IMR 800X does it all?

[abqcaster]

[OnHoPr]

Its a great powder for many circumstances. For many pistola and plinking rifle rounds the Lee dipper method works just fine with it. It can give good medium heavy loads in the bigger pistols. Now, if you are going to be doing a lot of 50 ft pistol competition you might want to weigh the powder or use a different one depending on your own accuracy. For the shotgun it is a good medium heavy load powder. As fiverunfive said it does take up volume in the hull which can be good for different wad columns. In the 20 ga I was a 4756 guy and really like the way Longshot or HS6 would give more case space after loading for more wad or shot. The little idiosyncrasy that I found with it was in home brews of slugs. I got some of my best groups with the powder, not the fastest or hardest hitting, but still good medium heavy slug loads. The powder after it dumps into the hull lays more level than any other powder. So, when you put your powder cup or wacks card on it your column starts off level for the rest of the loading. Upon firing it starts of more level and is less subject to canting the wad column during the travel down the barrel. That pressure at immediate ecksit of the barrel with wad column still pushing the slug the canted wad column can cant your slug off course or possibly make it wobble slightly.

[stillhere]

Another fan of 800x. This is a powder that is both economical to buy and to use. For my 45 Colt New Vaq, 8.5 grains under a 255 gr bullet of my own design really rocks. It's a great powder for my 44 mag loads, and even for my 357 loads. Yep; it meters too poorly to trust the drops without measuring them, and I've noted that many handloaders have sworn off the powder because of that fact. But, to me, if the performance good or great, I'm more than happy to measure each charge.

My experience has been that a lot of powders that meter much better really don't deliver in the performance area, so for me, it's clearly worth a little extra hassle for the performance.

[abqcaster]

FWIW, I have found that 800X meters terribly! BUT, it's very forgiving, so to speak. I get 0.2-0.3 swings in charge weight from my dispensers, however, those only seem to cause ES of less than 100fps in .40S&W and 357mag. It seems to work well enough with the disk measures in my lee Autodisk, but hates the adjustable charge-bar-like insert. It's very cheap and forgiving so, I'll probably be using a lot of it and see where I can also apply it.

[NavyVet1959]

Thus I have never seen 800X as a powder that justifies an 8 lb purchase. Bullseye yeah, but 800x due to its poor geometry seems more suited to niche low volume use. When I used it that's how I employed it.

I like to take advantage of the better per pound price when buying powder, so I try to buy in 8-lb containers if at all possible. I also try to order the maximum 50 lbs that most of the companies allow you to put on a HAZMAT order at one time. If I'm lucky, someone else will go in on the order with me, so I'm not having to buy the entire 50 lbs myself.

According to one post on 10mm-firearm.com, Double Tap is using 12.4 gr of it in their loading with a 135gr Nosler JHP to get 1600 fps (767 ft-lbs). They are using an OAL of 1.2450”.

When I'm making loads at the upper limits of the performance envelope, I'm more likely to weigh each charge, so the metering is not as much of an issue for me.

[Ithaca Gunner]

I'm a fan of 800x myself for handgun and shotgun, I haven't tried it with cast rifle boolits yet. I haven't found it that bad to measure for my use and as stated, it's very forgiving.