Alliant vs Hodgdon

[Adam Helmer]

Mr. 16 gauge,

Excellent post! I collect reloading manuals and have them going back to the early 1960s. The newer manuals NOW list my former mid-range accuracy loads as above Maximum! I never would have found my accuracy loads in many guns with today's powder listings. I will continue to use the safe loads developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Adam

[Seawolf1090]

Hmmm.... maybe that's why I have had such insipid and disappointing performance from Unique. In the .45ACP loading, my M1991A1 got gummed up and began to fail to function after three magazines full, and velocity on my Chrony clocked in 100+ FPS slower than listed by Alliant.
In my .357Magnum loads, it also burned very dirty, gumming up the extractor star and eventually causing failure.
From reading of others extolling Unique's virtues, I began to suspect my loads were simply too light. Luckily I only had one pound - not so much of a loss when I dumped the 'flamable dirt' onto my GF's flower bed......
Switched to Bullseye for most handgun loads, and Hodgdon's Lil Gun for my .357Mag loads - been very happy ever since, and now have twelve pounds of Bullseye!

[Mr. 16 gauge]

I will continue to use the safe loads developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

Me too, Adam.....I still have my Lyman 2nd Edition shotshell manual....not much useful data in there anymore; a lot of powders have been discontinued, such as the Alcan lot, and the only shell still being made in there is the Federal Hi-Power shell w/ paper base wad.

Still, one might stumble on a deal....took a gun to the gunsmith the other day and saw that he had to full boxes (2000) of CCI #57 primers....remember those? Now, if I can just find a bunch of the old Remington hulls, I'll be all set!