powder questions

kg said:
700X will give you fits in 9mm if you use a LEE Auto-Disk measure, sadly.

Have a look at Hodgdon's Data Center to get an idea of the compromises you will make. Reloading manuals are good reads too and might make things more obvious :).
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I have a Lee auto-disk what problems is there with the 700x ? That's what I have for 9mm but haven't loaded any pistol rounds yet.
 
kodiakattack said:
I have a Lee auto-disk what problems is there with the 700x ? That's what I have for 9mm but haven't loaded any pistol rounds yet.
Click to expand...

I have found that when loading light loads of bulky powders with the auto-disk it periodically drops only a 1/3 to 1/2 charge. This may be a case of what is sometimes referred to as 'bridging', where the bulky structure of some powders causes it to randomly clog in the measure because of the small powder cavity. Only part of it drops into the case. This also seems to happen with stick type rifle powders which do not flow smoothly. I was using Alliant Promo (a bulky flake powder) for my 9mm loads (about 3.4 gr.) and maybe 1 or 2 in 50 would suffer this problem. I never got an actual squib because the rounds always cleared the barrel but they were noticeably lighter than the others. I used the same powder for my 45 ACP loads but at around 3.9 gr. and never had the problem so it appears that the Lee disk cavity for 3.9 gr. was big enough that the clogging couldn't occur. The bulkier the powder the more this seems to be an issue with the auto-disk, especially with light loads. Conversely, I drop loads of Alliant Bullseye (a fairly fine granular powder) with charge weights as low as 1.6 gr. out of the auto-disk and never have this problem occur. I switched to 231 (also a finer grained powder) for my 9mm loads and have never had the problem since.
 
ted_dent said:
I have found that when loading light loads of bulky powders with the auto-disk it periodically drops only a 1/3 to 1/2 charge. This may be a case of what is sometimes referred to as 'bridging', where the bulky structure of some powders causes it to randomly clog in the measure because of the small powder cavity. Only part of it drops into the case. This also seems to happen with stick type rifle powders which do not flow smoothly. I was using Alliant Promo (a bulky flake powder) for my 9mm loads (about 3.4 gr.) and maybe 1 or 2 in 50 would suffer this problem. I never got an actual squib because the rounds always cleared the barrel but they were noticeably lighter than the others. I used the same powder for my 45 ACP loads but at around 3.9 gr. and never had the problem so it appears that the Lee disk cavity for 3.9 gr. was big enough that the clogging couldn't occur. The bulkier the powder the more this seems to be an issue with the auto-disk, especially with light loads. Conversely, I drop loads of Alliant Bullseye (a fairly fine granular powder) with charge weights as low as 1.6 gr. out of the auto-disk and never have this problem occur. I switched to 231 (also a finer grained powder) for my 9mm loads and have never had the problem since.
Click to expand...

Thanks I will have to watch for this when I start. See how it goes with the 700x.

Cheers!!!
 
kodiakattack said:
I have a Lee auto-disk what problems is there with the 700x ? That's what I have for 9mm but haven't loaded any pistol rounds yet.
Click to expand...

What Ted said, also with a 3.4gr load; very irregular with a few stovepipes in an old little Llama which should now be rated for 380 auto.
I tried to make baffles but they seemed to make things worse. It works well from 4.0 grains and up in .40 and bigger cases though.
"Thankfully" I had some TiteGroup that I could use for the 9mm, But as explained earlier, I don't like it because of its low volume.
 
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