JimTom wrote:Thanks JohnV, I have some federal small rifle primers. The loads I shoot out of my 357 Mag lever action are quite mild so hopefully they will be suitable as a replacement.
Interesting to read in the other thread that CCI small Pistol magnum are the same as CCI small rifle primers.
They may be dimensionally the same but magnum primer compound usually has more ground up glass powder in it to create longer hot sparks to better penetrate the powder and set off hard to ignite powders . Yes ground up Glass ! That is why some magnum primer loads are a bit dirty compared to standard primers , it's the extra garbage in the magnum compound . Short case like .357 with fairly fast powders should not need a magnum primer .
Primer flash tests , the hot sparks are red hot glass .
https://www.6mmbr.com/primerpix.html You can see that the Remington 7 1/2 primer is really a magnum primer and I reckon they would be hard on barrels but they do hold pressures well .