Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters REDUCE LOADS

The LEE reloading manual has a good section on developing reduced loads.

I like 4198 for reduced loads. RL7 seems pretty good too. 3031, Varget, and 4895 have also worked well for me. For real light loads, 700x has worked well but I've only used it in the 35 Whelen, with 158's. 1100 fps and very accurate at 50 yd. GD

Turn off the "Caps lock" please

Why tag a 6+ year old thread and bring it back too life?

One thing the Chemo did was put a few holes in my memory. When it comes to reloading, that can be dangerous. I was rummaging around the cabinet the other day and found an unused pound of Blue Dot and could not figure out why it was there. I decided it was probably some hair-brained idea I'd picked up on the 'Campfire and started investigating. After 15 minutes, I found my way to some of Seafire's posts.

I TAGGED the ones that caught my interest.

I figure the Blue Dot came from reading about replicating various .22 loads in a .223 REM using Blue Dot. Specifically, I thought about seeing if a .22 Hornet was worth a try by simulating it.

As to this post, 4198 is very interesting to me. I've been using H4895 for nearly everything over the past 20 years. I got into it initially with the Garand, but soon had all my deer rifles using it. My sons grew up using H4895 in their deer rifles as well. H4895 has become expensive and hard to find. So I'm looking for alternatives.

Following - good information in this thread.

Because there is some good, still relevant information in it!

Go over to the Hodgdon site and read up on reduced loads using H4895. Then take a look at their 270 Win/130 gr load data.

I don't think this type of info goes "stale"

Just curious, can cast bullet data be used for jacketed bullets safely" ie: 3011, 5744. 4198?

I've used data for cast bullets, but you need to be careful about maintaining a minimum velocity. A non-bonded jacketed rifle or pistol bullet fired in a rifle can leave the jacket stuck in the barrel. I've shot jacketed bullets down to around 1,200 fps without problems. I wouldn't use a load that says you'll get less than that.

all day long....your pressures with the upper end loads, will only be in the 30,000 ish to 40,000 ish ranges with most of the cast bullet load manuals..

unless you know what you are doing, don't spend time seeing how slow you can go...

but people freaking out about getting a Squib load, to me is silly, unless someone is trying to get down to 300 to 500 fps...

Use your head for something besides a hat rack as my grand dad use to say...

<^>

I am looking for a reduced load for my Whelen to use for plinking and general off hand practice. I have 1500-2000 Sierra 180 357 bullets left over from my 357 Max shooting days and think they would work good for this. What I need is a powder load, something that will be under 2000fps to keep it mild. Hopefully the powder is one that can be bought now days.

If you have any IMR 4759, according to the Speer reloading manual, 24 gr., 130 gr bullet pushing at 2000 fps. I know the powder is discontinued, but there’s still some out there if you can find some.
https://reloadingdata.speer.com/downloads/speer/reloading-pdfs/rifle/270_Winchester_130.pdf

This stuff is all very interesting to me. Making one gun do multiple jobs makes some guns obsolete though!

consult cast bullet manuals...plenty of info there...

what you are doing is not that odd of an application...

lots of people shoot 357 bullets out of 35 caliber rifles... 35 Remington, 356 and 358 Winchesters, 35 Whelen...

Might also mention that in 2018, a year after this old thread initially appeared, my Big Book of Gun Gack II was published, which has an entire chapter on reduced loads, including more details on much of the stuff that's been mentioned here, along with a bunch of loads for 20 cartridges from the .17 Hornady Hornet on up. It can be ordered from our website, www.riflesandrecipes.com.

A number of readers have told me there's some other useful information in GGII.