It has been a while since I've posted here. I was a heavy poster and tester for the CBI powder a few years back. In fact the CBI powder is what pushed me to buy the LabRadar chronograph. Over the past few years I've accumulated some powders and one of those was 700x. It was touted by the president of Hodgdon powders as good replacement for the very rare Bullseye powder. But powder loads for 700x were rare and the Hodgdon website only shows loads for 2 124grn bullets, neither of which I will ever buy! So I went through my inventory of plated bullets and found I had plenty of both Berry and X-treme 124grn 9mm round nose and decided it was time to work up a load for them. Forum data reports on 700x were searched and factory data seemed to show that loads between 3.8 and 4.2 should be usable. So I made up some bullets (I did just use the X-treme bullets for this test) and headed to the range on Monday 11Sep2023.
First I did 4 separate tests with my three loads (3.8, 4.0 and 4.2) and Federal Factory ball 115grn ammo. All tested with my stock Glock 17 Gen 4. OAL was 1.14ish some were as long as 1.15 before I adjusted down a bit.
I will post those individual load results later, all functioned fine. Then I grabbed all of my leftover rounds loaded them in my Colt Commander LW (it can be picky about chambering some ammo) and fired the remaining group past the LabRadar. 32 rounds as recorded below:
Shot ID
V0 V15 V25 PF15 Proj. Weight
1 1031 1011 1003 125.36 124
2 1039 1031 1026 127.84 124
3 1006 998 994 123.75 124
4 1025 1019 1015 126.36 124
5 879 865 859 107.26 124
6 894 888 884 110.11 124
7 928 917 912 113.71 124
8 921 910 902 112.84 124
9 906 902 899 111.85 124
10 901 895 890 110.98 124
11 897 891 886 110.48 124
12 913 895 874 110.98 124
13 947 938 931 116.31 124
14 942 929 920 115.2 124
15 975 961 952 119.16 124
16 883 878 875 108.87 124
17 883 872 865 108.13 124
18 923 919 916 113.96 124
19 911 907 905 112.47 124
20 950 932 920 115.57 124
21 975 960 949 119.04 124
22 921 912 906 113.09 124
23 1001 989 978 122.64 124
24 1018 1011 1005 125.36 124
25 1029 1021 1013 126.6 124
26 997 991 988 122.88 124
27 978 968 964 120.03 124
28 1043 1035 1029 128.34 124
29 1009 999 992 123.88 124
30 1023 1014 1009 125.74 124
31 1044 1030 1025 127.72 124
32 1138 1124 1114 139.38 124
Now, how is the helpful? Well it shows that over a wide load range of 3.8 to 4.2grns it produces a useable bullet that functions well. The last round felt a little stronger and I knew it was going to read higher. My guess is this one is close to 4.4grn but it was below 1300fps.
Edit--- After reviewing the results, I realized that a .2 grain increase in powder should result in a approximately 100fps increase. I would expect to see approximately 1150fps from 4.2grns. So shot #32 is probably a true 4.2grn load of 700x.
Powder measurement, well it sucks, it varies a bit. On one forum the poster stated he removed his powder baffle, I am going to that this week and I will follow up with what I learn. I'm using a Dillon 650XL all Dillon dies except I'm using the Lee FCD. I had a problem with my coated bullets tumbling but that stopped when I started using the FCD a couple of years ago.