Best All Around Handgun Powders For The Newer Reloader??

well hello from the hot lead zone it's fortune cookie 45 llc coming to you from the zone and saying hello to all you shooters and reloaders out there and three circles passengers and members now over on the patreon side what happened is that there's one of our members over there one of our patrons uh name is dick tickles and what happens is that he's always thinking of the rest of you out there in youtube and especially all the new shooters and reloaders out there a lot of new shooters around and a lot of shooters who didn't reload before are wanting to get into reloading now and some of the new shooters actually want to get right into reloading now because of the situation with the shortages in the guns and ammo and all that so that at this time there's a shortage of components and what we're going to talk about today in this video is directed toward the new shooters and reloaders out there because you're looking at powder and you're not finding any and you're looking hard and some of you are finding some isolated powder for example i was checking around today and i found that over at powder valley they actually have some accurate 5744 powder everything else is out of stock so anyway you get a chance to get some powder like 5744 but what's it good for maybe you might out of desperation feel the need to buy some of that because it's it's there but it's not a good powder for you so what dick tickles is suggesting is that let's talk about some powders that you just cannot pass up if you run in any of this powder whether it's on some site somewhere that actually has some or whether it's some person that's a reloader that wants to sell locally and you see a one ad for sale some reloading components including this powder and is that a good powder for you well if these powders are on that list then you gotta jump at it let's talk about some of these powders um what y'all do if you can't get any powder you can't get any primers you're having a hard time locating reloading presses reloading dies because guys are in short supply right now too the only die set i could find was a 30 40 craig and so i actually bought a 30 40 craig dies why because i intend to load that caliber in the future might as well buy the die set now since it's available but all the other common calibers you can't find any right now but what you need to do is to set aside a budget for reloading components and supplies and equipment and whatever that budget is whether it's fifty dollars or whether you save up you got a hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty maybe even two hundred dollars by the time you save up and what you do is you keep that that money readily available so that is its designated funds and when something pops up you can react and jump on it because if you don't it's not going to be there long now you know this is a reloading tray that you just saw a video on that i actually made out of oak a 6 oak plank and also a 2 by 12 so i cut the base out of 2 by 12 and then the top that does the actual reloading tray is made out of the oak plank but you saw this design it's the overhang or cantilever design see this tray is set up for 308 30 odd 6 243 winchester 260 remington 7 millimeter 08 all those kind of calibers based on the 30 odd 6 head diameter which is the same as 308 which is the same as 45 acp so you can load 45 acp in this tray also and it's great for 38 special and 357 magnum so this is high capacity it's got 75 slots for the cartridge cases but it's also got reloading dyes are kept right here on the tray so this is my own design and you see this is all finished now sprayed on two to three coats of polyurethane so you see this is the polyurethane that will keep this well protected including the bottom and notice that it has rubber feet so now that you're all warmed up on reloading let's talk about powder and when we say powder we mean gun powder we say gun powder we actually mean smokeless gun powder what makes these powders powders that you have to have well the first place if you talk about handgun powders the powder has to be good to load the nine millimeter because the nine millimeter is so popular around if the powder that's a must-have powder isn't good for nine millimeter then it's not in the realm of a powder you have to have for rifle it's 223 if the gun powder is not good for 223 it cannot be a powder that you have to have because again with rifles 223 is a common caliber so let's look at handguns first and here's an old standby you can load nine millimeter with this but you can also load many of your most useful handgun calibers now this won't load the big magnums or the 45 colt as well although you could use it but it's not a good magnum powder but because it does so well for all the standard calibers you have to consider alliant bullseye now bullseye's been around since 1898 so it's our longest running gunpowder and it's a very economical powder because it contains 40 nitroglycerin that makes this a double based powder very easy to ignite because it doesn't have any retardants in it but it does have to have stabilizers to control the nitroglycerin and because of that you get a lot of smoke or you get more smoke than a powder that doesn't have all those stabilizers in there now stabilizers is kind of like what they did with dynamite now dynamite is nitroglycerin which is very unstable but they basically mixed it with dirt diatomaceous earth dirt and that was the stabilizer which made the nitroglycerin safer and made dynamite well got stabilizers in here too and that can that makes the nitroglycerin stable but it also gives you a lot of smoke a lot more energy easy to ignite because it doesn't have the retardant so you only use standard small pistol or large pistol primers in there so bullseye is very good for calibers like 45 acp nine millimeter 38 special lighter loads and 357 magnum you can load 40 caliber in it and you can load all the way down into 25 acp with this and you can load light loads in the 44 magnum and 45 colt now here's oh by the way these cans are empty they're empty so it may look like i got a lot of powder here but these are all empty cans anyway must have winchester 231 this powder has 22 nitroglycerin works real well with small pistol primers large pistol primers standard primers and it burns very consistently it's made by extruding the powder like rifle powders but instead of little logs they saw it off in the little flakes that have a little hole in the center this powder burns very consistently so it's the first powder you think about