New .308 Lapua Palma
Accurate Shooter reports that Lapua will soon introduce a .308 Winchester case that uses small primers instead of large rifle primers.
Adam Braverman of Nammo-Lapua just confirmed that Lapua, at the behest of the U.S. Palma team, has been quietly developing a NEW version of the .308 Winchester cartridge that has a small BR-style primer pocket. That’s right, this is no joke. Lapua has crafted small primer pocket .308 Winchester brass that will be introduced at SHOT Show in Las Vegas (Jan. 19-22).
Apparently small primers are more consistent than large primers and therefor more accurate. It won't be long till we see wildcats based on this case.
More info at Accurate Shooter.
This is interesting, and I think there may be something too the small rifle primer thing. They’ve done it on the 6.5 Grendel (7.62×39 case), the 6.8 SPC (.30 American case), and now the .308. I wonder if most .308 rifles will work with such a case though. The firing pins are bound to be larger in diameter and longer in protrusion than a rifle or action designed for Small Primers, which could lead to punched primers. Vee j’al zee!
I presume this cartridge would function in ordinary .308 Winchester caliber rifles?
If so, a similar small pocket primer .243 Winchester cartridge would be a good seller, IMHO.
Remington offered something similar for a while. However, it wasn’t marketed for use as a .308. Instead, it was intended to be used by handloaders to fabricate the shorter .22 BR and 6mm BR cases.
Some wildcatters did use the full-length case. One example was the .22 CHeetah. (The capital ‘CH’ indicates the creators, gunwriter Jim Carmichel and RCBS founder Fred Huntington.)