Hey. In the early stages of gathing reloading info and was wondering, with all the various powders on the market, how do you determine which one you want?

 

It seems like buying different types for trial/error and experimentation would be rather costly.

Hey. In the early stages of gathing reloading info and was wondering, with all the various powders on the market, how do you determine which one you want?

 

It seems like buying different types for trial/error and experimentation would be rather costly.

you usually pick a known good round out of the book and get the components for that round. Start with a round suited for what you are going to use it for. Altering on the known with other variables will give you different results. Be careful and don't go max round to start.

It depends on the application you are using it for. Make sure you have multiple and update load data from reliable sources, not what someone posted online,for whichever powder you use. If its just for target, to get the most bang for your buck, you can pick a powder that uses less grains than other powders. If you want higher velocity, max loads, some powders would be better. Not exactly trial and error, but using multiple powders will help you find what powder you like for each caliber and what would be suited best for your needs. What calibers do you plan on reloading for?

Right now its more of a what powder can you find.

 

See what recipes are in say a Lymans 49 for the cal you are want.

 

Then see which of the powders you can find.

 

Obviously certain loadings will work better than others, but the Lymans loading should be safe.

If youre loading for rifle there are two types of powder design. Stick and ball. Stick powder doesnt flow that great in powder measures and can make progressive reloading difficult where the ball powder meters real smooth. Thats one big difference in the rifle powder world.

Ken

I believe mike is starting with Pistol reloading so generally all pistol caliber suitable powders will be powder measure friendly.

 

To reiteriate what others have said, the reloading manuals will tell you what powders work with that caliber. Generally speaking, pistols utilize powders on the faster end of the overall spectrum with larger and magnum rounds using some that are a little slower because they can make use of the slower burn rate to make more velocity but even there there is some crossover. But start with the book recipes and you'll find that they all mention more or less the same powders for the same caliber and so that type of corroboration gives you solid reinforcement that the powder is a good choice for your load.

Get a proper book, do some online searches & see what you can get. Slim pickings as of late.