Do you have a chronograph sir ? Many serious reloaders consider it essential equipment like I do, - beauty being you can test and tweak loads to your heart's content. Personally, I've always been a fan of Alliant "Unique" which does justabout every ctg I reload (many) well enuf, but in its recent hard-to-get status I went to a powder I bought for experimental purposes, Nobelsport Vectan "A0" powder which is primarily designed for shotgun (like Unique) yet it has a range of applicability in handgun & rifle ctgs quite similar to Unique although loading data is a little sparse. Its burn rate is listed near Alliant "Herco," and using some smarts and a chronograph and some interpolation of widely-published metallic ctg data for Unique and Herco and working-up safe and reasonable loads and testing them for speed and accuracy I don't consider myself at a loss for Unique being hard to find. In fact, I worked-up a 357mag loading for cast 120's in a Handi-Rifle that's about the best loading I ever discovered and it's totally unpublished. This is where a chronograph can be your friend in load development and I highly recommend one. My 2-cents on the topic of everybody having their favorite powders as listed above is fine and valid, but from a longtime experimenter who's gone thru many "specialized powders" in my learning curve I've recently concluded that a bottle of A0 which is cheap and available online can go far to replace a dozen specialized powders, and Unique and Herco too because I've done it with satisfaction it's not only a good standby to have, it's now my Go-To. Be safe and be smart and get a chronograph to proof you're not exceeding accepted velocity specs for any ctg or bullet strength be it cast or plated or jacketed and I've found A0 will prove a wholly acceptable and clean powder (and no stocking magnum primers either, - my intent in my experiments was to trim logistics and K.I.S.S.). If anyone would like to refute anything here have at it.
Respectfully for the community here, - Vincepo in The Poconos.
