Originally Posted by Pantera Mike

A couple of days ago I picked up a pound of AA#5 and a box of Speer 125gr Gold Dot Hollow Points. The Speer reloading manual has a max load of 7.8gr for +P while the older AA data has a MINIMUM of 8.3 with a warning not to reduce any further? The current AA data has a variety of loads for different 125gr bullets with a curious split, as the min and max charges vary quite a bit with different bullets. The two highest show a max of 7.8 which mirrors the Speer data. The minimum 357 magnum loads with this same bullet and powder combination are all substantially higher. So I felt safe starting off with 7.8. I won’t be able to try it until next week but will let you know how it turns out.

I did shoot a hundred rounds of my 2400 load last week, which rendered the gun filthy. It was accurate and recoil was authoritative leading me to believe that whoever was on the other end would definitely rue the day, but the gun and bench were sprinkled with unburned powder flakes. I have 150 more rounds of this stuff to get rid of and will never use that load again.

I actually bought eight pounds of 2400 last year because the reloading manual data indicated it was suitably flexible for downloading 357 and 44 to lower-than-max velocities. I have found that once the charge is reduced it no longer works effectively. I guess I can turn up the steam, but that’s why I have eight pounds of WW296?

First world problems....