I once made a light load of 9mm using True Blue powder. My load data was from Gordon’s Reloading Tool, so I wanted to start somewhere safe. My first round rolled out of the slide and landed at my toes. No boolits got stuck in the barrel.
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That was a fast powder, but now I’m looking at Ramshot Enforcer in a .357 Mag. I noticed that the flash hole is always buried in powder, even when shooting down hill. So the powder must be burning from one end to the other, like a cigarette. True Blue does not burry a flash hole, so the primer spark passes along the full length of the cartridge basically lighting all powder at once. Now if I had Enforcer fill about half the case, the primer spark would pass over the powder and it would not burn like a cigarette - kaboom?
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I have an NOE-360-160-WFN mold. The lead WFN, is a tad shorter than the 158 grain jacketed hollow point used in the load manual. I got the length of the bullet from GRT, and calculated a 4% decrease in case fill (~10% less powder over the flash hole. I think this is a safe starting point, but I don’t want to go any lower. I won’t be shooting downhill, so that’ll give me some safety factor, a CCI500 SPP to discourage a long spark, and a light roll crimp.
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What do you guys think? Maybe I just need a Lyman mold for their load data on this one.
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