I have some beautiful boolits made up with this mold (the Johnson SWC) and gas checked and lubed they come in at 161 grains. I am trying to come up with a mid range magnum load with these using powders I have on hand. I started with Unique and tried 6, 6.5 and 7 grains today without much success. The hits on target began to approach a group as the powder charge went up, but even the 7 grain load was less than impressive. I would be willing to go higher, but it seems like every load manual I can find with unique and a lead bullet tells me that 6 grains is the max. Alliant lists a 158 grain jacketed bullet as maxing out at 7.7 grains, but not sure how well that would translate to a gas checked lead boolit.
So I would appreciate any wisdom that people might wish to contribute on this one. How much higher can I go with Unique? I can switch to another powder that I have on hand (HP38, Longshot, Universal seem like candidates).
Incidentally, I tested a few lil gun loads in the 357 carbine with Sierra 158 grain JSPs. At 16.5 grains of powder it was very accurate. Given what I have seen for published velocities out of shorter barrels (mine is 24"), this load was probably screaming out of the barrel at close to 2000 FPS. Should be the bees' knees for hogs inside 100 yards.