First, DO NOT get reloading information from either a gun shop OR an internet forum! Rely on published data from reliable sources. Many gun shop employees are neither shooters not reloaders believe it or not!
Since BE-86 is relatively new the best place to go for data is to the original source, the manufacturer.
Alliant Powder - Home
Or go to this link:
Alliant Powder - Reloader's Guide where you can view or download the current data. You can also order a copy of the "Reloaders Guide" on this page.
Over the history of
Laflin and Rand,
DuPont,
Hercules, and now
Alliant, all of which have manufactured "Bullseye" at different times, there have been several propellants which have carried the Bullseye name in one form or another.
The "original" "Bullseye" was reported to be the clean-up of scraps and "sweepings" from the powder cutting operation for the Laflin and Rand rifle powders. It was found to be useful for handgun ammunition, but there was a limit to how much could be produced by this method and a new powder was developed as an original product that filled the same niche'. This became known as "Bullseye 2", and the original as "Bullseye 1". Bullseye 2 was the only version that remained in production and eventually came to be known as simply Bullseye as we know it today.
Over more than a century there has been a series of powders known to Hercules/Alliant, and the factory loading industry as various Bullseye numbers that were
not available to reloaders, so the similarity of names was not an issue. One was known as "
Bullseye-84" to the trade. Several years ago this was released to reloaders as "
Power Pistol" to avoid confusion from the name! And now Alliant has released another powder in the "Bullseye series" and called it
BE-86, probably hoping reloaders would recognize it as a new and different powder and not confuse it with traditional "Bullseye" that has been in production for nearly 120 years! Unfortunately this has not worked out well and there is a lot of mis-information being spread.
BE-86 is only one of the "Bullseye series". They are all different from each other and have different burning rates.
Reloading data IS NOT INTERCHANGEABLE between "Bullseye", "Bullseye-84 (Power Pistol)" and "BE-86".
This is a very similar situation to what Hodgdon did about 30 years ago when they introduces their "Clays Technology" series of powders. These were known as "Clays", "Universal Clays" and "International Clays". The problem is when "Clays" was specified it was ambiguous as to which of the clays series was intended! Since they were widely differing in application and burning rate this represented a real safety concern and eventually Hodgdon began distributing, and referring to, these as simply "Clays", Universal" and "International". to eliminate the confusion!
BE86
Linear Mode
