primer might give better accuracy.

 

[Offfhand]

Remington's small primer .308 case was introduced at the request of High Power rifle shooters such as myself who were interested in further accuracy development of the .308 Win. cartridge, which at that time was the dominating caliber in competition. Over time however we generally decided that the cons of the small primer concept in a case of that volume about equaled the pros so the idea faded as we moved on other experiments and different calibers. However, the theory comes to life with each new generation, as evidenced by Lapua's recent introduction of a SP .308 case. An upside of Remington's SP .308 case however was experimenters converted it to other calibers, such as the .22 CHeetah, 6mm BR, .22 BR and other calibers that proved successful, and still are. Some of which have become standard off the shelf calibers. It would be rather illogical to assume that the SP .308 case was made just to form 7mmBR cases or any other case configuration because their initial intent was simply to satisfy requests from competition shooters such as myself. In time of course Remington offered factory made brass in 6BR and 7BR and discontinued production SP.308 cases. There was, and still may be, considerable demand for SP .308 Remington brass, but which may have diminished now that SP .308 Lapua is available.

 

[steveno]

the 308 BR brass with the small primer was thinner brass so it could be easily form to the much shorter 7 BR case. Remington never made 7 BR brass or ammo until several years after they introduced the 7 BR. the round would have been a lot better accepted if they would have. I can't think of a better way to ruin a weekend than to form 200 rounds of 308 brass into 200 (hopefully not losing any in the forming process) rounds of 7 BR brass.