Wondering if anyone has had any experience with 700X for reloading .44 Mag.
All I've found is one load with extremely high pressures. How versitile is this powder for a handgun ? I can't find very much info at all on this powder.
Assuming you are asking about loading for handgun?
I went through this recently and all you usually get is a bunch of advice to use a different powder.
I will give my experience. I bought 1000, what turned out to be not-so-good 240 grain cast bullets sized .429. If you decide to buy cast, try and find them sized to .430 or .431 and you will probably have a lot less leading then I did. The over-size helps keep gas cutting to a minimum. I tried 9.0 to 10.5 grains of 700x and the leading was unbelievable out of my 5.5" revolver.
After much searching and some good advice from CGN'er H4831, I started looking at a reduced load of 700x. I started at 5.0 grains and reduced by .5 grains at a time. I got to 2.0 grains without having one stick in the barrel, but the pressure was so low that the powder was not burning completely and I was get a lot of primer residue back into the cylinder, so now I load 4.5 gr and find it works very well.
IIRC, H4831 found that 1.2 grains was enough to get a 240 cast stuck in his 6 1/2" 44.
Another thing I found was that if I drove those 240 cast with a max load of H110 the leading was almost non-existent.
I have also loaded 240 XTP jacketed with 10 gr of 700x, and they seem fine.
FYI, do not try really low loads with jacketed bullets, but I would say you should be fine down to around 5 grains.
Cheers.