Powders for snubbies

[Bill in Oregon]

Having brought home a Charter Arms Bulldog in .44 Special, I am wondering now about optimal powder selection for the 2.5-inch barrel. Brass, dies and the Lee 429-200 RF mold arrived yesterday, and cast some slugs today, mixed up some Ben's Liquid Lube and will be ready to load tomorrow. I am not looking for much more than 750 fps per M.L. McPherson's article. I know this will be easy with Trailboss, but I am curious what other powders would be good choices to deliver accuracy without a lot of flash and recoil. Have Universal Clays and Unique, of course. Thoughts?

[Blaine]

I have an unopened 8lb jug of Red Dot I'd be tempted to use....

[Catshooter]

If you have Universal Clays, you have your answer. It is a flash-suppressed powder, burns just slightly faster than Unique and has a very forgiving pressure curve. I love it and use it in all my pistols and some of my rifles.


Cat

[Sixgun]

231------6

[ollogger]

Been using a lot of TiteGroup lately & like the heck out of it!!


Brad

[BrianSH]

In McPherson's article he makes a passing remark about Power Pistol. PP is known in the industry as Bullseye 84. Bullseye because it looks like BE. 84 because it was formalized in 1984.

Anyway, in an article in Handloader a few years ago, a CCI rep said that they load more PP/BE84 than ALL other powders combined. You can load it from 380 to light magnums, across the board.

This is gonna get me banned, but PP replaces Unique. Use 1/2 to 1gr more than Unique, meters better, and cleaner.

I really like 8gr PP loaded short in 44magnum cases under a 240 cast. Out of my 4" 629, it runs 957 fps and I hit well with it. This is a Max 44 SPECIAL load in the Alliant data sheets. Sometime later, Brian Pearce did an article stating he liked this load +or - in his magnums as plinkers. I have no intention of shooting this in my Charter. Not because of damage to the gun, but arthritis runs in the family and I don't want to excelerate things. I've always had to "work my way up" before a handgun hunt.

I had a friend in the Air Force that liked Green Dot in his 7" Super BlackHawk. He only shot "specials" and like GD because it didn't have the "bark" other powders had. You've got to go back a few years to find GD data in the books, including Hercules.

Lastly, these days the Speer books have a snubby section to accompany the full size load data for the respective revolvre sections. - Brian

[marlinman93]

Unique, Red Dot, Green Dot, all work well for me!

[JB]

There are newer powders, but Unique works well for me for short barreled revolvers.

[wolfdog]

When I had my Bull dog mostly shot 200 grain JHP over 7 grains of Unique.

[retmech]

While Power Pistol works great it's known for being flashy. If you want all the benefits of PP without the flash use BE86, it's flash suppressed.

[BrianSH]

[quote="retmech"]While Power Pistol works great it's known for being flashy. If you want all the benefits of PP without the flash use BE86, it's flash suppressed.[/quote

I've wondered where BE86 fits in. I haven't put in much effort to find data on it as I've got enough various powder for a few years now.
Being the contrarian that I am, Flashy can be good. Night blindness has shown not to be much of a factor, and when I did LFI back in '89, we did some night fire with and without flashlights. It is possible to use your muzzle flash to get a stroboscopic sight picture good enough to make corrections with. Not as good as lighted fire, but accurate enough just the same. - Brian