Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns +P .38 Special handload question (lead 158gr)

I found 3 loads I'm looking at-

1. 6 Grains of Power Pistol (Speer #13)
2. 10 grains of H2400 (A Reloading Man. for .38 Sp.)
3. 8.4 grains Blue Dot (A Reloading Man. for .38 Sp.)

Anyone have experience with any or all of these 3?

If yes,would be interested in your comments, thanks.

Of the three you list I've only used the 10.0 of 2400 but it was extremely accurate in every .38 Special revolver I tried it in with 158/160 grain cast bullets, including the Speer swaged 158 SWC, Oregon Trail commercial and my own cast from a Lee or Accurate mold. It gave right around 1000 fps in a couple of different 4" Smith Model 15's.

I use 8.2 grains of Blue Dot behind a Sierra 140 grain JHP. It's a zippy load. Runs a bit more than 1000 fps from my 4 inch Model 19.

I hair have used a lot of 2400. Good results as Jim pointed out.

Ive been getting mid 9s with green dot. 3.5 to3.7 gr according to the Lee manual. 6 inch barrel.
They also list AA5 5.6 TO 6.2 for 1000
HERCO 4.4 TO 4.7 FOR 965

Thanks! Have some power pistol so will try that one first and see how it goes with the LCR.

It will go loud and flashy

What have you found that gets the velocity without the flash bang? Personally I've not fired off any PP at night so haven't noticed the extra flash. And with muffs on it doesn't seem any louder than BlueDot or Bullseye. With muffs off I can't half hear anyway. Maybe I need to broaden my horizons.

It is just a question of how much. No need to broaden one's horizons if one is happy.

Maybe so, but I've heard this a number of times. "Book" numbers for PP are pretty good for a lot of cartridges. I load 9mm, .40. .38 Sp with it. Seems fairly clean and meters pretty well. Now I'm not an expert at pistol cartridge loading just going by the little bit of experience I have. But for the life of me I can't figure how to tell the difference in BANG with PP vs BANG with the same cartridge at similar velocity with similar powder weight but a different powder. Not jerking your chain, just trying to science out this conundrum. Now flash is another deal altogether and in low light I can understand how that may come to be.

Blue Dot will light up the night like the Fourth of July also.

Several other handgun powders claim to be "low-flash" or "flash suppressed," BE-86, Silhouette and Zip among them. How effective they are I don't know from personal tests.

My own observations indicate that the smoke from bullet lube mitigates flash quite a lot, BUT the OP didn't actually ask about that.

Highly recommend either 6.4gr of AA#5 or 7.0gr of HS-6 behind a 158gr SWCHP. Also known as the "FBI Load".

Don

Power Pistol for me in +P.
This is my field pistol silhouette load.
Shot 63 of 80 first time out.
LRN 160 Power Pistol GR6.3 LO941 HI969 AVG955 ES28 SD9.07