Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Lil Gun Powder

50 B&M Super Short LilGun is the best powder for it ....450 Bushmaster you can try the rest it will come out the best....works in the 350 Legend but there's some that it doesn't beat....357 Maximum in a T-C and mid weight bullets....357 Mag in a carbine its a top shelf powder....

Have found it doesn't like to be compressed you will loose velocity....

Seems I read where FA put the word out, shooting Lil gun in their revolvers voided the warranty.

I have Lil gun, use 300 MP instead in my K-Hornet.

DF

Lil Gun proved to be one of the most accurate powders in my 458 SOCOM and the 500 S&W mag. H110 worked well too but Lil Gun just shot tighter groups.

Lil Gun gave highest velocity but poor accuracy in .25-20 for me. Actually, my experience has been that pushing the .25-20 beyond traditional velocities is not good for accuracy anyway which, I suspect, is a bullet issue.

I use it in my .500 S&W, great speed and accuracy. I don't shoot more than a cylinder full at a time with that anyway, so I don't worry about overheating.

I think I have used it in .41 Magnum, but don't have that information available here to confirm that.

Lil'Gun has become the go to powder for the 450 Bushmaster and 45 Raptor. I load for both but have yet to try Lil'Gun due to the reputation for burning out throats on FA revolvers. The Raptor operates at over 60K psi and this has been the zone where the FA problems developed. My Raptor has a Krieger barrel and given its cost, have been protective of it.

I know from another board that coyotewacker has used Lil'Gun with great success and has urged me to try it. Given that both the Bushmaster and Raptor have been in use for several years now with no reported Lil'Gun throat issues I suspect the conclusion that the cylinder gap/forcing cone may be the catalyst to the FA damage is accurate.

I am finally going to try Lil'Gun to see how my rifles like it.

It performed well in a 218 Bee Ruger No. 1 for me.

I have had problems with it in a 221 Fireball rifle and an XP100. Some very good groups with 45gr bullets, but also some blown primers with loads that were well under max listed. I have given up on it. Others have reported consistency issues with it too.

Jerry

Jerryv,

In contrast, I had great results with LG in my .221 Fireball Remington 700 Classic, especially with 40-grain bullets. In fact it turned out to be the standard powder in my rifle, though friends had some .221 rifles that preferred RL-7.

In a more general comment, I'm not as much of a handgun loony as some, though use them quite a bit. The two I often use LG in are a 4" Taurus .44 Magnum with 270-grain Speers and my 7-1/2 Blackhawk Bisley .45 Colt with 250-300 grain bullets. (Don't laugh at the Taurus--bought it after John Taffin gave one a thorough workout and declared it very good. That's how mine has worked out for a number of years now.)

Also have used it in the .17 Hornady Hornet, where it proved a little too fast-burning. Used it almost exclusively in the .22 Hornet since around 2000, until the last buying panic, when I switched to Alliant MP-300, to save my dwindling supply of Li'l Gun for loading the 28-gauge.

Most recently used it during the last month, while working up loads with super-dense tungsten shot in the 20-gauge, where it worked great.

Oh, and have also used LG in the .410, where it worked too. Surprise!

Here are some of my load notes I thought were special:

3) Hodgdon max load for LIL'GUN 158 gr. XTP
357 mag, 1.58" OAL, 15 gr.

a) Colt Police Positive 38 Special, 158 gr. LSWC
26 gr. [case full], CCI450 small rifle mag primers, fired hundreds,
kicks like a 44 mag

Then I repeated the work up with a chronograph in 2004

C) Colt Police Positive 38 Special 4" barrel:
1) cheap reloads mixed brand brass 158 gr. JHP, 830 fps
2) 18 gr. LIL'GUN 158 gr. XTP 1.59", WSPM, 1173 fps
3) 23.5 gr. LIL'GUN 158 gr. XTP 1.59", WSPM, 1155 fps

The more LIL'GUN I put in a 38 special, the harder it kicked, and the more noise it made... that did not mean the bullet was going faster.
That was embarrassing. My extra powder was going into extra muzzle fireball.

I wrote to Hodgdon and asked why they had no 158 gr cast loads for LIL'GUN and the 357 mag.
They wrote back that they tried it, but it was melting the bullet base.

My CZ527 22 Hornet loves Lil' Gun with most any 45 gr. bullet. And I just loaded up some 150 gr. 300 BO with it, but haven't had a chance to try those yet.

Been trying it for heavy .45 Colt revolver (Ruger Only) loads. It's been okay so far. But I'm not done experimenting with the rest of the powders I have on hand.

I may just save it for fast 250-260gr loads.

I've used it in both .45 Colt and .32 H&R Mag with good results.

Li'l Gun is very versatile in my experience. Have used it in shotshells in .410, 28 and 20 gauge, the last with hard tungsten shot. Have used it in rifle rounds including the .17 Hornet, .22 Hornet, .22 K-Hornet, .221 Fireball, .25-20, and .300 Ham'r, and in revolver rounds from .357 Magnum to .45 Colt. It has worked in all of them, though in some applications a little better than others. A good example is the .17 Hornet. It's not quite as good there as some other powders, but it can get you by.

Yeah, I used it for reduced loads in .223 with 40's. Started with .221 Fireball loads and worked up a bit past FB maximum. it was actually faster than i wanted so I dropped down to about 14 gr.

I like it for .300 Blackout supersonic loads with 125 gr Sierras.

There was an eight pounder in the reload shop today.

Works great in 450 Bushmaster and my 357 Maximum encore

I liked it in an old 221 FB I had.

Would really send 40s out the spout fast with 15g of powder.

Shot nicely in my 357, but turned the gun into a griddle. Will try it next in my Contender 357 MAX.

Li'L Gun was one of he two best powders in a Remington 700 Classic .221 FB I shot for a couple of years. (The other as Reloder 10-X, which also seems to work well in .221's.)

I tried loading Hornady 158 grain XTP in .357 magnum and followed Brian Pierce‘s loading data exactly. It blew a primer at the starting load, 17 grains iirc. My rifle is a Rossi 92 clone. Went back to 2400 in the rifle.