unburned win 231 powder

[xtrmn8tr]

hi
what exactly will isee if my win 231 powder is not burning all the way?...ihave seen light greenish tan win 231 spheres...is this unburned...or just spent or exhausted powder?...can somebody shed some light on this for me?

[bruce381]

unburned perhaps load is not crimped enough to get good ignition.

[BoolitBill]

I have always had good ingnition and burn from 231. When I look down the barrell it is empty. Sometimes I have had unburned powder left in the barrel when shooting 2400 or IMR 4227 and it looks like granules of powder in the barrel. My feeling is if there is powder in the barrel then it was an incomplete burn no matter what color it is or what it looks like.

[beagle]

Same here on WW231. Always burns clean for me./beagle

[MtGun44]

W231 is so fast, I'd be surprised if it is unburned. I have shot a lot of it in .45 ACP over
the years and never any unburned.

Bill

[felix]

Green means very poor ignition, with double base powders especially, because of the nitroglycerin. ... felix

[lwknight]

There will always be some unburned powder. If you don't believe it , just put a white paper a few feet in front of your firing line and see what lays on the paper after a few rounds.

[xtrmn8tr]

i wasn't using any crimp...so maybe its the reason i'm seeing the unburned powder!...wadda ya think? how much crimp should i be using?

[runfiverun]

greenish brown indicates not near enough pressure to completely burn all the powder.
if your trying something like 2 grs in a 38 to shoot cowboy.
you need to up the load.
a too light load is as dangerous as a too heavy load.
i have only twice seen unburned powder, once from not enough powder to get it up into it's pressure zone and once my ignition wasn't enough and i needed a hotter primer to get it going before the boolit moved too far away [which could have been done through neck tension]

[lwknight]

a too light load is as dangerous as a too heavy load.

OOHHSSSHHH!!! Here we go again.

[runfiverun]

i took part in the lets see how slow we can go thing too.
but if you can't get 231 to burn you are waaay too low in pressure.

[Rocky Raab]

Yup. Too light a bullet, too light a charge, too little crimp/neck tension, too small a bullet diameter - in any combination.

Fix any or all those things first. Using a hotter primer to overcome a fundamental load flaw is not the best solution.

[Cadillo]

i took part in the lets see how slow we can go thing too.
but if you can't get 231 to burn you are waaay too low in pressure.

That has been my experience as well. I load more 231 than any other pistol powder. If my loads are too light, I will get some unburned powder. When loaded a little hotter, 231 burns a lot cleaner.

[oldracer]

I have been loading 3.5gr of W231 in both 38spcl and 357 cases with DEWC of both commercial and my own casting and have had little or no unburned powder. I tried CCI, Winchester (regular and magnum) and Wolf and the only difference was the CCI needed a little harder firing pin strike to fire. As far as on-bench accuracy at 25 yards all the primers gave approximately the same grouping as did the bullets. The commercial bullets with solid lube do smoke a ton more than my cast ones with Lee liquid lube. I hope this helps some.

[44man]

OOHHSSSHHH!!! Here we go again.
Well, yes, too light and you could stick a boolit in the bore and when slamming boolits down range you are sure going to shoot another behind it. That is the danger in that CA game. They should be required to use loads like real cowboys used. Seems to me they tried to get as much power as they could out of a gun, not the other way around.
Unburned powder of any kind is no good because of the differences from shot to shot. If all burns with one shot but not the next, all you do is spray boolits.
They should at least have a power factor to put every shooter on an even footing. Gaining speed by reducing recoil to nothing is silly. Why not use an air gun?
Pop, poop and run down range to use your finger to move the boolit in line with the plate! :veryconfu What is that all about?

[fredj338]

i wasn't using any crimp...so maybe its the reason i'm seeing the unburned powder!...wadda ya think? how much crimp should i be using?

There you go. I crimp everything in a handgun. You get only 2"-8" of bbl, you need to delay the burn as much as you can, even w/ faster powder like W231. Loading below midrange also causes more unburned powder w/ any powder, even uberfasts. If you are trying to make mousefart loads, try heavier/longer bullets. They require more pressure to move down the bbl & help to delay the powder burn a tiny bit longer.