when you're talking about low standard deviation powders so because of that is one of our most accurate powders and it was designed to be dispensed by powder measure measured by volume not by weight so as long as your powder charge does not exceed maximum charges by weight you can go ahead and confidently dispense this powder with powder measures and get a very accurate load if you don't get an accurate load with winchester 231 you got to evaluate your reloading techniques this powder is a must-have for almost any handgun shooter so another part that you think about is on the on the fast burning side and that is a lined red but i like to buy it as a lion promo because promo is generic red dot without the little red dots in there and this makes it a very popular powder because it's so economical promo is the most inexpensive powder that we can buy for handgun loading and it's only available in eight pound jugs so none in here but red dot because of his burning speed can be used in all calibers like alliant bullseye and they only sell on eight pound jugs this is empty jug it's useful in a wide variety of calibers including nine millimeter promo is one you have to consider getting it's a double bass powder it's got 20 percent nitroglycerin and it's flaky bulky so it's really nice powder for loading our bigger cartridges like 45 cold 44 magnum you could load you could load anything up to plus p velocity in any of our cartridges and do it very well with red dot so this is a very good powder for us to use if you get a chance to get some promo the cost on this eight pound jug makes it worthwhile now the next two handgun powders are alliant unique and also hodgdon universal these two are very close to each other in terms of burning qualities and speed and economy and performance you can't go wrong with unique this is so versatile powder that's why they call it unique it can be used in handguns and rifles and reduced loadings it can be used in shot shell reloading and hodgdon universal is right there that's why they call it universal it was made to compete against unique unique's been around for a long time too it buy pr second oldest powder but universal again this is a very versatile powder if you look in your reloading manuals universal loads are all there are almost in every caliber along with unique so you get a chance to get these you gotta go for it now even though these are very close in performance they're not the same kind of powder unique is a double based powder that has 40 percent nitroglycerin universal is a signal based powder which means it doesn't have any nitroglycerin at all in there is it's all nitrocellulose however they burn fairly close to each other now unique doesn't meter well out of powder measures although some powder measures can work well with unique but not all and some reloaders complain about their powder measures not working well with unique universal on the other hand meters well through powder measures now this is a function of the graphite content that makes it slide through powder measures better and universal has that universal also is a cleaner burning powder some shooters some shooters complain about unique being smoky and [ __ ] but universal is like the clay's type of technology burns cleaner so if you got a chance to get either one of these they're both very good but you might like universal better but the beauty of these two powders is their wide versatility and if you look at your reloading manual you'll see why i said that because there's loads for unique and universal in almost all the calibers and that goes for whether you're using jacketed bullets or cast bullets they work well with either one give you a little more information on these two great powders the hydrogen universal was introduced back in 1992 along with clays and international clays and universal clays but you see here it doesn't say universal clays and it pictures a handgun here the reason why was that hodgdon clays was intended for shotguns and international clays was intended for shotguns but universal clays was actually intended for handgun use so why they got a handgun here but whereas clays and international clays are great shotgun powders also useful for a lot of handgun shooting this one was designed to be a handgun powder but it also has shotgun uses now 1992 makes this a relative newcomer for this single base powder whereas unique's been around since like the 1910s but both these powders are in that burn rate where it's perfectly balanced so that in shorter handgun barrels the burn rate allows real good velocities and usefulness across a wide range of bullet weights but also is useful in rifle barrels a longer barrel because the burn rate is such that as the bullets move down the barrel at the velocity they're being pushed the increased powder space allows the pressure curve to work very well for reduced loads in rifles so very useful for that you won't get the highest velocity in rifles using these powders but with cast bullets you can get some very good velocity useful velocity range in the 15 to 2200 feet per second range with these powders and they're balanced perfectly for shotguns as the shot charge goes down the big board barrels that the increase in powder space is perfect for the burning curve to handle shotgun shooting now of course to get the maximum amount of velocity in handguns rifles and shotguns you need to have a slower burning powder to allow that so the pressure curve doesn't get out of control this these powders aren't quite slow enough to allow use in magnum loads for shotguns or rifles of course but for maximum velocity and handguns the same applies these two powders so once again these two powders because the burning rate is balanced so well makes these two powders extremely versatile in their use and these two powders of course then become powders that we really want okay we're gonna divide this video into part one and part two part one is the handgun powders and part two will be the rifle powders because if we combine the two of them in one video is way too long now i know you've got your own favorite powders but remember the criteria is good for nine millimeter but versatile in many other handgun calibers so i would recommend any one of these because you can use these anytime you reload handgun any one of these so good reloading to all of you out there this is fortune cookie 45 llc see you next video on the rifle powders

Channel: FortuneCookie45LC

Views: 73,328

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Id: _VQEHFeSmKM

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021