Jul/Aug - uspsa

\FILL 0\
R E LOA
By Guy Neill, RELOADING E \PERT
Gu.Neill@seg-outdoor.com
1 've mentioned the new Western
powders from time to time and
have finally had a chance to shoot
some of them. The preliminary results
look very good.
I tried Western's Silhouette powder
in the .38 Super and True Blue in both
the Super and the .40 S&W The worst
velocity correlation I got was 92 percent.
This shows that the velocity
tracks in a predictable pattern with respect
to the charge weight. It is always
nice to have this predictability.
The standard deviations also were
good. They were not quite as good as
some that Western reported, but my
tests were under real conditions. I
made no attempt to position the powder
in the case, not that there was much
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room to play with. In loads making
Major, the Super's case is filled, with
rare exception.
Silhouette is a fine-grain ball powder
which may cause some problems
with powder measures. I have not
tested this aspect extensively as yet, but
the early trials with the new Arredondo
powder slide for the Dillon powder
measure seems to cope. From the data
at hand, Silhouette looks to make Major
using about a grain less powder
than the Vihtavuori 3N37 load I have
been using with the Speer 125 grain
TMJ bullet.
Silhouette is one of four pistol powders
offered by Western. The others are
Zip, True Blue, and Enforcer. Zip is
probably too fast burning for use in the
UPS COD
Super, but it may have some utility in
the .40 or .45 cartridges. Enforcer is a
slow burning powder directed at the
magnum revolver cartridges.
While I felt Silhouette would be the
most likely to work well for the Super,
I also tried True Blue. One feature of all
the Western powders, and especially
True Blue, is the low standard deviations
they produce in developing load
data. True Blue, in Western's testing,
has shown outstanding uniformity.
In the Super, with all other aspects
the same as the tests using Silhouette,
True Blue also yielded a linear correlation
of 92 percent. With equal charge
weights as Silhouette, it gave some 100
feet per second less velocity.. With the
new, lower power factors this may give
it some utility, but for the 175 factor I
believe it is a bit too fast burning.
Still, the vaunted consistency was
apparent. The initia1 low charge gave
the highest deviation at 30, but as the
charge weight increased, the deviation
came down to 10 to 12. Some powders
would be proud of a deviation of 30,
but True Blue appears to easily give
smaller standard deviations.
In the .40 S&W, True Blue may develop
into THE powder. The loads I
tried used the 180 grain cast bullets
from Lightning that I described in a
previous column. The bullets were
consistent in weight. Tests gave a linear
correlation of over 97 percent with this
cast bullet. This is outstanding. Combine
it with a maximum standard deviation
of 14.2 and what more could you
ask for? Okay, you want velocity, too?
My testing topped out at 1,000 feet per
second with the 180 grain Lightning
bullets. That's good enough for a 180
power factor.
One thing that greatly impressed
me about this .40 S&W test was that I
doubled my normal test regimen.
Maintaining the 97 percent correlation
42 FRONT SIGHT • July/August 2000